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The Tibetan Plateau vortices (TPVs) are mesoscale weather systems active at the near-surface of the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which are one of the major precipitation-producing systems over the TP and its surrounding areas. TPVs mainly occur in the warm season from May to September. In this paper, we investigated the interdecadal change of TPVs in the warm seasons of 1979–2020 with the six widely used reanalysis datasets. A significant change of the TPVs frequency appears around the mid-1990s, associated with less TPVs during 1979–1995 and more TPVs during 1996–2020, which is constant among the multiple reanalysis datasets. The abrupt change of TPVs is caused by a transition of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) from a cold phase to a warm phase in the mid-1990s. The shift of AMO leads to a silk-road pattern-like wave train and a spatially asymmetric change of tropospheric temperature. It modifies the intensity of the subtropical westerly jet and the TP heating, leading to the interdecadal change of TPV activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: A stretchable, transparent, and ultra-broadband (0.1–10 THz) terahertz shielding MXene (Ti3C2Tx) film has been fabricated by a structure engineering strategy. Theoretical calculations indicate that the wrinkled structure enhances the film's conductivity and surface plasmon resonances, resulting in an improved THz wave absorption. The wrinkled MXene films exhibit superb conformability to surfaces with random curvatures, and can be used as a shielding film for THz imaging. With the increasing demand for terahertz (THz) technology in security inspection, medical imaging, and flexible electronics, there is a significant need for stretchable and transparent THz electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials. Existing EMI shielding materials, like opaque metals and carbon-based films, face challenges in achieving both high transparency and high shielding efficiency (SE). Here, a wrinkled structure strategy was proposed to construct ultra-thin, stretchable, and transparent terahertz shielding MXene films, which possesses both isotropous wrinkles (height about 50 nm) and periodic wrinkles (height about 500 nm). Compared to flat film, the wrinkled MXene film (8 nm) demonstrates a remarkable 36.5% increase in SE within the THz band. The wrinkled MXene film exhibits an EMI SE of 21.1 dB at the thickness of 100 nm, and an average EMI SE/t of 700 dB μm−1 over the 0.1–10 THz. Theoretical calculations suggest that the wrinkled structure enhances the film's conductivity and surface plasmon resonances, resulting in an improved THz wave absorption. Additionally, the wrinkled structure enhances the MXene films' stretchability and stability. After bending and stretching (at 30% strain) cycles, the average THz transmittance of the wrinkled film is only 0.5% and 2.4%, respectively. The outstanding performances of the wrinkled MXene film make it a promising THz electromagnetic shielding materials for future smart windows and wearable electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), known as the "Asian water tower," provides freshwater resources for hundreds of millions of people in Asia. Most of the Asian rivers, such as the Yangtze, the Jinsha, the Salween and the Brahmaputra, are generated from southeastern part of the TP (SETP). In order to explore the influences of atmospheric circulation on the precipitation over the SETP, self‐organizing mapping (SOM) was utilized to identify the weather regimes (WRs) and related precipitation over the SETP and its surrounding areas. The daily scale of large‐scale circulation via ERA5 were classified into nine WRs by the SOM. There are two favourable regimes (rainy WRs) and three adverse ones (rainless WRs) for the SETP precipitation among these WRs, respectively. Furthermore, water vapour transport of the WRs and the relevant effects of ENSO are investigated. The droughts and floods of SETP are determined by the interannual variations of occurred frequency of the WRs. In particular, the SETP is flooded in the years with frequent occurrence of the rainy WRs and vice versa. The occurrence of WRs is closely related to the phase state of ENSO. The 9th WR (SOM9) and the 4th WR (SOM4) are separately occurred more frequently in the El Niño and the La Niña years. Regulation of ENSO on the SETP precipitation are effective through its influences on the state of atmospheric circulation, that is, frequency of various WRs. It implies that the occurred frequency of WRs is modulated by the climate systems and results in the interannual variations of precipitation over the SETP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A flexible drilling tool is a special drilling tool for ultrashort-radius radial horizontal wells. This tool is composed of many parts and has the characteristics of a multibody system. In this paper, a numerical method for the dynamic analysis of flexible drilling tools is proposed. The flexible drill tool is discretized into spatial beam elements, while the multilayer contact of the flexible drilling tool is represented by the multilayer dynamic gap element, and the dynamic model of the multibody system for the flexible drilling tool's multilayer contact is established, considering the interaction force between the drill bit and the rock. The nonlinear dynamic equation is solved using the Newmark method and Newton–Raphson method. An analysis of the dynamic behavior of a flexible drilling tool is conducted. The results indicate that the flexible drilling tool experiences vortex formation due to the interaction between the flexible drilling pipe and the guide pipe, leading to increased friction and wear. This situation hinders safe drilling operations with flexible drilling tools. The collision force of the flexible drilling tool near the bottom of the hole is more severe than that of the other tool types, which may lead to failure of the connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To identify genetic causes in 40 whole exome sequencing (WES)-negative Charcot–Marie–Tooth (CMT) families and provide a summary of the clinical and genetic features of the diagnosed patients. Methods: The clinical information and sequencing data of 40 WES-negative families out of 131 CMT families were collected, and phenotype-driven reanalysis was conducted using the Exomiser software. Results: The molecular diagnosis was regained in 4 families, increasing the overall diagnosis rate by 3.0%. One family with adolescent-onset pure CMT1 was diagnosed [POLR3B: c.2810G>A (p.R937Q)] due to the novel genotype–phenotype association. One infantile-onset, severe CMT1 family with deep sensory disturbance was diagnosed by screening the BAM file and harbored c.1174C>T (p.R392*) and 875_927delinsCTGCCCACTCTGCCCACTCTGCCCACTCTG (p.V292Afs53) of PRX. Two families were diagnosed due to characteristic phenotypes, including an infantile-onset ICMT family with renal dysfunction harboring c.213_233delinsGAGGAGCA (p.S72Rfs34) of INF2 and an adolescent-onset CMT2 family with optic atrophy harboring c.560C>T (p.P187L) and c.616A>G (p.K206E) of SLC25A46. According to the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) guidelines, the variants of POLR3B and SLC25A46 were classified as likely pathogenic, and the variants of INF2 and PRX were pathogenic. All these variants were first reported worldwide except for p.R392* of PRX. Conclusions: We identified five novel pathogenic variants in POLR3B, PRX, INF2, and SLC25A46, which broaden their phenotypic and genotypic spectrums. Regular phenotype-driven reanalysis is a powerful strategy for increasing the diagnostic yield of WES-negative CMT patients, and long-term follow-up and screening BAM files for contiguous deletion and missense variants are both essential for reanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

pH‐ and temperature‐responsive hydrogels have attracted considerable attention due to their responsiveness to dual physiologically‐relevant stimuli. In this study, we developed stimuli‐responsive hydrogels based on monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG)‐polypeptide block copolymers containing various tertiary amine pendants (EEP‐TAs). The EEP‐TAs were synthesized via ring‐opening copolymerization of α‐amino acid N‐carboxyanhydrides, and further modified post‐polymerization with click chemistry. The EEP‐TAs exhibited an α‐helix‐to‐β‐sheet transition when the pH was increased from 4.0 to 7.4. At elevated polymer concentrations, aqueous solutions of the EEP‐TAs underwent thermo‐induced sol–gel phase transitions, which were dependent on the pH. The hydrogels almost fully degraded within 3 weeks in the subcutaneous layer of mice and exhibited good histocompatibility in vivo. Additionally, doxorubicin (DOX)‐loaded hydrogels exhibited pH‐responsive drug release profiles in vitro, which were composed of rapid release at acidic pH and more sustained release at neutral pH. Thus, these polypeptide hydrogels hold potential as depots for environment‐responsive delivery of therapeutic agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dual-porosity structures of fine-grained soils can noticeably affect their ability to retain water. This work jointly employs axis translation technique, filter paper method, and vapor equilibrium technique to study the soil–water retention curve (SWRC) over a wide suction range of Nanyang expansive soil characterized by double porosity. Mercury intrusion porosimetry tests are carried out to investigate the correlations between the aforementioned water-retention response and underlying pore structure characteristics. The test data show that dual-porosity distribution leads to bimodal SWRC. The change in void ratio mainly affects the median size of the inter-aggregate pores and consequently the portion of SWRC at low suction range. Based on these experimental observations, this work presents an SWRC equation for fine-grained soils with dual-porosity structures. Attracting water through capillary and adsorptive processes is explicitly distinguished. The capillary water is described by a relation that includes the characteristics of both inter- and intra-aggregate pore size distributions as parameters for representing bimodal characteristics. The adsorbed water is modeled by a relation that considers capillary condensation within intra-aggregate pores and allows for the decoupling between adsorptive water-retention mechanism and void ratio change. The latter feature is the foundation for the model to include the void ratio effect on SWRC in a way consistent with how it affects the pore structures of soils. By simulating test data in this work and in the literature, the proposed model is shown to be capable of representing the water-retention behavior of fine-grained soils with dual-porosity structures under different void ratios. To include the aforementioned key factors that influence the SWRC of fine-grained soils, seven parameters are required in the proposed model. This feature can reduce the practical applicability of the model. Future directions to enhance this aspect are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a soil-water retention curve (SWRC) model for fine-grained soils. Compared with existing studies, the proposed model accounts for the distinct roles of the volume change of soils on capillarity and adsorption mechanisms. The capillary water is described by a relation that includes the characteristics of the pore-size distributions as parameters, while the absorbed water is modeled by a novel proposition that both considers the phenomenon of capillary condensation and allows for the decoupling between the degree of capillary and adsorptive saturation. Based on this feature, the void ratio effects are considered in a way in which they only affect capillary water, i.e., consistent with how volume change influences soil microstructures. The relative contributions of void ratio effects and hydraulic hysteresis on the path- and history-dependence of a SWRC in Sr–s–e space, where Sr is degree of saturation, s is matric suction, e is void ratio, for deformable unsaturated soils are examined. The significance of discriminating the effects of volume change on capillary and adsorptive water is illustrated by applying the SWRC model to computing the shear strength of unsaturated soils with different void ratios. The model performance is assessed by comparing against test data reported for four types of fine-grained soils in the literature and those tested for natural loess in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the hydraulic hysteresis caused by the change of contact angle at the soil–capillary water interface during the drying–wetting processes, this note proposes a novel hysteretic water-retention model. Compared with the previous studies, the model can take into account two distinct mechanisms, i.e., capillarity and adsorption, separately. The capillarity instead of adsorption is related to the contact angle hysteresis. Based on the Young–Laplace equation and the conjugate point on the main drying–wetting curve, the scanning equation is determined for the capillary part. It is evident that the new model is able to capture the hydraulic hysteresis behavior by comparing against experimental data from the published literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: A confined thermal expansion strategy to fabricate liquid metal (LM)-based monoliths with continuous LM network at ultra-low content. The results show a strong integration advantage of LM-based monoliths in density, mechanical strength, electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness, and near field shielding effectiveness, as well as multi-functions such as magnetic actuation. Liquid metal (LM) has become an emerging material paradigm in the electromagnetic interference shielding field owing to its excellent electrical conductivity. However, the processing of lightweight bulk LM composites with finite package without leakage is still a great challenge, due to high surface tension and pump-out issues of LM. Here, a novel confined thermal expansion strategy based on expandable microsphere (EM) is proposed to develop a new class of LM-based monoliths with 3D continuous conductive network. The EM/LM monolith (EM/LMm) presents outstanding performance of lightweight like metallic aerogel (0.104 g cm−1), high strength (3.43 MPa), super elasticity (90% strain), as well as excellent tailor ability and recyclability, rely on its unique gas-filled closed-cellular structure and refined LM network. Moreover, the assembled highly conducting EM/LMm exhibits a recorded shielding effectiveness (98.7 dB) over a broad frequency range of 8.2–40 GHz among reported LM-based composites at an ultra-low content of LM, and demonstrates excellent electromagnetic sealing capacity in practical electronics. The ternary EM/LM/Ni monoliths fabricated by the same approach could be promising universal design principles for multifunctional LM composites, and applicable in magnetic responsive actuator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endowing electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding foams with ultralow density and dynamic stable structure is crucial yet challenging. Here, we propose a facile one-step thermal treatment strategy to fabricate lightweight silver/reduced graphene oxide-coated carbonized melamine (CMF/rGO/Ag) hybrid foams with remarkable mechanical performance and outstanding EMI shielding effectiveness (EMI SE). Due to interfacial reinforcement of rGO between CMF skeleton and silver, the CMF/rGO/Ag foams show outstanding structural stability after 1000 cycles of a loading-unloading compression test. Moreover, The EMI SE of the foams reaches 50.6 dB at a mere density of 16 mg cm−3. The normalized surface-specific SE is up to 7616 dB cm2 g−1 with an ultralow Ag content of 0.09 vol%. Interestingly, the collaboration of the porous skeleton and multiple interfaces contribute to an anomalous high absorption coefficient of CMF/rGO/Ag foams (over 0.5). The high-absorption-coefficient shielding mechanism of the CMF/rGO/Ag foams was further studied by finite element analysis (FEA). The remarkable near-field EMI shielding performance of the CMF/rGO/Ag foam demonstrates that the low density and robust CMF/rGO/Ag foam have enormous advantages and wide application prospects as EMI shielding materials of electronic packaging. A silver/rGO coated carbonized melamine foam is fabricated by a one-step thermal treatment process. The as-prepared hybrid foams show excellent mechanical properties and structural stability. Due to the unique porous structure, the hybrid foams demonstrate an outstanding specific EMI SE of 7176 dB cm2 g-1, and an extra-high absorption coefficient of 0.51 with a low Ag content of 0.09 vol%. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is known as the Asian water tower that supplies fresh water for millions of people in Asia. The Tibetan Plateau vortices (TPVs) are one of the major precipitation‐producing weather systems over the TP. The characteristics of TPV‐associated precipitation from 1979 to 2017 are quantitatively analysed based on three daily precipitation datasets. The influence of TPVs on precipitation is more significant in the warm season (May–September) because the precipitation and TPV activities both peak in the warm season. The TPV‐associated precipitation (VAP) dominates the total precipitation over most of the TP in the warm season. The VAP contributes more than 50% of the total precipitation in the warm season over 30% of the area over the TP, particularly in the central TP, while the VAP accounts for more than 25% of the total precipitation in the cold season over about 20% of the area over the TP. Therefore, TPVs are the major systems to produce precipitation on the TP in the warm season, and they are also important in the cold season in certain regions. The interannual variation of VAP is mainly determined by the number, rather than the precipitation intensity, of TPVs. Furthermore, the heating anomaly caused by the TP thermodynamic effect is an influential factor of VAP. Stronger (weaker) TP heating and resulting ascending motion strengthen (attenuate) the convergence near the TP surface and the divergence in the upper troposphere. The thermal adaption‐associated circulation generates more (less) TPVs and VAP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and purpose: The purpose was to provide an overview of genotype and phenotype distribution in a cohort of patients with Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMT) and related disorders from central south China. Methods: In all, 435 patients were enrolled and detailed clinical data were collected. Multiplex ligation‐dependent probe amplification for PMP22 duplication/deletion and CMT multi‐gene panel sequencing were performed. Whole exome sequencing was further applied in the remaining patients who failed to achieve molecular diagnosis. Results: Among the 435 patients, 216 had CMT1, 14 had hereditary neuropathy with pressure palsies (HNPP), 178 had CMT2, 24 had distal hereditary motor neuropathy (dHMN) and three had hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy (HSAN). The overall molecular diagnosis rate was 70%: 75.7% in CMT1, 100% in HNPP, 64.6% in CMT2, 41.7% in dHMN and 33.3% in HSAN. The most common four genotypes accounted for 68.9% of molecular diagnosed patients. Relatively frequent causes were missense changes in PMP22 (4.6%) and SH3TC2 (2.3%) in CMT1; and GDAP1 (5.1%), IGHMBP2 (4.5%) and MORC2 (3.9%) in CMT2. Twenty of 160 detected pathogenic variants and the associated phenotypes have not been previously reported. Broad phenotype spectra were observed in six genes, amongst which the pathogenic variants in BAG3 and SPTLC1 were detected in two sporadic patients presenting with the CMT2 phenotype. Conclusions: Our results provided a unique genotypic and phenotypic landscape of patients with CMT and related disorders from central south China, including a relatively high proportion of CMT2 and lower occurrence of PMP22 duplication. The broad phenotype spectra in certain genes have advanced our understanding of CMT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau vortex (TPV) is a major rain-producing system over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in summer. The vertical structure of TPV is critical in understanding the generation and development of TPV. In this paper, the ERA-Interim reanalysis data and an objective TPV detection and vertical tracing method are used to investigate the vertical structure of TPV in boreal summer (June–August). Most TPVs are shallow, with only 1/5 of them can reach 400 hPa. Among the TPVs that move off the TP, more than half are deep vortices. The tilting direction of TPV is related to its baroclinic structure. In general, TPVs tilt to the direction of the cold air from low to high isobaric levels, and the tilting direction depends on the relative positions of the warm pool and the cold air intruding into TPV. Deep TPVs inside the TP and those moving off the TP have different vertical structures. On the plateau, TPVs have convergence at the low levels (400–500 hPa) and divergence at the high levels (above 400 hPa), which can cause updrafts in the vortex and a tropical cyclone-like structure. For the TPVs moving off the TP, the updrafts are significantly weak due to the relatively low low-level convergence and the relatively low high-level divergence. These TPVs almost have positive vertical vorticity and present an extratropical cyclone-like structure. The vertical thickness of TPV is important in determining whether the TPV could move off the TP. The results show that the deep TPVs are more likely to move out than the shallow ones. Therefore, the vertical structure is a better predictor on the movement of TPV than its other properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tibetan Plateau vortex (TPV) is a mesoscale weather system active in the near-surface layer, which is one of the major systems for the generation of precipitation in the Tibetan Plateau (TP). However, no long-term observations of the TPVs are available due to the scarcity of observations in the TP. Thereby, long-term, high-accuracy reanalysis products are a reliable source for the analysis of characteristic TPV activities and possible mechanisms behind. In the present study, an objective analysis method is implemented to obtain a complete dataset of TPV based on several reanalysis products, including the ERA-Interim, ERA40, JRA55, NCEP CFSR, and NASA MERRA2. The TPVs are detected and tracked by the minima in geopotential height at 500 hPa. Results indicate that the TPVs derived from multiple reanalysis products have quite similar spatial patterns and temporal variability. The characteristic parameters of the TPVs derived from a given reanalysis data are related to the resolution of this reanalysis product. Higher-resolution reanalysis products can yield more low-pressure systems, which explains why the TPVs derived from high-resolution reanalysis datasets generally have longer lifetime, stronger and larger vortex scale than those from low-resolution reanalysis products, although the total number of TPVs are similar. The annual average number of TPVs generated in the TP is 63.5, and these TPVs largely originate in the mountainous area of the central western TP around (34° N, 78–95° E) and a belt zone (30° N, 80–84° E) in the southern TP, where the elevation is around 5500 m. The TPVs often dissipate in low valleys and the lee side of mountains. They mainly occur in the warm season during May–September, most active in the summer and least active in the winter. More TPVs form in the daytime than in the nighttime. Those TPVs that move out of the TP account for less than 10–14% of all TPVs, and they usually follow three moving paths: eastward (6.9–7.8%), northeastward (2.3–3.4%) and southward (2.3–3.5%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comprehensive study based on multiphase-seepage and wellbore multiphase-flow theories. It establishes a model for calculating the rate of gas intrusion that considers various factors, including formation pore permeability, bottomhole pressure difference, rheology of the drilling fluid, and surface tension. Experiments were conducted to investigate the mechanism of gas intrusion under shut-in conditions, and the experimental results were employed to validate the reliability of the proposed method for calculating the gas intrusion rate. Furthermore, this research explores the transportation rates of single bubbles and bubble clusters in drilling fluid under shut-in conditions. Additionally, empirical expressions were derived for the drag coefficient for single bubbles and bubble clusters in the wellbore. These expressions can be used to calculate gas transportation rates for various equivalent radii of single bubbles and bubble clusters. The initial bubble size of intrusive gas, the transportation speed of intrusive gas in the wellbore, the rate of gas intrusion, and variations in the wellbore pressure after gas intrusion were analyzed. Additionally, a method was developed to calculate the rising velocity of bubble clusters in water based on experimental results. The study reveals that the average bubble size in the bubble cluster is significantly smaller than the size of single bubbles generated from the orifice. When the viscosity of the drilling fluid is low, the transportation velocity of the bubble cluster exhibits a positive correlation with the average bubble diameter. When the average bubble diameter exceeds 1 mm, the bubble velocity no longer varies with changes in the bubble-cluster diameter. The research results provide theoretical support for wellbore pressure prediction and pressure control under shutdown conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine Reading Comprehension (MRC) is the task of teaching machines to understand and answer questions based on a given text. In the judicial domain, MRC has garnered attention as a novel strategy for addressing a variety of legal issues. Judicial MRC generally requires interpretability, meaning that the model should not only answer the question correctly but also provide supporting evidence sentences. A straightforward approach is to handle the two tasks separately, which ignores the relation between the two tasks and leads to the loss of annotated information. To make better use of the limited judicial MRC annotation data, we simulate the strategies used by humans in solving MRC problems and propose the Feedback-Enhanced Two-Stage Framework for Machine Reading Comprehension (FETSF-MRC). This framework consists of two cascaded modules: (a) a scanning module that identifies evidence sentences and (b) a detailed reading module that focuses on the evidence to identify candidate answers and provides feedback to the scanning module. Experiments on two Chinese judicial reading comprehension datasets (CJRC, CAIL2020) and an open-domain English dataset HotpotQA show that FETSF-MRC achieves superior performance compared to several baselines. FETSF-MRC outperforms the best baseline by 1.12% and 1.49% in joint F1 score on the CJRC and CAIL2020 datasets, respectively, and achieves 73.74% joint F1 score on the HotpotQA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With complicated conditions and a large number of potentially causative genes, the diagnosis of a patient with complex inherited peripheral neuropathies (IPNs) is challenging. To provide an overview of the genetic and clinical features of 39 families with complex IPNs from central south China and to optimize the molecular diagnosis approach to this group of heterogeneous diseases, a total of 39 index patients from unrelated families were enrolled, and detailed clinical data were collected. TTR Sanger sequencing, hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) gene panel, and dynamic mutation detection in spinocerebellar ataxia (SCAs) were performed according to the respective additional clinical features. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) was used in patients with negative or unclear results. Dynamic mutation detection in NOTCH2NLC and RCF1 was applied as a supplement to WES. As a result, an overall molecular diagnosis rate of 89.7% was achieved. All 21 patients with predominant autonomic dysfunction and multiple organ system involvement carried pathogenic variants in TTR, among which nine had c.349G > T (p.A97S) hotspot variants. Five out of 7 patients (71.4%) with muscle involvement harbored biallelic pathogenic variants in GNE. Five out of 6 patients (83.3%) with spasticity reached definite genetic causes in SACS, KIF5A, BSCL2, and KIAA0196, respectively. NOTCH2NLC GGC repeat expansions were identified in all three cases accompanied by chronic coughing and in one patient accompanied by cognitive impairment. The pathogenic variants, p.F284S and p.G111R in GNE, and p.K4326E in SACS, were first reported. In conclusion, transthyretin amyloidosis with polyneuropathy (ATTR-PN), GNE myopathy, and neuronal intranuclear inclusion disease (NIID) were the most common genotypes in this cohort of complex IPNs. NOTCH2NLC dynamic mutation testing should be added to the molecular diagnostic workflow. We expanded the genetic and related clinical spectrum of GNE myopathy and ARSACS by reporting novel variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A well-formed and robust vasculature is critical to the health of most organ systems in the body. However, the endothelial cells (ECs) forming the vasculature can exhibit a number of distinct functional subphenotypes like arterial or venous ECs, as well as angiogenic tip and stalk ECs. In this study, we investigate the in vitro differentiation of EC subphenotypes from embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Using our staged induction methods and chemically defined mediums, highly angiogenic EC subpopulations, as well as less proliferative and less migratory EC subpopulations, are derived. Furthermore, the EC subphenotypes exhibit distinct surface markers, gene expression profiles, and positional affinities during sprouting. While both subpopulations contained greater than 80% VE-cad+/CD31+ cells, the tip/stalk-like EC contained predominantly Flt4+/Dll4+/CXCR4+/Flt-1− cells, while the phalanx-like EC was composed of higher numbers of Flt-1+ cells. These studies suggest that the tip-specific EC can be derived in vitro from stem cells as a distinct and relatively stable EC subphenotype without the benefit of its morphological positioning in the sprouting vessel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pyruvate kinase M2 isoform (PKM2) is a crucial protein responsible for aerobic glycolysis of cancer cells. Activation of PKM2 may alter aberrant metabolism in cancer cells. In this study, we discovered a 4-hydroxy-thiazolidine-2-thione compound 2 as a novel PKM2 activator from a random screening of an in-house compound library. Then a series of novel 4-hydroxy-thiazolidine-2-thione derivatives were designed and synthesized for screening as potent PKM2 activators. Among these, some compounds showed higher PKM2 activation activity than lead compound 2 and also exhibited significant anti-proliferative activities on human cancer cell lines at nanomolar concentration. The compound 5w was identified as the most potent antitumor agent, which showed excellent anti-proliferative effects with IC 50 values from 0.46 μM to 0.81 μM against H1299, HCT116, Hela and PC3 cell lines. 5w also showed less cytotoxicity in non-tumor cell line HELF compared with cancer cells. In addition, Preliminary pharmacological studies revealed that 5w arrests the cell cycle at the G2/M phase in HCT116 cell line. The best PKM2 activation by compound 5t was rationalized through docking studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Binding of the transcriptional co-activator YAP with the transcription factor TEAD stimulates growth of the heart and other organs. YAP overexpression potently stimulates fetal cardiomyocyte (CM) proliferation, but YAP's mitogenic potency declines postnatally. While investigating factors that limit YAP's postnatal mitogenic activity, we found that the CM-enriched TEAD1 binding protein VGLL4 inhibits CM proliferation by inhibiting TEAD1-YAP interaction and by targeting TEAD1 for degradation. Importantly, VGLL4 acetylation at lysine 225 negatively regulated its binding to TEAD1. This developmentally regulated acetylation event critically governs postnatal heart growth, since overexpression of an acetylation-refractory VGLL4 mutant enhanced TEAD1 degradation, limited neonatal CM proliferation, and caused CM necrosis. Our study defines an acetylation-mediated, VGLL4-dependent switch that regulates TEAD stability and YAP-TEAD activity. These insights may improve targeted modulation of TEAD-YAP activity in applications from cardiac regeneration to cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon nanotube (CNT) aerogels and sponges are macroscopic porous materials with a unique isotropic structure. CNTs make an interconnected 3D scaffold, therefore the resulting aerogels are robust, highly conductive, and flexible, enabling a much broader range of applications than aligned arrays and thin films, especially in energy and environmental areas. A comprehensive overview of the recent progress in isotropic CNT-based macroscopic structures is provided, including their synthesis methods, structural characteristics, mechanical properties, and deformation mechanism, as well as potential applications in energy and environmental fields. In particular, this study focuses on the CNT sponges developed, which are high-performance porous materials with many distinct properties such as their versatile deformations and shape recovery. Importantly, the CNT sponges provide a universal platform for designing and manufacturing a variety of hierarchical functional composites by introducing polymers or inorganic guests, thus greatly extend application areas from highly compressible electrodes for supercapacitors and batteries, catalysis, to environmental cleanup. Future research directions and associated challenges in this field are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme precipitation events (EPEs) often bring disastrous consequences, such as floods, urban waterlogging and landslides. Understanding the effects of weather systems on EPEs can help improve the accuracy of weather forecasts. The Tibetan Plateau vortex (TPV) is a mesoscale weather system that is active near the surface of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Though the crucial role of TPVs on the TP precipitation has been widely known, the influence of TPVs on EPEs is not yet clear. In this study, the quantitative impacts of TPVs on the EPEs over the TP and its surrounding areas are investigated based on the TPV datasets from the ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) and four precipitation datasets from the ERA5, NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC), Integrated Multi-satllitE Retrievals for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission (IMERG) and in-situ rain gauges. The results show that the TPVs have remarkable positive contribution to the EPEs over the TP and its adjacent regions for all four precipitation datasets. The TPVs induce more than half of the daily EPEs over the central TP, while the number of days influenced by TPVs only accounts for <20% of the total days over this region. A higher frequency of EPEs is identified over the central TP, and a higher ratio of the TPVs tends to be associated with EPEs after they move out of the TP. The EPEs tend to occur near the center and the southeastern quadrant of TPVs. For the TPVs associated with EPEs (EPE-TPVs) and those having no relation to EPEs (NEPE-TPVs), the structure of TPVs and related large-scale circulation are significantly different at the upper- and lower-level of the troposphere. The EPE-TPVs tend to be larger, stronger, thicker, and move farther than the NEPE-TPVs. The TPVs inducing EPEs usually consist of some specific synoptic components, including the southwest monsoon current along the southern side of TPVs, the shear line near the surface of the TP, and the South Asia high in the upper-troposphere. EPE-TPVs related atmospheric circulations and the climatology of circulations are analyzed in detail to provide a better understanding for forecast service. • The contributions of Tibetan Plateau vortices (TPVs) to extreme precipitation events (EPEs) over the Tibetan Plateau and its vicinity are consistent by using different precipitation datasets. • The TPVs contribute to more EPEs with more intense EPEs threshold. • The TPVs associated with EPEs (EPE-TPVs) are relatively larger, stronger, thicker and longer-lived than those having no connection to EPEs (NEPE-TPVs). • The South Asian high is under the western (eastern) mode for EPE-TPVs (NEPE-TPVs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The simulation results of land use under different models are compared. • A comprehensive restricted area was used as the limiting factor. • In the accuracy evaluation, the FoM value is significantly different. • The simulation accuracy of PLUS model is higher than other models. The simulation and future prediction of spatial and temporal land use and land cover change (LUCC) have long been the focus (and challenge) of research on land use change and sustainable development. However, the existing research lacks empirical comparisons among different simulation models under the same conditions in the same region; hence, the most accurate simulation results cannot be obtained through the optimal model. In this paper, taking the Fuxian Lake basin as an example, the CA-Markov, FLUS, and PLUS models are adopted to explore the optimal model for simulating LUCC in this basin by integrating restricted areas of LUCC. This study shows the following. (1) The simulation results are more accurate under the joint restrictions of open water, prohibited development zones and ecological protection red lines than under a single restriction. (2) All three models can simulate the LUCC in the Fuxian Lake basin. Among these models, the PLUS model has the highest simulation accuracy in simulating LUCC at the basin scale and offers the best match of land types in terms of their quantity and spatial distribution. (3) The PLUS model can accurately predict the changes of LULC in the Fuxian Lake basin. The results of this study should help decision makers evaluate land use development patterns and provide a reference for the formulation of regional sustainable development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many engineering practices are carried out within the unsaturated soil. Soil-water retention curves (SWRCs) of many soils exhibit bimodal characteristics that significantly affect strength behavior, this issue still remains unresolved. This work employs suction stress concept to examine the uniqueness of strength parameters for coarse- and fine-grained unsaturated soils with bimodal SWRCs. Capillary degree of saturation is used to upscale pore-scale suction to macroscopic suction stress. In the suction stress-shear strength plane, both coarse- and fine-grained soils display the bi-linear strength envelope, differing from unsaturated soils with unimodal SWRC. • The shear strength of unsaturated soils with bimodal water-retention curves are analyzed using suction stress concept. • The influences of soil type on the shear strength of soils with bimodal SWRC are discussed. • The unified strength criterion for soils with bimodal SWRC is manifested by a bi-linear relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of high dose of oral lapatinib (LAPA), a HER2 tyrosine kinase inhibitor, with intravenous paclitaxel (PTX) exhibited a clinical survival advantage compared with PTX alone against HER2 positive breast cancer. However, localized delivery system with high regional drug level may greatly decrease the dose of drug, leading to higher safety and lower cost. In an attempt to imitate the fast and slow exposure of these two drugs in clinic use, we incorporated PTX nanoparticles and LAPA microparticles into a thermosensitive hydrogel (PL-gel) for peritumoral injection, using PTX-gel plus LAPA-oral (P-gel + L-oral) and so on as controls. To visually study in vitro or in vivo, PTX/DID and LAPA/DIR hybrid crystals were prepared. In vitro and in vivo studies demonstrated the fast and short-term release of PTX, as well as the slow and long-term release of LAPA from the PL-gel. The most synergistic effect was found between LAPA and PTX on the cell line overexpressing both HER2 and P-gp, and the mechanisms related to LAPA-induced inhibition on P-gp expression, more G2/M phase arrest of PTX and more uptake of PTX in tumor cells. With a dose of LAPA in PL-gel group only less than 5% of that in P-gel + L-oral group, PL-gel demonstrated significant tumor suppression similar to P-gel + L-oral group, and showed longer mice survival time. Besides, PL-gel achieved more steady LAPA accumulation in tumors and revealed significantly less toxicity compared with P-gel + L-oral group. To summarize, this localized co-delivery system with good synergistic effects between LAPA and PTX might offer a potential strategy for HER2 and P-gp positive breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Naturally existing materials often acquire unique functions by adopting a gradient structure with gradual change in their microstructure and related properties. Imparting such an elegant structural control into synthetic materials has been a grand challenge in the fi eld. Here, the concept of gradient structure into macroscopic carbon nanotube (CNT) fi lms is employed and the CNT arrangement from well-aligned array to completely random distribution, in a continuous and smooth way, is changed. Gradient films with tailored alignedto- random transition rate or multilevel hierarchical structures with repeated transition have been fabricated. Local deformation and mechanical properties are directly related to the arrangement of CNTs and can be tailored by Herman's orientation factor; in particular, the elastic modulus and stiffness span over several orders of magnitude from aligned to random regions within a single monolithic film. Controlled synthesis of macroscopic CNT gradient structures with tunable mechanical properties opens a potential route toward manufacturing biomimetic functional materials with locally optimized design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The distribution of equilibrium points and bifurcation characteristics were studied. • The bifurcation angle range and the safe basin of the system are proposed as the optimization objectives. • Competitive Pareto parameter optimization solutions were obtained through the sensitivity analysis and algorithm NSGA-II. • Optimization of the structure parameters can remarkably improve the stability. The main structural parameters that affect vehicle bifurcation characteristics and the safe basin are obtained, with the goal of improving the stability. First, the distribution of the system equilibrium points in three-dimensional space is studied, and the bifurcation characteristics of the front steering angles are obtained. Second, the front steering angle range corresponding to the bifurcation point (FSAR-BP) and the safe basin of the system (SBS) are determined and used as optimization objective functions. Considering the influence of the structural parameters on the FSAR-BP and SBS, a sensitivity analysis of the parameters is performed to establish their importance ranking in terms of their influence on the FSAR-BP and SBS. Third, a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is utilized to optimize the parameters, and the competitive Pareto parameter optimization solution sets are obtained. Finally, the three solution sets with better comprehensive performance are selected for comparison with the pre-optimized set in the FSAR-BP and SBS. The results indicate that the optimized FSAR-BP increased by 218.81%, 237.83%, and 267.88%, and the optimized SBS increased by 207.52%, 197.06%, and 173.93%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To provide updated, pooled evidence on clinical outcomes among octogenarians (aged ≥80 years) with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) managed by elective endovascular repair, compared to conventional open repair. Methods: PubMed, Embase, and Scopus databases were systematically searched. Studies that were either observational or randomized controlled trials were considered for the review. Included studies were conducted in elderly subjects (≥80 years) with AAA, and clinical and mortality outcomes were compared between endovascular and open surgical repair. Those reporting on outcomes of patients with urgent repair were excluded. The primary outcomes of interest were mortality and risk of complications. The pooled effect sizes were reported as odds ratio (OR) for categorical outcomes and weighted mean difference (WMD) for continuous outcomes. STATA software was used for statistical analysis. Results: The meta-analysis included 15 studies. Compared to those undergoing open repair, patients receiving endovascular repair had significantly reduced risk of immediate post-operative mortality (OR.23, 95% CI:.20,.27), overall complication (OR.30, 95% CI:.20,.44), cardiac (OR.23, 95% CI:.16,.35), renal (OR.29, 95% CI:.18,.46), pulmonary (OR.14, 95% CI:.09,.21) and bleeding related (OR.59, 95% CI:.42,.83) complications. The risk of mortality at latest follow up (at 36 months and 60 months) was similar in the two groups. The total blood loss (ml) (WMD -1126.47, 95% CI: −1497.81, −755.13), operative time (min) (WMD -29.40, 95% CI: −56.19, −2.62), length of intensive care unit stay (days) (WMD -2.27, 95% CI: −3.43, −2.12) and overall hospital stay (days) (WMD −6.64, 95% CI: −7.60, −5.68) was significantly lower in those undergoing endovascular repair. Conclusions: Endovascular repair appears to be better than open repair of AAA in this high-risk, frail population, with respect to short term outcomes. The benefits of reduced risk of short term mortality, complications, and better peri and post-operative outcomes may be considered when making a choice between these two surgical approaches. Randomized controlled trials are needed to provide reliable evidence on the effect of EVAR on long term survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hydromechanical behavior of expansive soils is one of the challenging topics in geotechnical engineering. Direct measurements of unsaturated shear strength in the laboratory are complicated and time-consuming. This work introduces a novel model to estimate the contribution of suction to the shear strength of expansive soils. Non-linear relationships in the space of suction and shear strength can be clearly observed, which indicates that the friction angle (ϕ b) changes with the evolution of suction. Capillary saturation has been used to upscale suction from pore-scale stress to macroscopic stress using the capillary part of soil-water retention curve. Experimental results indicate that the relationships between capillary suction stress and shear strength show linear properties. However, the friction angle (ϕ s) contributed by capillary suction stress to shear strength is not equal to the internal friction angle (ϕ) of saturated soils. The proposed model uses the shear strength value measured at any specific unsaturated state to obtain the evolution of friction angle (ϕ s). Results show that the effect of different reference points on computed strength can be ignored. The proposed model is successfully validated with historical data of various kinds of expansive soils from literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the linear structure of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) has a drawback that may lead to attacks against LFSR-based stream ciphers, feedback with carry shift registers (FCSRs) have been proposed as an alternative to LFSRs for the design of stream ciphers. However, some weaknesses in stream ciphers based on Fibonacci or Galois FCSRs have been exposed. Then, a new ring FCSRs has been proposed which is based on a matrix definition. This new approach generalizes Galois and Fibonacci FCSRs, and circumvents some of their severe weaknesses. In this paper, we give an affirmative answer to the following conjecture: for any given connection integer there exists a ternary transition matrix with a critical path of length 1 and fan-out of 2. We also give an algorithm to construct such transition matrices with given connection integer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR), a ligand-gated ion channel, is increasingly emerging as a new tumor target owing to its expression specificity and significancy for cancer. In an attempt to increase the targeted drug delivery to the α7 nAChR-overexpressing tumors, herein, α-conotoxin ImI, a disulfide-rich toxin with highly affinity for α7 nAChR, was modified on the PEG-DSPE micelles (ImI-PMs) for the first time. The DLS, TEM and HPLC detections showed the spherical nanoparticle morphology about 20 nm with negative charge and high drug encapsulation. The ligand modification did not induce significant differences. The immunofluorescence assay confirmed the expression level of α7 nAChR in MCF-7 cells. In vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrated that the α7 nAChR-targeted nanomedicines could deliver more specifically and faster into α7 nAChR-overexpressing MCF-7 cells. Furthermore, fluo-3/AM fluorescence imaging technique indicated that the increased specificity was attributed to the ligand-receptor interaction, and the inducitivity for intracellular Ca 2+ transient by ImI was still remained after modification. Moreover, paclitaxel, a clinical frequently-used anti-tumor drug for breast cancer, was loaded in ImI-modified nanomedicines to evaluate the targeting efficacy. Besides of exhibiting greater cytotoxicity and inducing more cell apoptosis in vitro , paclitaxel-loaded ImI-PMs displayed stronger anti-tumor efficacy in MCF-7 tumor-bearing nu/nu mice. Finally, the active targeting system showed low systemic toxicity and myelosuppression evidenced by less changes in body weight, white blood cells, neutrophilic granulocyte and platelet counts. In conclusion, α7 nAChR is also a promising target for anti-tumor drug delivery and in this case, α-conotoxin ImI-modified nanocarrier is a potential delivery system for targeting α7 nAChR-overexpressing tumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a sustained-release drug depot for localized cancer treatment, in situ thermo-sensitive hydrogel has attracted increasing interests. However, it is currently a big challenge to achieve high drug-loading, sustained and stable drug release, as well as long-term local drug retention simultaneously. We hypothesized that this goal could be accomplished by incorporating the nanocrystals (NCs) of a hydrophobic drug, such as paclitaxel (PTX) into the thermo-sensitive hydrogel (Gel). Hence, a PTX-NCs-Gel system has been constructed with thermo-sensitive Pluronic F127, using PTX-NCs and Taxol® as the controls. Besides, near infra-red agent DiR was used to prepare PTX/DiR hybrid NCs and PTX/DiR hybrid NCs-Gel as well. As a result, this hydrogel system could achieve a high drug loading of PTX up to 3mg/ml while stabilize the particle size of PTX-NCs significantly compared with PTX-NCs alone. There was no obvious interaction between PTX-NCs and F127. Obviously, PTX/DiR hybrid NCs-Gel presented better localized retention capacity and a much longer retention time in murine 4T1 tumor than PTX/DiR hybrid NCs and Cremophor/ethanol solubilized DiR in vivo. With a linear elimination, over 10% of PTX still remained inside of mouse 4T1 tumor 20days after intratumoral dosing of PTX-NCs-Gel. Importantly, PTX-NCs exhibited comparable cytotoxity against 4T1 and MCF-7 cells in vitro compared with Taxol®, which could ensure the efficacy of PTX-NCs-Gel. After intratumoral injection, PTX-NCs-Gel was found to be the most effective among all PTX formulations in the 4T1 and MCF-7 tumor-bearing mice models, with much lower system toxicity than Taxol®. In general, it is believed that the novel thermo-sensitive hydrogel system prepared in this study with PTX-NCs affords high drug-loading, sustained and stable drug release, as well as extended drug retention inside of tumor, which results in better therapy and lower toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, many security and privacy-sensitive applications are running on mobile platforms. However, as mobile operating systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, they are vulnerable to various attacks. In addressing the need of running high assurance mobile apps in a secure environment even though the operating systems are untrusted, this paper presents vTrust, a new mobile app trusted execution environment, which offloads the general execution and storage of a mobile app to a trusted remote server (e.g., a VM running in a cloud) and secures the I/O between the server and the mobile device with the aid of a trusted hypervisor on the mobile device. Specifically, vTrust establishes an encrypted I/O channel between the local hypervisor and the remote server. In this way, any sensitive data flowing through the mobile OS, which the hypervisor hosts, is encrypted from the perspective of the local mobile OS. To enhance the performance of vTrust, we have also designed multiple optimizations, such as output data compression and selective sensor data transmission. We have implemented vTrust, and our evaluation shows that it has limited impact on both user experience and the application performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heart growth is tightly controlled so that the heart reaches a predetermined size. Fetal heart growth occurs through cardiomyocyte proliferation, whereas postnatal heart growth involves primarily physiological cardiomyocyte hypertrophy. The Hippo kinase cascade is an important regulator of organ growth. A major target of this kinase cascade is YAP1, a transcriptional coactivator that is inactivated by Hippo kinase activity. Here, we used both genetic gain and loss of Yap1 function to investigate its role in regulating proliferative and physiologic hypertrophic heart growth. Fetal Yap1 inactivation caused marked, lethal myocardial hypoplasia and decreased cardiomyocyte proliferation, whereas fetal activation of YAP1 stimulated cardiomyocyte proliferation. Enhanced proliferation was particularly dramatic in trabecular cardiomyocytes that normally exit from the cell cycle. Remarkably, YAP1 activation was sufficient to stimulate proliferation of postnatal cardiomyocytes, both in culture and in the intact heart. A dominant negative peptide that blocked YAP1 binding to TEAD transcription factors inhibited YAP1 proliferative activity, indicating that this activity requires YAP1-TEAD interaction. Although Yap1 was a critical regulator of cardiomyocyte proliferation, it did not influence physiological hypertrophic growth of cardiomyocytes, because postnatal Yap1 gain or loss of function did not significantly alter cardiomyocyte size. These studies demonstrate that Yap1 is a crucial regulator of cardiomyocyte proliferation, cardiac morphogenesis, and myocardial trabeculation. Activation of Yap1 in postnatal cardiomyocytes may be a useful strategy to stimulate cardiomyocyte expansion in therapeutic myocardial regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, the sidelobe of the low profile multi-subarray antenna for satcom on-the-move (SOTM) is reduced by genetic algorithm (GA). The characteristics of the antenna are analyzed theoretically. It is indicated that the sidelobe level of the antenna is difficult to be reduced by amplitude tapering for its dispersed framework. In order to suppress the sidelobe level of the antenna in the whole elevation scan range, the subarray distances are optimized by GA. Two types of the antennas, the fixed-space and the active-space multi-subarray antennas, are analyzed respectively. Then the effects of amplitude perturbation on sidelobe cancellation are discussed under two conditions, i.e., the initial subarray distances and the optimal subarray distances. Simulation results prove the validity of the theoretical analysis, show that the perturbation of subarray distances can suppress the sidelobe level effectively, and the perturbation of amplitude is almost ineffective in sidelobe reduction. The conclusions can be used as the reference to the design of the multi-subarray antenna and other antennas whose array calibrations are discontinuous. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Designing robust, flexible, and low metal consuming hybrid foams for high-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding is crucial yet challenging. A new metallization strategy of foam type materials is presented to fabricate the robust and flexible silver embedded poly (styrene-block-butadiene-block-styrene)/carbon black hybrid foam (Ag@SBS/CB) with ultra-low silver consumption. The synergistic effect between the embedded isolate Ag nanoparticles and carbon black endows the Ag@SBS/CB foam with high mechanical and electrical stability as well as outstanding EMI shielding performance. The Ag@SBS/CB foam can endure over 1500 cycles of the compression-release test without detectable decay in the relative conductivity. A significant influence of the pore size and the silver fraction on the EMI shielding performance is revealed, providing an intriguing microstructure design strategy. The EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) of the foam reaches 81.3 dB with the silver fraction of 0.63 vol% and a CB fraction of 15 wt% at a thickness of about 5 mm. In particular, the Ag@SBS/CB foam with a thinner thickness of 2 mm shows a much better near-field EMI shielding than Al plate. Isolated silver nanoparticles partially embedded SBS/CB hybrid foams prepared by facile in-situ chemical reduction method show high EMI shielding performance, especially at near-field region. Compared to the conventional metallized foam, due the silver particles embedded structure, the resultant hybrid foams exhibit excellent electrical and mechanical stability with little silver consumption. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: CDC5, a Myb-related protein, is reported to be essential for the G2 phase of cell cycle in yeast and animals, but little is known about its function in plants. In this study, Arabidopsis thaliana CDC5 (AtCDC5) is found to be nuclear localized, and the C-terminus of this protein is of transcriptional activation activity in yeast. By taking advantage of the virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) technique, we analyzed the phenotypes of the plants in which AtCDC5 is specifically silenced. The AtCDC5 VIGS plants died before bolting, in which accelerated cell death was detected. Further analysis showed that the transcripts of AtSPT and SAG13, but not SAG12, accumulated in these AtCDC5 VIGS plants, suggesting that the accelerated cell death is different from that occurred during leaf senescence. Furthermore, silencing of AtCDC5 by VIGS in either wild-type, npr1 or nahG plants all induces cell death, suggesting that SA is not crucial for the AtCDC5-associated cell death. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A point cloud is a set of discrete surface samples. As the simplest 3D representation, it is widely used in 3D reconstruction and perception. Yet developing a generative model for point clouds remains challenging due to the sparsity and irregularity of points. Drawn by StyleGAN, the forefront image generation model, this paper presents Point-StyleGAN, a generator adapted from StyleGAN2 architecture for point cloud synthesis. Specifically, we replace all the 2D convolutions with 1D ones and introduce a series of multi-resolution discriminators to overcome the under-constrained issue caused by the sparsity of points. We further add a metric learning-based loss to improve generation diversity. Besides the generation task, we show several applications based on GAN inversion, among which an inversion encoder Point-pSp is designed and applied to point cloud reconstruction, completion, and interpolation. To our best knowledge, Point-pSp is the first inversion encoder for point cloud embedding in the latent space of GANs. The comparisons to prior work and the applications of GAN inversion demonstrate the advantages of our method. We believe the potential brought by the Point-StyleGAN architecture would further inspire massive follow-up works. • We propose Point-StyleGAN, a generator adapted from StyleGAN2 architecture for multi-scale point cloud synthesis. • We introduce multi-resolution discriminators to overcome the under-constrained issue caused by the sparsity of points. • Experiments show that our method achieves competitive performance and much faster inference time than SOTA approaches. • An inversion encoder Point-pSp is also designed and applied to point cloud reconstruction, completion, and interpolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the effect of melatonin on the expression of PD-L1 on the surface of ovarian cancer cells. Methods: Ovarian cancer cell line OVCAR3 was treated with melatonin, then flow cytometry was used to detect the expression level of PD-L1 on the surface of ovarian cancer cells. Western blot was used to detect the expressions of PD-L1 and LC-3 in ovarian cancer cells after different treatments. After adding autophagy inhibitor Autophinib, flow cytometry was used to detect the expression of PD-L1 on the surface of ovarian cancer cells, ovarian cancer cells were treated with melatonin or melatonin combined with autophagy inhibitors and co-incubated with human T lymphocyte Jurkat. The proportion of ovarian cancer cell apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry. Results: Melatonin treatment significantly reduced expression of PD-L1 on the surface of ovarian cancer cells, promoted autophagy of ovarian cancer cells. Autophagy inhibitors reversed down regulation of PD-L1 treated by melatonin, Jurkat cells killed more melatonin treated ovarian cancer cells, and the killing of ovarian cancer cells by Jurkat cells revised by autophagy inhibitors. Conclusion: Melatonin can enhance the killing effect of T cells on ovarian cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed control system (DCS) is the core digital instrumentation and control (I&C) equipment and research related to its predictive maintenance is highly valued by the industry. Switched-mode power supply (SMPS) circuit modules are widely used in DCS boards, and their fault can cause the board to fail and may even disrupt the safe and economical operation of the nuclear power plant (NPP). In this study, a machine learning-based board-level fault diagnosis method is proposed for an SMPS circuit module of the DCS board in an NPP. Support vector machine based on particle swarm optimization (PSO-SVM) and one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) models are developed based on traditional machine learning and deep learning, respectively. Furthermore, wavelet packet transform is used for circuit fault feature extraction of the PSO-SVM model. Based on the aging samples of aluminum electrolytic capacitors (AECs) obtained from the accelerated life test (ALT) and their aging process data, the waveform data of the output voltage of SMPS under the corresponding fault modes are obtained via circuit simulation and hardware experimental tests. The influence of aging of the two output filter capacitors on the SMPS output is analyzed, and the feasibility of the two fault diagnosis methods is verified. All developed fault diagnosis models exhibited good diagnostic performance. The research results can provide application reference with practical engineering significance for the predictive maintenance of DCS boards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zinc (Zn)–dysprosium (Dy) binary alloys are promising biodegradable bone fracture fixation implants owing to their attractive biodegradability and mechanical properties. However, their clinical application is a challenge for bone fracture healing, due to the lack of Zn–Dy alloys with tailored proper bio‐mechanical and osteointegration properties for bone regeneration. A Zn‐5Dy alloy with high strength and ductility and a degradation rate aligned with the bone remodeling cycle is developed. Here, mechanical stability is further confirmed, proving that Zn‐5Dy alloy can resist aging in the degradation process, thus meeting the mechanical requirements of fracture fixation. In vitro cellular experiments reveal that the Zn‐5Dy alloy enhances osteogenesis and angiogenesis by elevating SIRT4‐mediated mitochondrial function. In vivo Micro‐CT, SEM‐EDS, and immunohistochemistry analyses further indicate good biosafety, suitable biodegradation rate, and great osteointegration of Zn‐5Dy alloy during bone healing, which also depends on the upregulation of SIRT4‐mediated mitochondrial events. Overall, the study is the first to report a Zn‐5Dy alloy that exerts remarkable osteointegration properties and has a strong potential to promote bone healing. Furthermore, the results highlight the importance of mitochondrial modulation and shall guide the future development of mitochondria‐targeting materials in enhancing bone fracture healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surgical excision is the first choice for clinical cancer therapy. However, major challenges, such as postoperative tumor recurrence and unsatisfactory wound healing after surgery, remain. In this study, an adhesive hydrogel is developed as a multifunctional platform for antitumor chemoimmunotherapy and postoperative wound treatment. The hydrogel adheres firmly to diverse tissues and degrades within 4 weeks in vivo with good histocompatibility. The immune‐stimulating hydrogel ((DOX+R837@HN)@Gel) is fabricated by encapsulating doxorubicin (DOX) and imiquimod‐loaded HSA nanoparticles (R837@HNs) into the hydrogel. When combined with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, intratumorally administering (DOX+R837@HN)@Gel exhibits markedly enhanced systemic antitumor efficacy and strengthened antitumor immunity. For tumor surgical resection, (DOX+R837@HN)@Gel can adhere to the wounds and effectively prevents tumor recurrence and achieves long‐term immune memory with ICB therapy. Moreover, the hydrogel achieves rapid hemostasis and promotes wound healing after treating surgical wound models. Therefore, this multifunctional hydrogel has great significance for clinical postsurgical cancer treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-bioevaporation is a cleaner and sustainable production for treating concentrated landfill leachate (CLL). Temperature gradient in a co-bioevaporation pile resulted in a relatively wet matrix near the top, but drier conditions near the bottom. That made the biochemical fractions degradation (except of lipids) greatest near the top and lowest near the bottom. The total degraded biochemical fractions reached 191.96, 170.8 and 156.12 mg g−1 TS (total solids), respectively in the top, middle and bottom sections of the pile. The highest enzymatic activity (including hydrolase and dehydrogenase) was observed in the top region, while the lowest was in the bottom region. The top region came to be dominated by thermophiles, particularly anaerobic Tepidimicrobium which accounted for 10.55% and 8.81%, respectively in the warming and peak temperature periods. Their activity as well as synergy with aerobes contributed to the higher enzymatic activity and faster degradation near the top of a co-bioevaporation pile. The dominant genera near the bottom were aerobic mesophiles or moderate thermophiles. These spatial variations were related to the spatial gradients in temperature, organics and moisture which form, as well as to oxygen availability. Image 1 • Biochemical fractions degradation was in the order of top, middle and bottom. • Mesophiles were dominated at bottom while thermophiles were dominated at top. • Some thermophiles at the top region were anaerobes (such as Tepidimicrobium). • Synergy of anaerobes with aerobes caused faster degradation of organics at the top. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multipartite secret sharing schemes are those having a multipartite access structure, in which the set of participants is divided into several parts and all participants in the same part play an equivalent role. Secret sharing schemes for multipartite access structures have received considerable attention due to the fact that multipartite secret sharing can be seen as a natural and useful generalization of threshold secret sharing. This work deals with efficient and explicit constructions of ideal multipartite secret sharing schemes. Most ideal multipartite secret sharing schemes in the literature can be classified as either hierarchical or compartmented. The main results are the constructions for ideal hierarchical access structures, a family that contains every ideal hierarchical access structure as a particular case such as the disjunctive hierarchical threshold access structure and the conjunctive hierarchical threshold access structure, the constructions for three families of compartmented access structures, and the constructions for two families compartmented access structures with compartments. We present an efficient method to construct ideal linear schemes realizing these access structures by linear algebraic techniques on the basis of the relationship between multipartite secret sharing schemes, polymatroids and matroids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Zn-4Ag-0.1Sc (ZAS) was prepared by Sc alloying followed by hot-rolling (HR). • HR ZAS showed the highest mechanical properties and strength-elongation product. • HR ZAS exhibited the highest degradation rate and tribological property. • HR ZAS alloy exhibited good cytocompatibility and effective antibacterial ability. • HR ZAS alloy showed good in vivo antibacterial and osteogenic properties. Zinc-silver (Zn-Ag) alloys are generally promising guided bone-regeneration membrane (GBRM) materials due to their moderate degradability, osteogenic differentiation, and antibacterial properties. However, Zn-Ag alloys often display microstructural inhomogeneity and mechanical instability due to the formation of coarse Ag-rich second phases. In this study, Zn-4Ag and Zn-4Ag-0.1Sc (denoted ZA and ZAS, respectively) were comparatively investigated, and the ZAS exhibited a suitable degradation rate, high strength-elongation product, cytocompatibility, antibacterial capacity, and in vitro and in vivo osteogenic properties, making it highly appropriate for GBRM applications. Among all the as-cast and hot-rolled (HR) samples, the HR ZAS had the highest ultimate tensile strength of ∼260.5 MPa, tensile yield strength of ∼202.0 MPa, and elongation of ∼72.7%. The HR ZAS also exhibited a higher degradation rate of ∼36.5 µm/a in Hanks' solution than those of the HR ZA, while its diluted extract was more cytocompatible and capable of osteogenic differentiation toward both MG-63 and MC3T3-E1 cells. The HR ZAS showed an exceptionally effective antibacterial ability against S. aureus in both in vitro antibacterial testing and in vivo subcutaneous infection models. Further, the HR ZAS demonstrated better osteogenic and histocompatibility properties than those of pure Zn in a rat skull defect model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: A transparent, conductive, and flexible metal mesh film has been developed by a low-cost, uniform self-forming crackle template and electroplating strategy. The Cu mesh films show an ultra-low sheet resistance (0.18 Ω □−1), high transmittance (85.8%@550 nm), high figure of merit (> 13,000), excellent stretchability and mechanical stability. The metal mesh film can be used as a flexible heater and electromagnetic interference shielding film (40.4 dB at 2.5 μm). Despite the growing demand for transparent conductive films in smart and wearable electronics for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, achieving a flexible EMI shielding film, while maintaining a high transmittance remains a significant challenge. Herein, a flexible, transparent, and conductive copper (Cu) metal mesh film for EMI shielding is fabricated by self-forming crackle template method and electroplating technique. The Cu mesh film shows an ultra-low sheet resistance (0.18 Ω □−1), high transmittance (85.8%@550 nm), and ultra-high figure of merit (> 13,000). It also has satisfactory stretchability and mechanical stability, with a resistance increases of only 1.3% after 1,000 bending cycles. As a stretchable heater (ε > 30%), the saturation temperature of the film can reach over 110 °C within 60 s at 1.00 V applied voltage. Moreover, the metal mesh film exhibits outstanding average EMI shielding effectiveness of 40.4 dB in the X-band at the thickness of 2.5 μm. As a demonstration, it is used as a transparent window for shielding the wireless communication electromagnetic waves. Therefore, the flexible and transparent conductive Cu mesh film proposed in this work provides a promising candidate for the next-generation EMI shielding applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]