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In order to create the components of cermet tool material, a new method for designing tool material based on wear prediction was proposed. The finite element simulation of the cutting process was carried out based on a previously constructed microstructure model of the tool material which involves the components and its volume fractions. A new Ti(C7, N3)/TiB2/WC was designed and prepared based on the acquisition of variations in tool wear morphology among different components and the wear prediction results were verified by the high-speed cutting experiment of stainless steel 06Cr19Ni10. It has been shown that with 20% TiB2 and 15% WC, respectively, the changes of the peak temperature of the rake face and the cutting force reached the lowest level and also the wear amount of the tool was the minimum. With a sintering temperature of 1550 °C, a pressure of 32 MPa and a holding time of 30 min, the bending strength of the Ti(C7, N3)/TiB2/WC cermet tool and hardness were 1096.45 MPa and 18.9 GPa, respectively, and the fracture toughness was 9.85 MPa∙m1/2. The validity of the proposed wear prediction model was verified by studying the variation of the wear amount and the main wear area of the developed tool. This research provides a new efficient method for the design of cermet tool materials, which is time-saving and cost-effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a Ti(C 7 , N 3)/TiB 2 /WC cermet tool material was prepared by plasma sintering. The components of the tool material and sintering process parameters were optimized through testing mechanical property. The cutting performance of the prepared tool was studied in the cutting experiment of 06Cr19Ni10 austenitic stainless steel. A comparison was made between the prepared tool and the commercial cermet tool SNMN120708. It is shown that when the volume fractions of TiB 2 and WC were 20% and 15%, respectively, at the sintering temperature of 1550 °C and with the holding time of 30 min, the prepared tool would possess the flexural strength of 1096.45 Mpa, the hardness of 18.9 Gpa, the fracture toughness of 9.85 Mpa·m1/2 and the optimal cutting speed of 150 m/min. At the cutting speeds of 100 m/min and 150 m/min, the cutting distance of the developed tool was larger than that of SNMN120708. When the cutting speeds were 200 m/min and 250 m/min, the cutting distance of SNMN120708 tool was relatively large. The main wear mechanism of Ti(C 7 , N 3)/TiB 2 /WC and SNMN120708 tool was adhesive wear, with no trace of abrasive wear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Intestinal barrier plays key roles in maintaining intestinal homeostasis. Inflammation damage can severely destroy the intestinal integrity of mammals. This study was conducted to investigate the protective effects of embelin and its molecular mechanisms on intestinal inflammation in a porcine model. One hundred sixty 21-day-old castrated weaned pigs (Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire, average initial body weight was 7.05 ± 0.28 kg, equal numbers of castrated males and females) were allotted to four groups and fed with a basal diet or a basal diet containing 200, 400, or 600 mg embelin/kg for 28 d. The growth performance, intestinal inflammatory cytokines, morphology of jejunum and ileum, tight junctions in the intestinal mucosa of piglets were tested. IPEC-1 cells with overexpression of P300/CBP associating factor (PCAF) were treated with embelin, the activity of PCAF and acetylation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) were analyzed to determine the effect of embelin on PCAF/NF-κB pathway in vitro. Results: The results showed that embelin decreased (P < 0.05) serum D-lactate and diamine oxidase (DAO) levels, and enhanced the expression of ZO-1, occludin and claudin-1 protein in jejunum and ileum. Moreover, the expression levels of critical inflammation molecules (interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and NF-κB) were down-regulated (P < 0.05) by embelin in jejunal and ileal mucosa. Meanwhile, the activity of PCAF were down-regulated (P < 0.05) by embelin. Importantly, transfection of PCAF siRNAs to IPEC-1 cell decreased NF-κB activities; embelin treatment downregulated (P < 0.05) the acetylation and activities of NF-κB by 31.7%–74.6% in IPEC-1 cells with overexpression of PCAF. Conclusions: These results suggested that embelin ameliorates intestinal inflammation in weaned pigs, which might be mediated by suppressing the PCAF/NF-κB signaling pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the transverse vibration of a fractional viscoelastic beam is studied based on the fractional calculus, and the corresponding scheme of a viscoelastic beam is established by using the mixed finite volume element method. The stability and convergence of the algorithm are analyzed. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. Finally, the values of different parameter sets are tested, and the test results show that both the damping coefficient and the fractional derivative have significant effects on the model. The results of this paper can be used for the damping modeling of viscoelastic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underlying mechanism of leaf coloration remains blank in Bougainvillea peruviana 'Thimma', which has high ornamental value in urban landscape. In this study, the variegated leaves were comprehensively characterized. Compared to the green leaves, the yellow sectors of variegated leaves had severely disrupted chloroplasts and ruptured thylakoid membranes. The chloroplast number was lower in the yellow sectors of variegated leaves. The chlorophyll and carotenoid contents were extremely lower in the yellow sectors of variegated leaves. Besides, the contents of three key chlorophyll precursors, protoporphyrin IX (Proto IX), magnesium protoporphyrin IX (Mg-Proto IX), and protochlorophyllide (Pchlide), were significantly decreased in the yellow sectors of variegated leaves. The abscisic acid (ABA) content was higher in the yellow sectors of variegated leaves. Moreover, through comparative transcriptome analysis of mature completely green leaves and yellow sectors of variegated leaves, a total of 951 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified. Further annotation analysis indicated that DEGs involved in chlorophyll biosynthesis and the development of chloroplast were downregulated in yellow sectors of variegated leaves, which were likely the main causes of the yellow color phenotype. Additionally, two DEGs were enriched in the ABA biosynthesis, which might inspire future research on correlation between leaf color and hormone. These findings will provide novel insights for leaf coloration regulation in B. peruviana. [Display omitted] • Disrupted chloroplasts and ruptured thylakoid membranes in variegated leaves decreased pigment contents. • Chlorophyll and carotenoids biosynthesis were suppressed in variegated leaves. • De novo transcriptome analysis was performed to detect DEGs related to chloroplast development and pigment biosynthesis. • A proposed model for leaf color variation was established in Bougainvillea peruviana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-dimensional, localized ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing is now possible owing to recent developments in spatial transcriptomics (ST). ST is based on highly multiplexed sequence analysis and uses barcodes to match the sequenced reads to their respective tissue locations. ST expression data suffer from high noise and dropout events; however, smoothing techniques have the promise to improve the data interpretability prior to performing downstream analyses. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data similarly suffer from these limitations, and smoothing methods developed for scRNA-seq can only utilize associations in transcriptome space (also known as one-factor smoothing methods). Since they do not account for spatial relationships, these one-factor smoothing methods cannot take full advantage of ST data. In this study, we present a novel two-factor smoothing technique, spatial and pattern combined smoothing (SPCS), that employs the k -nearest neighbor (kNN) technique to utilize information from transcriptome and spatial relationships. By performing SPCS on multiple ST slides from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and simulated high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) datasets, smoothed ST slides have better separability, partition accuracy and biological interpretability than the ones smoothed by preexisting one-factor methods. Source code of SPCS is provided in Github (https://github.com/Usos/SPCS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pansy (Viola × wittrockiana Gams.) is an important and attractive ornamental plant with a wide variety of flower colors. To date, the molecular genetic understanding of its colorful petal pigment patterns remains largely unknown. In this study, we analyzed the bicolor petals of "Mengdie" in cytological, physiological, and transcriptomic aspects. Results showed that the difference of flower colors was mainly determined by the pigment distribution in the epidermal cells. Pigment analysis indicated that anthocyanins had strong correlations with color parameters, which acted as the main factor in flower coloration. Comparative transcriptome analysis found a total of 43,908 unigenes with the mean length of 682 bp. There were 24,323, 16,668, 8507, and 7680 unigenes annotated in the Nr, Swiss-Prot, KOG, and KEGG databases, respectively. Differential expression genes (DEGs) showed that the expression of anthocyanin late biosynthesis genes (LBGs), VwF3′H, VwF3′5′H, and VwUFGT, would be likely to play a major role in the color formation of pansy. The expression patterns of selected DEGs were verified by qRT-PCR. This study contributes an excellent insight into molecular mechanism of pigment biosynthesis and provides some useful information for flower color modification in pansy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whole-Slide Histopathology Image (WSI) is generally considered the gold standard for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Given the large inter-operator variation among pathologists, there is an imperative need to develop machine learning models based on WSIs for consistently predicting patient prognosis. The existing WSI-based prediction methods do not utilize the ordinal ranking loss to train the prognosis model, and thus cannot model the strong ordinal information among different patients in an efficient way. Another challenge is that a WSI is of large size (e.g., 100,000-by-100,000 pixels) with heterogeneous patterns but often only annotated with a single WSI-level label, which further complicates the training process. To address these challenges, we consider the ordinal characteristic of the survival process by adding a ranking-based regularization term on the Cox model and propose a weakly supervised deep ordinal Cox model (BDOCOX) for survival prediction from WSIs. Here, we generate amounts of bags from WSIs, and each bag is comprised of the image patches representing the heterogeneous patterns of WSIs, which is assumed to match the WSI-level labels for training the proposed model. The effectiveness of the proposed method is well validated by theoretical analysis as well as the prognosis and patient stratification results on three cancer datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lactate has recently been reported to accumulate in the livers of patients progressing from simple steatosis to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). However, the underlying mechanism(s) of lactate accumulation and the role of lactate in the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are essentially unknown. We compared the acetylome in liver samples taken from healthy individuals, patients with simple steatosis and patients with NASH to identify potential targets of acetylation with a role in lactate metabolism. Interactions between the acetylated target and acetyltransferases were measured in multiple cell lines. An acetyltransferase inhibitor was injected into high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice to determine the role of lactate on NAFLD progression in vivo. Hyperacetylation of lactate dehydrogenase B (LDHB) was found to be associated with lactate accumulation in NAFL and NASH livers in humans and mice. P300/CBP-associated factor (PCAF)-mediated acetylation of LDHB K82 was found to significantly decrease LDHB activity and impair hepatic lactate clearance, resulting in lactate accumulation. Acetylated LDHB induced lactate accumulation which exacerbated lipid deposition and inflammatory responses by activating histone hyperacetylation in HFD-induced NASH. The administration of embelin, a PCAF inhibitor, and the generation of an acetylation-deficient mutant of LDHB ameliorated NASH. PCAF-dependent LDHB acetylation plays a key role in hepatic lipid accumulation and inflammatory responses by impairing lactate clearance; this process might be a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of NASH. Lactate is known to accumulate in the livers of patients during the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD); however, the underlying mechanism(s) of this accumulation and its importance in disease progression are unknown. Herein, we show that the acetylation of an enzyme involved in lactate metabolism leads to impaired lactate clearance and exacerbates NAFLD progression. [Display omitted] • LDHB is hyperacetylated by PCAF at K82 in patients with NAFL and NASH. • PCAF-dependent K82 acetylation decreased the activity of LDHB and inhibited lactate clearance. • LDHB acetylation promoted lipid accumulation, inflammatory responses and fibrosis. • Targeted PCAF-dependent LDHB acetylation ameliorated NASH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The forest water content in Boreal Forest has decreased in the past three decades. • VPD induced the decline of forest water content through physiological traits. • Intact forest showed a less decrease in forest water content than managed forests. Widespread forest mortality has been observed in recent years which may be related to the forest water content. Changes in atmospheric demand for water (vapour pressure deficit, VPD) and soil moisture due to climate change affect plants in terrestrial ecosystems. Hence, it is crucial to determine the impact of variations in soil-atmosphere water content on forest water content to enhance our predictive capability of future forest dynamics. Here, we explored the dynamics of forest water content in the boreal forest (BFC) based on remote sensing Ku-band vegetation optical depth (VOD) data and found a declining trend from 1988 to 2016. The study revealed a strong negative correlation between VPD and VOD and the negative trend of BFC water content increased with increasing annual VPD. Further analysis found a negative correlation between monthly transpiration and VOD, and a positive correlation between canopy conductance and VOD. The relationship exhibited greater significance in regions characterized by a more rapid increase in VPD suggesting elevated VPD led to a higher transpiration, resulting in a decline in forest water content and subsequent plant physiological regulation. This occurred consistently in intact and managed boreal forest, implying common climatic drivers on a large scale. The decrease of annual mean VOD was slower in the intact boreal forest than in the managed forest, which may be due to the diversity and richness of the intact forest. The findings enhanced the understanding of the dynamics of forest water content under atmospheric drought caused by climate change, which requires the adoption of strategies to prevent forest mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was published that zirconate coatings containing Gd/Yb and yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) coatings with high Y content had good calcium-magnesium-aluminum-silicate (CMAS) corrosion resistance. However, there are few reports on CMAS resistance of zirconia-based thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) doped with Y, Gd and Yb. This article intends to explore the role of Y, Gd and Yb in resisting CMAS corrosion of zirconia-based TBCs. The purpose is to optimize the rare earth modification of zirconia-based TBCs. 8YSZ and ZrO2-9.5Y2O3-5.6Yb2O3-5.2Gd2O3 free-standing TBCs were produced by air plasma spraying (APS) with commercial powders. The CMAS corrosion behavior and failure mechanism of these coatings were studied by heat treatment at 1350 °C. The microstructure and composition were characterized. The results showed the CMAS deposited on the surface of 8YSZ/YSZ-Yb-Gd coatings gradually penetrated into coatings. ZrSiO4 and m-ZrO2 were observed in the shallow layer of coatings. The diffusion rate of Y3+ in coatings into CMAS was greater than that of Gd3+ and Yb3+. Compared with YSZ coatings, CMAS penetrated deeper in YSZ-Yb-Gd coatings after the same corrosion time. The spallation of YSZ-Yb-Gd coatings occurred earlier than 8YSZ. In general, adding a small amount of Yb and Gd did not improve the CMAS resistance of YSZ TBCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three different kinds of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) — 8YSZ, 38YSZ and a dual-layered (DL) TBCs with pure Y 2 O 3 on the top of 8YSZ were produced on nickel-based superalloy substrate by air plasma spraying (APS). The Calcium–Magnesium–Aluminum-Silicate (CMAS) corrosion resistance of these three kinds of coatings were researched via burner rig test at 1350 °C for different durations. The microstructures and phase compositions of the coatings were characterized by SEM, EDS and XRD. With the increase of Y content, TBCs exhibit better performance against CMAS corrosion. The corrosion resistance against CMAS of different TBCs in descending was 8YSZ + Y 2 O 3 , 38YSZ and 8YSZ, respectively. YSZ diffused from TBCs into the CMAS, and formed Y-lean ZrO 2 in TBCs because of the higher diffusion rate and solubility of Y3+ in CMAS than Zr4+. At the same time, 38YSZ/8YSZ + Y 2 O 3 reacts with CAMS to form Ca 4 Y 6 (SiO 4) 6 O/Y 4·67 (SiO 4) 3 O with dense structure, which can prevent further infiltration of CMAS. The failure of 8YSZ coatings occurred at the interface between the ceramic coating and the thermally grown oxide scale (TGO)/bond coating. During the burner rig test, the Y 2 O 3 layer of the DL TBCs peeled off progressively and the 8YSZ layer exposed gradually. DL coatings keep roughly intact and did not meet the failure criteria after 3 h test. 38YSZ coating was partially ablated, the overall thickness of the coating is thinned simultaneously after 2 h. Therefore, 8YSZ + Y 2 O 3 dual-layered coating is expected to be a CMAS corrosion-resistant TBC with practical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The effects of dietary garcinol on diarrhea and intestinal barrier function associated with its modulation of gut microbiota in weaned piglets were investigated. Method: One hundred forty four weaned piglets (Duroc × Yorkshire × Landrace) from 16 pens (9 piglets per pen) were randomly divided into four treatment groups: controls (CON) or those supplemented with 200 mg/kg (LOW), 400 mg/kg (MID), or 600 mg/kg (HIGH) diet garcinol. After 14-day trial, three piglets per pen were chosen to collect plasma, intestinal tissue and colonic digesta samples. Results: We demonstrated for the first time that garcinol promoted growth performance, as increased average daily feed intake (ADFI) and decreased feed/gain ratio (F/G); and reduced diarrhea incidence (P < 0.05); and strengthened antioxidant capacity, as an increased antioxidative index (P < 0.05). Additionally, garcinol ameliorated intestinal barrier dysfunction, as an increased villus height to crypt depth ratio, increased zonula occludens protein 1 (ZO-1), occludin and claudin-1 expression in the jejunum and ileum (P < 0.05), and decreased intestinal permeability (P < 0.05); and reduced inflammation, as decreased cytokine interleukin (IL)-6, IL-10, IL-1β and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) levels in the mucosa of the jejunum and ileum, and NF-κB p65 translocation (P < 0.05). Moreover, garcinol inhibited the growth of most harmful bacteria in the gut, especially Escherichia coli, and increased the growth of the beneficial bacteria Lactobacillus. Conclusion: This work provides a fundamental basis for the future development of garcinol-functional food use for improving diarrhea and intestinal barrier function in weaned piglets and for understanding the biological effects of garcinol and its potential as a functional feed additive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Increased hepatic glycolysis and lipogenesis are characteristic of pregnancy.Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate the mechanism of garcinol on the amelioration of hepatic pyruvate and triglyceride (TG) accumulation in mid-to-late pregnant rats.Methods: Forty Sprague-Dawley pregnant rats (aged 9 wk, n = 10/diet) were fed a basal diet (control) or that diet plus garcinol at 100 ppm (Low Gar), 300 ppm (Mid Gar), or 500 ppm (High Gar) for 14 d. The livers were processed for Western blotting analyses and measuring enzymatic activity and pyruvate and TG concentrations. Hepatocytes from other pregnant Sprague Dawley rats were transfected with P300/CBP associating factor (PCAF) short interfering (si)RNAs; hepatocytes from nonpregnant Sprague-Dawley rats with overexpression of PCAF were treated with garcinol (5 μM). The activity and acetylation of upstream stimulatory factor (USF-1) and glycolytic enzymes were analyzed.Results: Dietary garcinol significantly decreased (P < 0.05) concentrations of hepatic and plasma TG (27.1-45.8%) and total cholesterol (25.3-49.5%), plasma free fatty acids (24.4-37.8%), and hepatic pyruvate (31.5-43.5%) and lactate (33.4-65.7%) in mid-to-late pregnant rats. Garcinol promoted (P < 0.05) antioxidant capacity in the liver and plasma by 27.4-32.1%. Garcinol downregulated (P < 0.05) lipid synthesis-related enzyme expression by 30.6-85.3% and decreased (P < 0.05) glycolytic enzyme activities by 22.5-74.6% and PCAF activity by 18.6-55.4%. Transfection of PCAF siRNAs to hepatocytes of pregnant rats decreased USF-1 and glycolytic enzyme activities by PCAF; garcinol treatment downregulated (P < 0.05) the acetylation and activities of USF-1 and glycolytic enzymes by 35.6-83.7%.Conclusions: Garcinol attenuates hepatic pyruvate and TG accumulation in the liver of mid-to-late pregnant rats, which may be due to downregulating the acetylation of USF-1 and the glycolytic enzymes induced by PCAF in isolated hepatocytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation Rapid advances in single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) have produced higher-resolution cellular subtypes in multiple tissues and species. Methods are increasingly needed across datasets and species to (i) remove systematic biases, (ii) model multiple datasets with ambiguous labels and (iii) classify cells and map cell type labels. However, most methods only address one of these problems on broad cell types or simulated data using a single model type. It is also important to address higher-resolution cellular subtypes, subtype labels from multiple datasets, models trained on multiple datasets simultaneously and generalizability beyond a single model type. Results We developed a species- and dataset-independent transfer learning framework (LAmbDA) to train models on multiple datasets (even from different species) and applied our framework on simulated, pancreas and brain scRNA-seq experiments. These models mapped corresponding cell types between datasets with inconsistent cell subtype labels while simultaneously reducing batch effects. We achieved high accuracy in labeling cellular subtypes (weighted accuracy simulated 1 datasets: 90%; simulated 2 datasets: 94%; pancreas datasets: 88% and brain datasets: 66%) using LAmbDA Feedforward 1 Layer Neural Network with bagging. This method achieved higher weighted accuracy in labeling cellular subtypes than two other state-of-the-art methods, scmap and CaSTLe in brain (66% versus 60% and 32%). Furthermore, it achieved better performance in correctly predicting ambiguous cellular subtype labels across datasets in 88% of test cases compared with CaSTLe (63%), scmap (50%) and MetaNeighbor (50%). LAmbDA is model- and dataset-independent and generalizable to diverse data types representing an advance in biocomputing. Availability and implementation github.com/tsteelejohnson91/LAmbDA Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary garcinol supplementation during late gestation (from the 90th day of pregnancy; day 90) and lactation on the acid–base balance of the umbilical cord blood and performance of sows and piglets. Sixty sows (Duroc × Yorkshire × Landrace; second- or third-parity; n = 20) were randomly divided into 3 gestation (day 90 of pregnancy) or lactation treatments, control diet (CON; basal diet), basal diet with 200 mg garcinol, and basal diet with 600 mg garcinol per kg of feed. The body weight (BW); backfat thickness and litter size of the sows; and birth weight, weaning weight, and mortality of piglets were recorded. Sows' blood and piglets' umbilical cord blood were collected for the measurements of hematological parameters and antioxidative and immune indexes, and acid–base balance parameters, respectively. The colostrum and milk and fecal samples of the sows were also collected for analysis of milk composition and apparent total tract nutrient digestibility. Garcinol had no effect on the BW and backfat thickness of the sows but significantly increased the birth weight and weaning weight of piglets (P < 0.05) and decreased the mortality (P < 0.05). Moreover, the white blood cell counts and neutrophil count, mean cell hemoglobin, superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), and catalase (CAT) activity in the plasma of the sows were increased more significantly (P < 0.05) in the garcinol groups than that in the CON group, whereas the malondialdehyde (MDA) content was decreased (P < 0.05). The garcinol treatment significantly increased the pH, HCO3− and base excess values (P < 0.05), whereas it decreased the pCO2 and lactate content (P < 0.05) in the umbilical blood. Dry matter (DM), ash, and ether extract in the colostrum were similar between groups (P > 0.05), whereas the garcinol significantly increased the crude protein (CP) in the milk. In addition, the content of immunoglobulin A (IgA) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) in the plasma of piglets and in colostrum and milk of sows were increased more significantly (P < 0.05) in the garcinol groups than that in the CON group. The apparent total tract nutrient digestibility was similar between treatments. Collectively, this study indicates that sows fed with garcinol in late gestation and lactation showed improved maternal health and antioxidative status, milk protein content, acid–base balance in the umbilical cord blood, and growth performance in piglets, showing promise in natural plant extract nutrition for sows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of oral anticoagulants for older adult patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). Pairwise and network meta-analyses. Patients with AF aged ≥75 years. PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane library were searched for published randomized controlled trials and adjusted observational studies evaluating the use of a non–vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs), vitamin K antagonist, or antiplatelet drug for the prevention of stroke. The primary efficacy and safety outcomes were the composite of stroke and systemic embolism (SSE) and major bleedings. This study included 38 studies enrolling 1,022,908 older adult patients with AF. Results from pairwise meta-analyses showed that NOACs were superior to warfarin for all outcomes, except that dabigatran increased the risk of gastrointestinal (GI) bleedings. Aspirin was associated with a higher risk of SSE and ischemic stroke than warfarin or NOACs. Results of network meta-analyses indicated that apixaban significantly reduced the risk of SSE, major bleedings, and GI bleedings than warfarin, rivaroxaban, and dabigatran. Apixaban, edoxaban, rivaroxaban, and dabigatran reduced the risk of ischemic stroke and intracranial bleeding compared to warfarin. Dabigatran showed lower risk of all-cause mortality than warfarin and of intracranial bleeding than rivaroxaban. NOACs are of at least equal efficacy, or even superior to warfarin. The safety profile of individual NOAC agents was significantly different, as apixaban performs better than the other oral anticoagulants in reducing major bleeding and GI bleeding, whereas dabigatran increased the risk of GI bleeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (GCNA) helps identify gene modules with potential biological functions and has become a popular method in bioinformatics and biomedical research. However, most current GCNA algorithms use correlation to build gene co-expression networks and identify modules with highly correlated genes. There is a need to look beyond correlation and identify gene modules using other similarity measures for finding novel biologically meaningful modules. Results: We propose a new generalized gene co-expression analysis algorithm via subspace clustering that can identify biologically meaningful gene co-expression modules with genes that are not all highly correlated. We use low-rank representation to construct gene co-expression networks and local maximal quasi-clique merger to identify gene co-expression modules. We applied our method on three large microarray datasets and a single-cell RNA sequencing dataset. We demonstrate that our method can identify gene modules with different biological functions than current GCNA methods and find gene modules with prognostic values. Conclusions: The presented method takes advantage of subspace clustering to generate gene co-expression networks rather than using correlation as the similarity measure between genes. Our generalized GCNA method can provide new insights from gene expression datasets and serve as a complement to current GCNA algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water use efficiency (WUE) is an important parameter to assess agricultural production and the reasonable utilization of water resources. Especially in the context of changing hydrological environment, more attention need to be paid on how to use limited water resource to improve crop yield for ensuring food security. Based on 33 site-years of flux measurements over 10 cropland sites using the eddy covariance (EC) technique, the study systematically evaluated the large differences in seasonal and interannual variations of gross primary productivity (GPP), evapotranspiration (ET) and ecosystem WUE across the four crops worldwide including soybean, maize, winter wheat and paddy rice. The lengths of the growing seasons across the main crops extracted from time-series MODIS NDVI data, implied that the longest growth period in winter wheat and the shortest growing season in paddy rice field. Further analyses suggest that maize cropland has the strongest ecosystem WUE with 2.48 ± 0.69 g C kg −1 H 2 O, followed by winter wheat (2.00 ± 0.39 g C kg −1 H 2 O), soybean (1.92 ± 0.52 g C kg −1 H 2 O), and paddy rice (1.88 ± 0.63 g C kg −1 H 2 O). Meanwhile, the variability in ecosystem WUE exhibited apparent seasonality, and peaked together with GPP in the most active summertime. A series of biotic and abiotic factors affected the GPP as well as WUE variability. Given the complicated interactions among these environmental factors, this study revealed the great potential to remotely retrieve the WUE variability using time-series MODIS NDVI data over large areas. Ecosystem WUE of the C 4 crop –maize was obviously higher than the other three C 3 crops. Engineering C 4 feature into C 3 crops may be a feasible way to increase photosynthesis and yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overwhelming frequency of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes are closely related to liver diseases, which might share common pathogenic signaling processes. These metabolic disorders in the presence of inflammatory response seem to be triggered by and to reside in the liver, which is the central metabolic organ that plays primary roles in regulating lipid and glucose homeostasis upon alterations of metabolic conditions. Recently, abundant emerging researches suggested that p300 and CREB binding protein (CBP) are crucial regulators of energy homeostasis and liver fibrosis through both their acetyltransferase activities and transcriptional coactivators. Plenty of recent findings demonstrated the potential roles of p300/CBP in mammalian metabolic homeostasis in response to nutrients. This review is focused on the different targets and functions of p300/CBP in physiological and pathological processes, including lipogenesis, lipid export, gluconeogenesis, and liver fibrosis, also provided some nutrients as the regulator of p300/CBP for nutritional therapeutic approaches to treat liver diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The associations between the triglyceride–glucose (TyG) index with subsequent stroke in American adults are unknown. The aim of this study was to determine the associations between baseline and trajectories of TyG index with subsequent stroke in American adults. Methods: A total of 10,132 participants free of a history of stroke at baseline were included. We quantified the association of baseline and trajectories of TyG index with incident total stroke, ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage using Cox regression, restricted cubic splines and logistic regression analysis. Results: There were 909 incident stroke cases over a median follow-up of 26.6 years. After adjustment for potential confounders, each unit increase in the TyG index was associated with a 32.1% higher risk of incident stroke. Compared with participants in the lowest quartile of the baseline TyG index, those in the highest quartile had a greater risk of incident stroke [HR (95% CI) 1.254 (1.014–1.552)]. Restricted cubic splines showed that the risk of stroke increased in participants with a higher TyG index, especially when the TyG index was > 8.6. Results were similar for incident ischemic stroke. Compared with participants in the lowest quartile of the baseline TyG index, those in the second quartile had a lower risk of intracerebral hemorrhage [HR (95% CI) 0.494 (0.262–0.931)]. Five discrete trajectories with stable TyG indexes at various levels at follow-up visits were identified, and parallel results were observed for the associations of trajectories of TyG index with outcomes. Conclusions: The TyG index independently predict stroke progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sr 5 (PO 4 ) 3 F (S-FAP) nanoparticles were synthesized by a chemical co-precipitation method, and the effects of mixing modes on the particle’s morphology were investigated. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) results combined with the fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) indicated that the as-synthesized powders were pure phase hexagonal apatite structure. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) combined with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that the particle’s morphology tended to transform from nanorods to nearly spherical particles when the mixing modes changed from droplet mixing to quick mixing. The distinctions in the morphology with different mixing modes were briefly analyzed predominantly taking into account the nucleation and growth rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We report that the photosensitivity at near UV/vis band of PMMA-based polymer optical fiber (POF) can be enhanced by introducing 9-vinylanthracene (9-VA) into the fiber core, based on its photo-crosslinking mechanism. The enhanced photosensitivity was demonstrated by the UV–vis absorption and photoluminescence spectra. An index change of 8×10−4 (at 1550nm) in a POF doped with 0.2mol% 9-VA was achieved under very low intensity (3.1mW/cm2) and 10min exposure of UV lamp (365nm dominant). As an exemplary use, long period gratings (LPGs) were fabricated with a point-to-point technique in the photosensitive POF – the first time to our knowledge. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A novel configuration for a luminescent solar concentrator is proposed, which employs a cylindrical waveguide with a dye-doping coating and is here called a cylindrical coated luminescent solar concentrator (CC LSC). An expression for the power conversion efficiency of the configuration is first established, and then its loss mechanisms, such as escape-cone loss, self-absorption probability, and host absorption, are investigated in terms of the theoretical model. Results are also compared with those for a cylindrical doped luminescent solar concentrator (CD LSC), from which it can be concluded that the power conversion efficiency for a CC LSC is 1.17–1.48 times as much as that for a CD LSC with an equivalent absorbance and geometric gain when Rhodamine 6G is used as a luminescent species and the ratio of the coating thickness to the radius of the cylinder, d/R, is 1/100. It is also found that the power conversion efficiency for a CC LSC increases with decreasing d/R at a certain geometric gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Luminescent down shifting (LDS) technique is one effective way to improve the poor response of multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) photovoltaic (PV) modules at short wavelength less than 400nm. Eu3+ complexes are effective LDS species for PV modules due to their large stokes’ shift and high luminescent quantum efficiency (LQE). Although Eu3+ complexes have been utilized in PV modules as LDS species widely, they have not been encapsulated into the pre-existing poly-ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) layer of modules between glass and solar cell by now. The aim of our work is to enhance the performance of mc-Si PV modules by encapsulating high efficient Eu3+ complexes into their pre-existing EVA layers which would not modify the well-established manufacturing process for PV modules. In this work, two Eu3+ complexes with different absorption spectrum were encapsulated into the commercial EVA layer by soaking method for the first time and used in the encapsulation of mc-Si PV modules. Hereinto, Eu(TTA)3(TPPO)2 (TTA=2-thenoyltrifluoroacetonate, TPPO=triphenylphosphine oxide) (EuTT) with absorption spectrum less than 400nm and high LQE (0.73) improves the external quantum efficiency of mc-Si PV module from 0.05 to 0.20, which produces a 0.42% increases in its power conversion efficiency. In addition, it is found that the enhancement brought by Eu(TTA)3(TPPO)2 can reduce cost of power generated by mc-Si devices from US$1/W p to US$0.98/W p according to the calculation. Therefore, Eu(TTA)3(TPPO)2 as LDS species with high LQE and low cost is promising for enhancing the performance of mc-Si PV modules in practical application. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) employing Eu(TTA)3(TPPO)2 (europium tris(2-thenoyl trifluoro acetonate)-di(triphenylphosphine oxide)) was fabricated in our work firstly, and then its current–voltage (I–V) performance under AM1.5G radiation with different radiation area were measured and compared with that of LSC employing dye. As there is no overlap between absorption spectrum and fluorescence spectrum of Eu(TTA)3(TPPO)2, it is found that the power conversion efficiency of LSC employing Eu(TTA)3(TPPO)2 decreases ten times slower than that of LSC employing dye reported with the increment of radiation area under AM1.5G. To accurately characterize the zero self-absorption loss of LSC employing rare earth complex more, external quantum efficiency (EQE) was also measured and simulated theoretically. When experiment data is compared with theoretical simulation, the measured EQE data at 380nm is found to well coincide with theoretical result by taking host absorption loss into consideration. And the conclusion could be drawn that rare earth complex obviously shows zero self-absorption loss in use of LSC system and is proposed as a potential candidate for increasing the LSC efficiency. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, a europium complex, Eu(TTA)3Dpbt (TTA=thenoyltrifluoroacetonate, Dpbt=2-(N,N-diethylanilin-4-yl)-4,6-bis(3,5-dimethylpyrazol-1-yl)-1,3,5-triazine), with extended absorption range is incorporated into polyvinyl-butyral (PVB) to fabricate luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) on the face of K9 glass. This kind of LSC can absorb the light in the UV and the blue region and is free of self-absorption. External quantum efficiency of the LSC is measured at different wavelength. Under a solar simulator (AM1.5G), efficiency of Eu(TTA)3Dpbt doped LSC is 11% higher than that of Eu(TTA)3Phen doped LSC (0.176%), resulting from the absorption of Eu(TTA)3Phen which is limited within UV region. It can be seen from this result that extending absorption region of lanthanide complexes can be used to further enhance efficiency of lanthanide complex doped LSC, besides these complexes are without self-absorption because of their large Stokes shift. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: One barrier to the application of current tri-octylphosphine oxide (TOPO) based quantum dots (QDs) for biomedical imaging is that the TOPO on TOPO-QDs can be replaced by the proteins in living system, which may cause the degradation of QDs and/or deactivation of protein. In order to develop biocompatible optical imaging agents, a novel triblock copolymer, designed as a multidentate ligand, was synthesized to coat quantum dot nanocrystals (QDs). The copolymer consists of a polycarboxylic acid block at one end and a polythiol block at the other end with an intervening cross-linked poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) block bridging the ends. The multiple mercapto groups from the polythiol block act as multidentate ligands to stabilize QDs, while the polycarboxylic acid block improves the water solubility of QDs and offers reaction sites for surface modification or conjugation with bimolecules. The cross-linked poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) block provides a densely compacted hydrophobic shell. This shell will act as a barrier to inhibit the degradation of QDs by preventing the diffusion of ions and small molecules into the core of QDs. This new multidentate polymer coating facilitates the transfer of QDs from organic solvent into aqueous phase. The QDs directly bound to multidentate mercapto groups instead of TOPO are less likely to be affected by the mercapto or disulfide groups within proteins or other biomolecules. Therefore, this research will provide an alternative coating material instead of TOPO to produce QDs which could be more suitable for in vivo use under complex physiological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The use of a luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) with a high geometric gain is one of the methods to achieve low cost of photovoltaic power. However, the self-absorption loss of the LSC is a restraining factor working against the gain. Differed from organic dyes, the hybrid dyes (rare earth complexes), composed of organic antenna and inorganic emitting ions, have very low self-absorption losses. A hybrid solar concentrator (HSC) has been fabricated by doping a rare earth complex, Eu(TTA)3Phen, into a polymer optical fiber (POF). Experiments on the HSC show that there is no self-absorption loss, and the emission photons increase linearly with geometric gain (increasing from around 50 to approximately 200). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gold nanoparticles were assembled with the rigid cross-linker, H10TTPR. The assembly process was studied with the UV-vis spectroscopy and TEM. By adjusting the amount of H10TTPR added to the gold nanoparticle solution, the aggregate form of gold nanoparticles could be controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gold nanoparticles were self-assembled onto the surface of solubilized carbon nanotubes through an interlinker of bi-functionalized molecule (PHT) terminated with pyrenyl unit at one end and thiol group at the other end. While the fluorescence of PHT is quenched moderately by the carbon nanotubes, the fluorescence is almost totally quenched by the further binding of gold nanoparticles. The enhancement of the Raman responses of nanotubes by the gold nanoparticles is also observed. These results imply there are charge transfer interactions between nanotubes and gold nanoparticles. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Consider the inherent correlation between diagnosis and prognosis tasks and propose a novel multi-task multi-modal learning framework for joint diagnosis and prognosis of human cancer. • Integrate histopathological image and genomic data for the diagnosis and prognosis of human cancers. • Conduct experiments on three cancer cohorts from the TCGA database that can validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. • In-depth explanation of the selected multi-modal biomarkers. The framework of our study is consisted of three steps. Firstly, extracting imaging and eigengene features from the histopathological image and gene expression data, respectively. Secondly, implementing the proposed multi-task multi-modal feature selection algorithm (i.e., M2DP) to identify diagnosis and prognosis related features. Thirdly, based on the selected features of each patient, applying AdaBoosting and Cox proportional hazard models for the diagnosis and prognosis prediction of cancer patients, respectively. With the tremendous development of artificial intelligence, many machine learning algorithms have been applied to the diagnosis of human cancers. Recently, rather than predicting categorical variables (e.g. , stages and subtypes) as in cancer diagnosis, several prognosis prediction models basing on patients' survival information have been adopted to estimate the clinical outcome of cancer patients. However, most existing studies treat the diagnosis and prognosis tasks separately. In fact, the diagnosis information (e.g. , TNM Stages) indicates the extent of the disease severity that is highly correlated with the patients' survival. While the diagnosis is largely made based on histopathological images, recent studies have also demonstrated that integrative analysis of histopathological images and genomic data can hold great promise for improving the diagnosis and prognosis of cancers. However, direct combination of these two types of data may bring redundant features that will negatively affect the prediction performance. Therefore, it is necessary to select informative features from the derived multi-modal data. Based on the above considerations, we propose a multi-task multi-modal feature selection method for joint diagnosis and prognosis of cancers. Specifically, we make use of the task relationship learning framework to automatically discover the relationships between the diagnosis and prognosis tasks, through which we can identify important image and genomics features for both tasks. In addition, we add a regularization term to ensure that the correlation within the multi-modal data can be captured. We evaluate our method on three cancer datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas project, and the experimental results verify that our method can achieve better performance on both diagnosis and prognosis tasks than the related methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of dietary garcinol (0, 200, 400 and 600 mg/kg) on the growth performance, meat quality, postmortem glycolysis and antioxidative capacity of finishing pigs. Dietary garcinol increased pigs' average daily gain, pH 24h , a* and myoglobin content of longissimus dorsi (LM) (P < 0.05), and decreased feed/gain ratio, the L* 24h , glycolytic potential, drip loss, shear force, and backfat depth (P < 0.05). The glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT) and total antioxidative capacity (T-AOC) were significantly increased by garcinol (P < 0.05), while the activity of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and malonaldehyde (MDA) content were decreased (P < 0.05). Moreover, garcinol decreased the p300/CBP-associated factor (PCAF) activity, the acetylation level and activities of glycolysis enzymes phosphoglycerate kinase 1 (PGK1), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) and 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2, 6-bisphosphatase-3 (PFKFB3) (P < 0.05). The results of this study showed that garcinol decreased postmortem glycolysis, and this may be due to the mechanism of decreasing glycolytic enzyme acetylation induced by PCAF. The present study indicates that garcinol can facilitate the growth performance of pigs and improve pork quality by changing postmortem glycolysis and antioxidative capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Conditioning temperature at 75 and 80℃ improved starch and protein digestibility. • Starch gelatinization and pellet hardness were appropriate at 75 and 80℃. • Conditioning temperature at 75-80℃ improved growth performance and promoted the diversity of gut microflora in pigs. • 75–80℃ is the best conditioning temperature for sorghum-based diets in pigs. This study was conducted to determine the effect of the conditioning temperature on the pelleting characteristics, nutrient digestibility (in vitro and in vivo) and gut microbiota of sorghum-based diets for pigs. The experimental design included an evaluation of the effects of 5 conditioning temperatures (65, 70, 75, 80, 85℃) on sorghum-based diet pelleting. Increasing the conditioning temperature led to an increase of resistant starch (P < 0.05), decrease of the protein solubility of pellet (P < 0.05) and increase of the hardness of pelleted diets (P < 0.01) but had a quadratic interaction with gelatinized starch (P < 0.05) and the RS (resistant starch) /GS (gelatinized starch) ratio (P < 0.05), and the contents of gelatinized starch at 75 and 80℃ were higher than those found in the other groups. There was a quadratic relationship (P < 0.05) between dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP) digestibility with the conditioning temperature in vitro. Additionally, increasing the conditioning temperature produced a quadratic relationships between the apparent digestibility and ileum apparent digestibility of both CP and starch in vivo (P < 0.05), and their greatest digestibility occurred at both 75 and 80℃. As for growth performance, the average daily gain (ADG), feed conversion rate (FCR) and diarrhea ratio reached optimal values at temperatures of 75 and 80℃. Moreover, the increase of the conditioning temperature from 75 to 80℃ significantly increased (P < 0.05) the number of beneficial bacteria (Bifidobacterium sp. and Lactobacillus sp.) in the gut and feces as well as suppressed (P < 0.05) bacterial pathogens (Escherichia coli), which effectively promoted the diversity of the gut microflora. Overall, these results indicate that 75 and 80℃ are suitable conditioning temperatures of sorghum-based diets for pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrological fluctuations are key abiotic stresses that influence plant growth and photosynthetic processes of wetland plants. However, the response mechanism of the plant characteristics and photosynthesis of Carex schmidtii, with respect to hydrological fluctuations, are still unclear. Comparative studies of plant size parameters, biomass parameters, and photosynthesis parameters of C. schmidtii under the interactive influence of initial water depth (WD), water-level amplitude (WA), and duration time, were performed. The coupling relationship between any two factors of the plant characteristics of C. schmidtii was also examined. Generally, the results showed that the WD and WA treatments, and the duration time, significantly affected plant size, biomass, and photosynthesis of C. schmidtii. The exception was the effect by the WA on the biomass and the NPQ. Furthermore, the biomass and photosynthesis of C. schmidtii were significantly affected by the interactive effects by WD and WA. The plant size, biomass, and photosynthesis parameters of C. schmidtii first increased and then decreased over time. Larger values of plant size, biomass, and photosynthesis parameters (except for qL and NPQ) were found for the treatment with an initial water depth of 0 cm. As was the situation with WD, the largest values of plant height, chlorophyll content, Fv/Fm, and ΔFv/Fm' were obtained for a water-level amplitude of 0 cm. Furthermore, the chlorophyll content was positively related to the plant size parameters, Fv/Fm, ΔFv/Fm', and qL. Except for qL, ΔFv/Fm' had a significant relationship with all plant factors. Lower water levels and smaller water level changes are more conducive to the growth and photosynthese of C. schmidtii. Plant size, biomass accumulation and photosynthesis of C. schmidtii collectively coped with hydrological fluctuations. The findings have improved understanding of the response of C. schmidtii to hydrological fluctuations. They have thereby provided invaluable information for the restoration, management and conservation of tussock wetlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) syndrome is a multi-organ neoplastic disease characterized by highly vascular and cystic tumors in the central nervous system (CNS), retina, and visceral lesions, which are mainly caused by germline mutations in VHL. We aimed to detect novel mutations in VHL gene in families with VHL. Here, a large consanguineous four-generation family with variant phenotypes of VHL syndrome was recruited, and its molecular genetics were tested via Sanger sequencing. And various tools and databases were used to predict the variant pathogenicity, frequency, and protein function. Genetic investigation detected a c.351G > A nonsense mutation in VHL that altered the downstream reading frame and created a premature TGA stop signal, resulting in severely truncated pVHL (p.Trp117Ter). This mutation is absent from most public databases, and functional prediction bioinformatic tools demonstrated that this residue is conserved and that this variant is highly likely to be deleterious. The c.315G > A nonsense mutation in VHL is the causal mutation of this kindred that may lead to clear familial aggregation of VHL syndrome because of the dysfunction of the truncated pVHL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality, and vascular calcification has been highly correlated with CVD events. Abdominal aortic calcification (AAC) has been shown to predict subclinical CVD and incident CVD events. However, the relationship between vitamin C and abdominal aortic calcification remains unclear. Objective: To investigate the relationship of dietary vitamin C with AAC among the adult population in the US. Methods: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2013–2014 provided the data for the cross-sectional study. 2297 subjects (1089 males) were included in the study. Two scoring systems, AAC 24-point scale (Kauppila) and AAC 8-point scale (Schousboe), were used for the measurement of AAC score. Dietary vitamin C intake was calculated as the average of two rounds of 24-h interview recall data and classified in tertiles for analysis. We applied weighted multiple regression analyses to assess the relationship of dietary vitamin C with AAC score and the risk of having AAC. To ensure the robustness of the findings, subgroup and sensitivity analyses were performed. Additionally, smooth curve fittings, using generalized additive models (GAM) were employed to visualize potential nonlinear relationships. Furthermore, an exploratory analysis on the relationship of vitamin C supplements with AAC was also conducted. Results: The results showed that higher dietary vitamin C intake was related to a reduction in AAC score (AAC-24: β = -0.338, 95% confidence interval [CI] -0.565, -0.111, P = 0.004; AAC-8: β = -0.132, 95%CI -0.217, -0.047, P = 0.002), and lower risk of AAC (odds ratio [OR] = 0.807, 95%CI 0.659, 0.989, P = 0.038). However, the relationship of vitamin C supplements with AAC was not identified. Conclusions: The study revealed that higher intake of dietary vitamin C rather than vitamin C supplements was related to reduced AAC score and lower risk of AAC, indicating that diets rich in vitamin C are recommended due to its potential benefits for protecting against vascular calcification and CVD among the adult population in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel self-hardening α-tricalcium phosphate (α-TCP) bone cement complexed with different content of α-calcium sulfate hemihydrate (α-CSH) and micrometer hydroxyapatite mineralized silk fibroin (HA-SF) using micro/SF as curing liquid has been investigated in this work, which was capable of tunable setting time, degradation, mechanical property and ability to anti-washout. After addition 0 ∼ 25% α-CSH to the α-TCP cement with SFFs as curing liquid, it shortened the setting time of the modified composite to 10 ∼ 30 min. Furthermore, the addition of SFFs improved the compressive strength of the composite from 5.41 MPa to 9.44 MPa. The composites with both Na2HPO4 and SFFs as curing liquid showed good anti-collapse performance. The weight loss ratio of bone cement was −0.18 ∼ 12.08% in 4 weeks when the content of α-CSH in α-TCP/α-CSH was between 0 ∼ 25 wt%. During the degradation of α-CSH, the amorphous α-TCP were deposited as hydroxyapatite to formed a plate-like products on the surface of composite. Compared to the composite with Na2HPO4 solution as the curing liquid, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity of the composites using SFFs as curing liquid were maintained at high levels on the 14th day especially when the Ca/P ratio was 1.7. This study provides a theoretical basis for the regeneration of bone defects guided by bone cement materials. Graphical Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conversion of skeletal muscle fiber from fast-twitch to slow-twitch is crucial for sustained contractile and stretchable events, energy homeostasis, and anti-fatigue ability. The purpose of our study was to explore the mechanism and effects of garcinol on the regulation of skeletal muscle fiber type transformation. Forty 21-day-old male C57/BL6J mice (n = 10/diet) were fed a control diet or a control diet plus garcinol at 100 mg/kg (Low Gar), 300 mg/kg (Mid Gar), or 500 mg/kg (High Gar) for 12 weeks. The tibialis anterior (TA) and soleus muscles were collected for protein and immunoprecipitation analyses. Dietary garcinol significantly downregulated (p < 0.05) fast myosin heavy chain (MyHC) expression and upregulated (p < 0.05) slow MyHC expression in the TA and soleus muscles. Garcinol significantly increased (p < 0.05) the activity of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma co-activator 1α (PGC-1α) and markedly decreased (p < 0.05) the acetylation of PGC-1α. In vitro and in vivo experiments showed that garcinol decreased (p < 0.05) lactate dehydrogenase activity and increased (p < 0.05) the activities of malate dehydrogenase and succinic dehydrogenase. In addition, the results of C2C12 myotubes showed that garcinol treatment increased (p < 0.05) the transformation of glycolytic muscle fiber to oxidative muscle fiber by 45.9%. Garcinol treatment and p300 interference reduced (p < 0.05) the expression of fast MyHC but increased (p < 0.05) the expression of slow MyHC in vitro. Moreover, the acetylation of PGC-1α was significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Garcinol promotes the transformation of skeletal muscle fibers from the fast-glycolytic type to the slow-oxidative type through the p300/PGC-1α signaling pathway in C2C12 myotubes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Aim: The current meta-analysis evaluated the survival outcomes of newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients treated with radiotherapy (RT) alone and with RT + temozolomide (TMZ). Methods: Relevant studies were identified by an extensive literature search in Medline, Current Contents and Cochrane databases by 2 independent reviewers using the terms "glioblastoma multiforme/glioblastoma, TMZ, radiation therapy/RT and survival." Results: Results revealed a median survival of 13.41-19 months in the combined treatment group, as opposed to 7.7-17.1 months in the RT-alone group. Progression-free survival (PFS) was also significantly different between the 2 groups (RT + TMZ, 6.3-13 months; RT-alone, 5-7.6 months). While there was no significant difference in the 6-month survival and 6-month PFS rates between the RT + TMZ and RT groups (pooled OR 0.690; p = 0.057 and OR 0.429, p = 0.052, respectively), the 1-year survival and 1-year PFS rates showed significant difference (OR 0.469; p = 0.030 and OR 0.245, p < 0.001, respectively). Conclusions: Concomitant RT + TMZ is more effective and improves the overall survival and PFS in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The Lycophyta species are the extant taxa most similar to early vascular plants that were once abundant on Earth. However, their distribution has greatly diminished. So far, the absence of chromosome-level assembled lycophyte genomes has hindered our understanding of evolution and environmental adaption of lycophytes. Findings We present the reference genome of the tetraploid aquatic quillwort, Isoetes sinensis , a lycophyte. This genome represents the first chromosome-level assembled genome of a tetraploid seed-free plant. Comparison of genomes between I. sinensis and Isoetestaiwanensis revealed conserved and different genomic features between diploid and polyploid lycophytes. Comparison of the I. sinensis genome with those of other species representing the evolutionary lineages of green plants revealed the inherited genetic tools for transcriptional regulation and most phytohormones in I. sinensis. The presence and absence of key genes related to development and stress responses provide insights into environmental adaption of lycophytes. Conclusions The high-quality reference genome and genomic analysis presented in this study are crucial for future genetic and environmental studies of not only I. sinensis but also other lycophytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the cardiovascular and renal benefits of finerenone, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) and glucagonlike peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) in patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) with network meta-analysis. Methods: Systematic literature searches were conducted of PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Medline and Embase covering January 1, 2000 to December 30, 2021. Randomized control trials (RCTs) comparing finerenone, SGLT-2i and GLP-1 RA in diabetics with CKD were selected. We performed a network meta-analysis to compare the two drugs and finerenone indirectly. Results were reported as risk ratio (RR) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: 18 RCTs involving 51,496 patients were included. Finerenone reduced the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), renal outcome and hospitalization for heart failure (HHF) (RR [95% CI]; 0.88 [0.80–0.97], 0.86 [0.79–0.93], 0.79 [0.67,0.92], respectively). SGLT-2i were associated with reduced risks of MACE (RR [95% CI]; 0.84 [0.78–0.90]), renal outcome (RR [95% CI]; 0.67 [0.60–0.74], HHF (RR [95% CI]; 0.60 [0.53–0.68]), all-cause death (ACD) (RR [95% CI]; 0.89 [0.81–0.91]) and cardiovascular death (CVD) (RR [95% CI]; 0.86 [0.77–0.96]) compared to placebo. GLP-1 RA were associated with a lower risk of MACE (RR [95% CI]; 0.86 [0.78–0.94]). SGLT2i had significant effect in comparison to finerenone (finerenone vs SGLT2i: RR [95% CI]; 1.29 [1.13–1.47], 1.31 [1.07–1.61], respectively) and GLP-1 RA (GLP-1 RA vs SGLT2i: RR [95% CI]; 1.36 [1.16–1.59], 1.49 [1.18–1.89], respectively) in renal outcome and HHF. Conclusions: In patients with T2DM and CKD, SGLT2i, GLP-1 RA and finerenone were comparable in MACE, ACD and CVD. SGLT2i significantly decreased the risk of renal events and HHF compared with finerenone and GLP-1 RA. Among GLP-1 RA, GLP-1 analogues showed significant effect in reducing cardiovascular events compared with exendin-4 analogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the cardiovascular and renal benefits of finerenone, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) and glucagonlike peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) in patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) with network meta-analysis. Methods: Systematic literature searches were conducted of PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Medline and Embase covering January 1, 2000 to December 30, 2021. Randomized control trials (RCTs) comparing finerenone, SGLT-2i and GLP-1 RA in diabetics with CKD were selected. We performed a network meta-analysis to compare the two drugs and finerenone indirectly. Results were reported as risk ratio (RR) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: 18 RCTs involving 51,496 patients were included. Finerenone reduced the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), renal outcome and hospitalization for heart failure (HHF) (RR [95% CI]; 0.88 [0.80–0.97], 0.86 [0.79–0.93], 0.79 [0.67,0.92], respectively). SGLT-2i were associated with reduced risks of MACE (RR [95% CI]; 0.84 [0.78–0.90]), renal outcome (RR [95% CI]; 0.67 [0.60–0.74], HHF (RR [95% CI]; 0.60 [0.53–0.68]), all-cause death (ACD) (RR [95% CI]; 0.89 [0.81–0.91]) and cardiovascular death (CVD) (RR [95% CI]; 0.86 [0.77–0.96]) compared to placebo. GLP-1 RA were associated with a lower risk of MACE (RR [95% CI]; 0.86 [0.78–0.94]). SGLT2i had significant effect in comparison to finerenone (finerenone vs SGLT2i: RR [95% CI]; 1.29 [1.13–1.47], 1.31 [1.07–1.61], respectively) and GLP-1 RA (GLP-1 RA vs SGLT2i: RR [95% CI]; 1.36 [1.16–1.59], 1.49 [1.18–1.89], respectively) in renal outcome and HHF. Conclusions: In patients with T2DM and CKD, SGLT2i, GLP-1 RA and finerenone were comparable in MACE, ACD and CVD. SGLT2i significantly decreased the risk of renal events and HHF compared with finerenone and GLP-1 RA. Among GLP-1 RA, GLP-1 analogues showed significant effect in reducing cardiovascular events compared with exendin-4 analogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of finerenone and sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) on reducing new-onset of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Method: We searched the PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Medline and Embase covering January 1, 2000 to April 30, 2022. Randomized control trials comparing finerenone or SGLT2i with placebo in patients with T2DM and CKD were selected. Results were reported as risk ratio (RR) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: A total of 10 studies (35,841 patients) were included. Finerenone (RR 0.79, 95% CI 0.62–0.99) was associated with a decreased risk of AF compared with placebo, while SGLT2i were not. SGLT2i were associated with a decreased risk of hospitalization for heart failure (RR 0.78, 95% CI 0.63–0.98) compared with finerenone. They were comparable in AF(RR 0.84, 95% CI 0.48,1.46), major adverse cardiovascular events(MACE) (RR 0.93, 95% CI 0.81,1.06) and nonfatal stroke(RR 0.78, 95% CI 0.58,1.05). They both showed no significant risk of adverse events compared with placebo. Conclusion: There was no significant difference in the reduction of new-onset of atrial fibrillation between Finerenone and SGLT2i based on the indirect comparisons of currently available clinical studies. The large-sampled head-to-head trials was needed for the more precise conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel joint-less toroidal magnet made of second-generation high-temperature superconducting (2G-HTS) tapes. This approach effectively resolves the closed-loop issue for 2G-HTS magnets and has the potential to provide higher and more stable magnetic fields. Compared with traditional 2G-HTS toroidal magnets, while the current loops of the joint-less magnets have no resistance, a decrease in magnetic field still occurs, especially in coils with insulation. Therefore, this work focuses on the decrease of the magnetic field of this novel magnet using experimental and microanalytical methods. For the first time, it was verified that, by winding two coil groups, insulated and no-insulated, parallel charging does not cause interference between them. Furthermore, the magnetic field area was expanded by finite element analysis, and simulations showed that the magnetic field converged with increasing number of coils. Besides, we found that the decrease of the magnetic field was related to the damage of the tape during slitting and winding, where insulated coils were more susceptible to damage during winding. The damage usually occurred at the starting point of the tape slitting, because the copper layer was separated due to adhesion during the winding of insulated coils, which further caused the superconducting layer to detach, resulting in a decrease in the critical current. From our perspective, benefiting from the high critical field of the 2G-HTS tapes, this novel toroidal coil structure has significant implications for the construction of compact toroidal magnets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose DEGAS (Diagnostic Evidence GAuge of Single cells), a novel deep transfer learning framework, to transfer disease information from patients to cells. We call such transferrable information "impressions," which allow individual cells to be associated with disease attributes like diagnosis, prognosis, and response to therapy. Using simulated data and ten diverse single-cell and patient bulk tissue transcriptomic datasets from glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), Alzheimer's disease (AD), and multiple myeloma (MM), we demonstrate the feasibility, flexibility, and broad applications of the DEGAS framework. DEGAS analysis on myeloma single-cell transcriptomics identified PHF19high myeloma cells associated with progression. Availability: https://github.com/tsteelejohnson91/DEGAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We report a temperature sensor based on a Bragg grating written in a benzil dimethyl ketal (BDK) doped multimode (MM) polymer optical fiber (POF) for the first time to our knowledge. The thermal response was further analyzed in view of theory and experiment. In theory, with the order of the reflected mode increasing from 1st to 60th order, for MM silica fiber Bragg grating (FBG) the temperature sensitivity will increase linearly from 16.2pm/°C to 17.5pm/°C, while for MM polymer FBG the temperature sensitivity (absolute value) will increase linearly from −79.5pm/°C to −104.4pm/°C. In addition, temperature sensitivity of MM polymer FBG exhibits almost 1 order larger mode order dependence than that of MM silica FBG. In experiment, the Bragg wavelength shift will decline linearly as the temperature rises, contrary to that of MM silica FBG. The temperature sensitivity of MM polymer FBG is ranged from −0.097nm/°C to −0.111nm/°C, more than 8 times that of MM silica FBG, showing great potential used as a temperature sensor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Two europium organic complexes of Eu(DBM)Phen (DBM = dibenzoylmethane, Phen = 1,10-phenanthroline) and Eu(TTA)·2HO (TTA = 2-thenoyltrifluoroacetone) with different structures are successfully encapsulated into polystyrene (PSt) microspheres by in situ dispersion polymerization. These fluorescent microspheres are monodisperse and spherical in shape with the homogeneous distribution of europium complexes in the polymer matrix, as investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy. The europium content in the microspheres is measured by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer. It is shown that the compatibility of the europium complex with the styrene monomer has a great impact upon the europium content in the PSt microspheres by dispersion polymerization. As the complex amount increases, the europium content in the microspheres containing Eu(DBM)Phen increases, while that in the microspheres containing Eu(TTA)·2HO first increases and then reaches a saturated value at a high addition amount. Fluorescence properties indicate that the PSt polymer is a valuable matrix for improving the emission intensity of Eu(DBM)Phen yet not an ideal matrix for Eu(TTA)·2HO, which is demonstrated by the measurement of fluorescence lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integrative analysis of histopathological images and genomic data has received increasing attention for studying the complex mechanisms of driving cancers. However, most image-genomic studies have been restricted to combining histopathological images with the single modality of genomic data (e.g., mRNA transcription or genetic mutation), and thus neglect the fact that the molecular architecture of cancer is manifested at multiple levels, including genetic, epigenetic, transcriptional, and post-transcriptional events. To address this issue, we propose a novel ordinal multi-modal feature selection (OMMFS) framework that can simultaneously identify important features from both pathological images and multi-modal genomic data (i.e., mRNA transcription, copy number variation, and DNA methylation data) for the prognosis of cancer patients. Our model is based on a generalized sparse canonical correlation analysis framework, by which we also take advantage of the ordinal survival information among different patients for survival outcome prediction. We evaluate our method on three early-stage cancer datasets derived from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project, and the experimental results demonstrated that both the selected image and multi-modal genomic markers are strongly correlated with survival enabling effective stratification of patients with distinct survival than the comparing methods, which is often difficult for early-stage cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]