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Background: The electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) is a common technology to detect DNA-protein interactions. However, in most cases, the protein used in EMSA is obtained via prokaryotic expression, and rarely from plants. At the same time, the proteins expressed from prokaryotic systems usually cannot fold naturally and have no post translationally modification, which may affect the binding of proteins to DNA. Results: Here, we develop a technique to quickly isolate proteins of interest from host plants and then analyze them using fluorescent EMSA. This technology system is called: protein from plants fluorescent EMSA method (PPF-EMSA). In PPF-EMSA, a special transient transformation method is employed to transiently deliver genes into the plant, enabling efficient synthesis the encoded proteins. Then, the target protein is isolated using immunoprecipitation, and the DNA probes were labeled with cyanine 3 (Cy3). Both fluorescent EMSA and super-shift fluorescent EMSA can be performed using the proteins from plants. Three kinds of plants, Betula platyphylla, Populus. davidiana×P. bolleana and Arabidopsis thaliana, are used in this study. The proteins isolated from plants are in a natural state, can fold naturally and are posttranslationally modified, enabling true binding to their cognate DNAs. Conclusion: As transient transformation can be performed quickly and not depended on whether stable transformation is available or not, we believe this method will have a wide application, enabling isolation of proteins from host plant conveniently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effects of sentence-final particles (SFPs) in comprehending different types of irony by Chinese-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). We tested 15 children with ASDs, along with another 15 typically developing (TD) children. In our test, by manipulating the use of the prototypical SFP / a /, participants were required to judge the speaker's attitude and real intention in ironic utterances of 16 stories and to further explain the language phenomenon. The results of a three-way analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the two groups: first, children with ASDs performed significantly worse than did their TD counterparts; second, while TD children relied more on SFPs to understand irony of compliment, children with ASDs only performed better with SFPs in comprehending irony of criticism. The differences are discussed in relation to theory of mind, the frequency of utterance, and rules of cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accumulation of specific metabolic intermediates is known to promote cancer progression. Metabolic abnormalities are hallmarks of cancer cells and contribute to tumor progression. The resultant abnormal oncometabolites cause both metabolic and nonmetabolic dysregulation and have pleiotropic effects on cancer biology, suggesting potential for therapeutic intervention. Targeting oncometabolites could reverse dysfunctional cellular metabolism in tumors. Small molecule metabolite-based metabolomics, as a diagnostic technique, gains insight into therapeutic targets for metastatic disease, providing a methodological basis for better understanding the signaling role of oncometabolites in the modulation of the tumor microenvironment. Metabolic abnormalities are a hallmark of cancer cells and are essential to tumor progression. Oncometabolites have pleiotropic effects on cancer biology and affect a plethora of processes, from oncogenesis and metabolism to therapeutic resistance. Targeting oncometabolites, therefore, could offer promising therapeutic avenues against tumor growth and resistance to treatments. Recent advances in characterizing the metabolic profiles of cancer cells are shedding light on the underlying mechanisms and associated metabolic networks. This review summarizes the diverse detection methods, molecular mechanisms, and therapeutic targets of oncometabolites, which may lead to targeting oncometabolism for cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, fast compact finite difference schemes are derived for fourth-order multi-term fractional sub-diffusion equations with initial singularity under the first Dirichlet boundary conditions. In contrast to the direct scheme, the fast algorithm adopted to approximate the Caputo derivative reduces the computation costs effectively. Sharp error estimate of the proposed scheme for linear models is rigorously presented by the energy method. Furthermore, to handle more intricate nonlinear models, a crucial Grönwall inequality is then deduced to analyse the stability and convergence of the linearized scheme. It is worth pointing out that the Grönwall inequality is also helpful in numerical analysis of multi-step schemes for other problems, such as, integro-differential equations with multiple fractional derivatives. Ultimately, numerical examples are provided to verify the efficiency of the established difference schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the two-dimensional Volterra integro-differential equations for viscoelastic rods and membranes in a bounded smooth domain. The memory kernel of this equation makes it not easy to construct an efficient numerical scheme and perform theoretical analysis. The numerical method is considered by the finite difference approach for spatial discretization and Crank–Nicolson (CN) alternating direction implicit (ADI) scheme in the time direction. The integral terms are approximated by the fractional convolution quadrature. We prove that the proposed method is unconditional stable and derive error estimates in L 2 norm. The literature reported on the ADI finite difference method of this model is extremely sparse. Numerical results support the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to accurately identify and measure in-focus droplets from shadowgraph droplet images that typically contain a large number of defocused droplets for the research of multiphase flow. However, conventional in-focus droplet identification methods are time-consuming and laborious due to the noise and background illumination in experimental data. In this paper, a deep learning-based method called focus-droplet generative adversarial network (FocGAN) is developed to automatically detect and characterize the focused droplets in shadow images. A generative adversarial network framework is adopted by our model to output binarized images containing only in-focus droplets, and inception blocks are used in the generator to enhance the extraction of multi-scale features. To emulate the real shadow images, an algorithm based on the Gauss blur method is developed to generate paired datasets to train the networks. The detailed architecture and performance of the model were investigated and evaluated by both the synthetic data and spray experimental data. The results show that the present learning-based method is far superior to the traditional adaptive threshold method in terms of effective extraction rate and accuracy. The comprehensive performance of FocGAN, including detection accuracy and robustness to noise, is higher than that of the model based on a convolutional neural network. Moreover, the identification results of spray images with different droplet number densities clearly exhibit the feasibility of FocGAN in real experiments. This work indicates that the proposed learning-based approach is promising to be widely applied as an efficient and universal tool for processing particle shadowgraph images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the shadowgraphy techniques with a single camera, it is difficult to accurately obtain the shape, size, and depth location of the droplets out of focus due to the defocus blur. This paper proposed a deep learning-based method to recover the sharp images and infer the depth information from the defocused blur droplets images. The proposed model comprising of a defocus map estimation subnetwork and a defocus deblur subnetwork is optimized with a two-stage strategy. To train the networks, the synthetic blur data generated by the Gauss kernel method are utilized as the input data, which mimic the defocused images of droplets. The proposed approach has been assessed based on synthetic images and real sphere blur images. The results demonstrate that our method has satisfactory performance both in terms of depth location estimation and droplet size measurement, e.g., the diameter relative error is less than 5% and the location error is less than 1 mm for the sphere with a diameter of more than 1 mm. Moreover, the present model also exhibits considerable generalization and robustness against the transparent ellipsoid and the random background noise. A further application of the present model to the measurement of transparent water droplets generated by an injector is also explored and illustrates the practicability of the present model in real experiments. The present study indicates that the proposed learning-based method is promising for the three-dimensional (3D) measurement of spray droplets via a combination of shadowgraphy techniques using a single camera, which will greatly reduce experimental costs and complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the structure of hydraulic spool valve and the influence of different pressure differences on steady-state flow force. An improved scheme of designing a jet guide groove on the valve core is proposed to compensate for steady-state flow force. This article uses the CFD method to study the influence of spool valve structural parameters on steady-state flow force. The response surface method is used to establish the Polynomial regression model of the steady-state flow force, and the optimal structure size of the jet guide slot is obtained. The results indicate that the flow force increases with the increase of pressure difference. Moreover, under the same operating conditions, the absolute flow force of the spool valve with jet guide groove is smaller than that of the spool valve without jet guide groove. Therefore, the jet guide groove can effectively compensate for steady-state flow force, improve the control accuracy of the valve, and improve the stability of the spool valve. • This paper describes the principle of hydrodynamic force generation and the effect of spool structure on hydrodynamic force. • A new deflector structure consisting of a combination of triangles and circular arcs is proposed. • This structure reduces the impact of the fluid on the spool and reduces the loss of the spool. • Velocity and pressure clouds for different structures are derived and optimal structural parameters are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many fluid experiments, we can only obtain low-spatial high-temporal resolution flow images and high-spatial low-temporal resolution flow images due to the limitation of high-speed imaging systems. To solve this problem, we proposed a degradation and super-resolution attention model (D-SRA) using unsupervised machine learning to super-resolution reconstruct high resolution (HR) time-resolved fluid images from coarse data. Unlike the prior research to increase the resolution of coarse data artificially generated by simple bilinear down-sampling, our model that consists of a degradation neural network and a super-resolution neural network aims to learn the mappings between experimental low-resolution data and corresponding HR data. What is more, channel and spatial attention modules are also adopted in D-SRA to facilitate the restoration of abundant and critical details of flow fields. The proposed model is validated by two high-speed schlieren experiments of under-expanded impinging supersonic jets. The comprehensive capability of D-SRA is statistically analyzed based on the synthetic unpaired schlieren images. The spatial-resolution of coarse images can be successfully augmented by 4 2 times and 8 2 times with most physical details recovered perfectly, which outperforms the existing method. The D-SRA also exhibits considerable generalization and robustness against unknown-degenerated schlieren images. Moreover, the practicability of the proposed method is also further explored on real unpaired jets schlieren images. It is convincingly demonstrated that the present study successfully surpasses the performance limitations of high-speed cameras and has significant applications in various fluid experiments to obtain flow images with high spatial and temporal resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploiting the sparse user activity induced by sporadic transmission, compressed sensing (CS) has been widely applied in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) enabled non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for efficient multiuser detection. However, most of the existing detection schemes in MIMO enabled NOMA systems focus mainly on the spatial structure in user activity induced by multiantenna reception, while the temporal correlation in user activity has rarely been incorporated for further performance improvement. To address this issue, we propose a novel Multiuser Detection framework in MIMO enabled NOMA (MDMN), which explicitly integrates the temporal correlation in user activity into the detection process to improve the user detection accuracy. Specifically, we first formulate multiuser detection with multiantenna reception in MDMN as a block CS problem, by exploiting the spatial correlation in user activity. Furthermore, through incorporating the temporal correlation in active user sets into block CS, an adaptive CS algorithm based on subspace pursuit is developed for MDMN, named spatial-temporal correlation enhanced adaptive subspace pursuit (STASP). In particular, STASP does not require any prior knowledge of the user sparsity, as the cross validation designed in STASP can properly terminate the algorithm. The superior performance of the proposed MDMN framework and the corresponding algorithms is corroborated by extensive simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • CrO x -modified Ni on ZSM-23 has high-performance in n -C 16 hydroisomerization. • Microporous ZSM-23 is suitable to prepare high-performance Ni m Cr n /ZSM-23 catalyst. • Particle size and electronic state of Ni is affected by the interaction of Ni with CrO x. • Ni 2.0 Cr 2.0 /ZSM-23 outperforms a Pt on ZSM-23 for n -C 16 hydroisomerization. • The addition of CrO x intensifies the interaction between the NiO x and ZSM-23 support. CrO x -doped Ni catalysts with different Ni/Cr mass ratios on ZSM-23 (Ni m Cr n /ZSM-23) were synthesized using a simple initial wet impregnation method. The influence of CrO x on Ni in the Ni m Cr n /ZSM-23 catalysts was investigated by combining XPS, IR-CO, H 2 -TPR, TEM, and EDX mapping. The obtained results suggested that an intimate contact was formed between Ni and CrO x in the catalysts. The CrO x -modified NiO x species strongly interacted with ZSM-23, facilitating the formation of small sized Ni nanoparticles. Meanwhile, the electronic density around Ni on the catalyst was increased due to the presence of adjacent CrO x. The reaction rate and TOFs over Ni 2.0 Cr 2.0 /ZSM-23 (1.13 × 10-2 mol•g-1•h−1 and 6.8 × 10-2 s−1) are much higher than over Ni 2.0 /ZSM-23 (0.88 × 10-2 mol•g-1•h−1 and 6.2 × 10-2 s−1) in the n -hexadecane hydroisomerization, illustrating the promotion of CrO x in the Ni-based catalyst. The Ni 2.0 Cr 2.0 /ZSM-23 catalyst exhibited the highest iso -hexadecanes yield of 82.9 %, as compared to Pt/ZSM-23 catalyst (78.9 %). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Clinical experiences of herbal medicine (HM) have been used to treat a variety of human intractable diseases. As the treatment of diseases using HM is characterized by multi-components and multi-targets, it is difficult to determine the bio-active components, explore the molecular targets and reveal the mechanisms of action. Metabolomics is frequently used to characterize the effect of external disturbances on organisms because of its unique advantages on detecting changes in endogenous small-molecule metabolites. Its systematicity and integrity are consistent with the effective characteristics of HM. After HM intervention, metabolomics can accurately capture and describe the behavior of endogenous metabolites under the disturbance of functional compounds, which will be used to decode the bioactive ingredients of HM and expound the molecular targets. Metabolomics can provide an approach for explaining HM, addressing unclear clinical efficacy and undefined mechanisms of action. In this review, the metabolomics strategy and its applications in HM are systematically introduced, which offers valuable insights for metabolomics methods to characterizing the pharmacological effects and molecular targets of HM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the disadvantage of the high e−-h+ complexation rate in TiO 2 NTs. In this study, RGO was deposited on TiO 2 NTs using the cyclic deposition method to obtain RGO-TiO 2 NTs photoanode. The physical and chemical properties of the photoanodes were analyzed and applied to the photoelectrocatalytic system for treating AO7 dye. The surface structure and composition analysis results indicated that GO was effectively reduced to RGO and uniformly loaded on the surface of TiO 2 NTs. The performance studies showed that RGO/TiO 2 NTs with 20 cycles exhibited the most favorable optical and photoelectrochemical properties. The forbidden bandwidth of the modified photoanode was reduced from 3.18 to 2.94 eV. Under the synergistic effect of 1.5 V bias voltage and UV light, the photocurrent density of RGO/TiO 2 NTs-20 reached 7.46 mA cm−2, which was approximately 1.32 times of that of pure TiO 2 NTs. In addition, the photoconversion efficiency of the photoanode increased from 3.14 % to 4.48 % after the modification with RGO. The optimal reaction conditions of the photoelectrocatalytic system with RGO/TiO 2 NTs-20 as the photoanode for the treatment of AO7 dyes were electrolyte concentration of 0.1 mol·L−1, pH of 2.7, and stirring speed of 255 r min−1. Under which the degradation rate of AO7 reached 92.97 %, and the rate constant reached 0.01512 min−1. The primary active species involved in the degradation system were h+ and ·OH, with ·O 2 − serving as the secondary active substance. In summary, RGO can be used as an electron conductor to improve the performance of TiO 2 NTs, and the photoelectrocatalytic system with RGO/TiO 2 NTs as the photoanode can effectively treat AO7 dyes. The study offers new ideas for preparing efficient photoelectrodes and applying them in the field of pollutant degradation. • A coupled system of UV and electricity is established. • The e− transfer rate of TiO 2 NTs photoanodes was enhanced by using loaded RGO. • The reaction conditions were optimized for the treatment of AO7 with RGO/TiO 2 NTs as photoanode PEC system. • The mechanism of AO7 treatment by PEC system with RGO/TiO 2 NTs as photoanode was investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of genes conferring salt tolerance is important to reveal plant salt tolerance mechanisms. Here, we employed yeast expression system combined with high-throughput sequencing to identify genes conferring salt tolerance from Tamarix hispida Willd. A total of 1224 potential genes conferring salt tolerance were identified. Twenty-one genes were randomly selected for functional characterization using transient transformation in T. hispida and stable transformation in Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. More than 90% of studied genes are found to confer tolerance to salt stress, indicating that the identified genes are reliable. More than 75% of the identified genes were highly expressed in roots rather than in leaves, suggesting roots play an important role in salt tolerance. The genes belonging to 'response to stimulus' were highly accumulated , and these accounted for 32% of the total identified genes. In addition, the processes of 'protein translation', 'osmotic adjustment', 'scavenging of free radicals', 'photosynthesis, detoxification of cells', 'protection of cellular macromolecules' and 'maintenance of cellular pH' play important roles in salt tolerance. This study provides useful information on the salt tolerance mechanism of T. hispida and offers a valuable resource for exploring genes used in salt tolerance breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the numerical method for two dimensional fractional integro-differential equations, where the order of time fractional derivative α ∈ (1 , 2) and integral order γ ∈ (0 , 1). To overcome the difficulty caused by the two fractional terms, we transform the original equation using the method of integration by parts. A novel high order compact alternating direction implicit (ADI) difference scheme is then proposed to solve the equivalent model. By some skills and detailed analysis, the unconditional stability and convergence in H 1 norm are proved, with the accuracy order O (τ 2 + h 1 4 + h 2 4) , where τ , h 1 and h 2 are temporal and spatial step sizes, respectively. Finally, numerical results are presented to support the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cell selection is a critical issue in sparse mobile crowdsensing (MCS) systems. However, the sensing cost heterogeneity among different cells (subareas) has long been ignored by existing works. Moreover, the data provided by participants are not always trustworthy, and some malicious participants may intend to launch data positioning attacks, which raises a new challenge for cell selection. In this paper, to address these issues, we propose a trustworthy and cost-effective cell selection (TCECS) framework that takes cell heterogeneity and malicious participants into consideration simultaneously. To this end, we first offer to utilize an iterative statistical spatial interpolation technique to identify trustworthy participants with the help of a small portion of dedicated sensors. Furthermore, we employ the regularized mutual coherence (RMC) in compressive sensing (CS) theory to characterize the contribution to inference accuracy of measurements submitted by different trustworthy participants. Finally, the cell selection strategy, which consumes the least sensing cost while satisfying a given sensing quality, is determined via an RMC-constrained optimization problem. Extensive experiments on a real-world taxi GPS dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach can mitigate the adverse effects of malicious participants and outperforms the baselines with less sensing cost for the same required sensing quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-order compact alternating direction implicit scheme is considered to solve the two-dimensional time-fractional integro-differential equation with weak singularity near the initial time in this paper. The L 1 formula and trapezoidal PI rule on nonuniform meshes, which greatly improve the temporal accuracy compared to the method on uniform grids, are adopted to approximate the Caputo derivative and the Riemann-Liouville integral, respectively. With the help of a modified discrete fractional Grönwall inequality and some crucial skills, the stability and convergence of the proposed scheme are analyzed. Numerical results confirm the sharpness of the error analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA-protein interactions are critical to almost all cellular functions, and identification of the proteins that bind to an DNA site of interest (gene-centered approach) is an important investigation area. However, gene-centered methods are mainly based on DNA hybridization to isolate target proteins, which is complex and inefficient. Here, we built a gene-centered approach involving direct isolation of target DNA, termed protein capture based on biolistic transformation (PCaB). The target DNA was labeled with biotin and cyanine 3 (Cy3) at its 5′ and 3′ DNA ends, respectively, and introduced into the host plants through biolistic transformation. The DNA and its binding proteins were crosslinked using formaldehyde. The labeled DNAs were obtained using gel excision and biotin-Streptavidin affinity according to the indication of Cy3 fluorescence, which make harvest of target DNA with a low background. The DNA-binding proteins were identified using mass spectrometry analysis. The PCaB method allowed us to identify and confirm 16 putative upstream regulators of the BpERF3 gene from Betula platyphylla. Theoretically, PCaB could be adapted to all plant species that can be transformed using biolistic bombardment, and captures DNA-binding proteins quickly with a low background. Therefore, PCaB will provide a powerful tool to discover DNA-protein interactions. • A method captures DNA-binding protein efficiently with low background. • The DNA-binding proteins are captured using gel excision and biotin-Streptavidin affinity. • This method studies DNA-protein interactions in all plants with biolistic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a wide range of insect species, the microbiota has potential roles in determining host developmental programme, immunity and reproductive biology. The tea geometrid moths Ectropis obliqua and E. grisescens are two closely related species that mainly feed on tea leaves. Although they can mate, infertile hybrids are produced. Therefore, these species provide a pair of model species for studying the molecular mechanisms of microbiotal involvement in host reproductive biology. In this study, we first identified and compared the compositions of microbiota between these sibling species, revealing higher microbiotal diversity for E. grisescens. The microbiota of E. obliqua mainly comprised the phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria, whereas that of E. grisescens was dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Firmicutes. At the genus level, the dominant microbiota of E. grisescens included Wolbachia, Enterobacter and Pseudomonas and that of E. obliqua included Melissococcus, Staphylococcus and Enterobacter. Furthermore, we verified the rate of Wolbachia to infect 80 samples from eight different geographical populations, and the results supported that only E. grisescens harboured Wolbachia. Taken together, our findings indicate significantly different microbiotal compositions for E. obliqua and E. grisescens, with Wolbachia possibly being a curial factor influencing the reproductive isolation of these species. This study provides new insight into the mechanisms by which endosymbiotic bacteria, particularly Wolbachia, interact with sibling species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female fertility potential depends on the number of mature follicles; however, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Based on previously generated miRNA and mRNA sequencing data of healthy ovarian follicles (>5 mm in diameter) isolated from Hu sheep with different prolificacy, we investigated the roles of a novel miRNA (unconservative_15_2570409) and the progesterone receptor (PGR) gene in follicular development. During the periovulatory phase, the expression of unconservative_15_2570409 and PGR was lower and higher, respectively, in the >5 mm follicles of high prolificacy (HP) ewes than in those of low prolificacy (LP) ewes and in the >3 mm follicles than in the smaller follicles of the HP ewes. Subsequently, the granulosa cells (GCs) of Hu sheep were used as an in vitro model. PGR overexpression significantly increased the mRNA expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR), 3-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase/isomerase (3β-HSD), and cytochrome P450 family 19 subfamily A member 1 (CYP19A1), which promoted the secretion of progesterone (P 4) and estradiol (E 2). PGR knockdown significantly downregulated the levels of StAR and 3β-HSD mRNA and decreased the production of P 4 , whereas no effects on CYP19A1 mRNA expression and E 2 levels were observed. We also found the negative regulatory effect of unconservative_15_2570409 on the mRNA and protein expression of PGR by targeting the 3ʹ-untranslated region. The regulation of PGR levels resulted in a corresponding change in the ADAMTS1, PPAR-γ, and CTSL gene transcripts, which are important for follicular maturation and ovulation. Additionally, PGR, ADAMTS1, and PPAR-γ were predominantly localized in the GCs. Collectively, our results suggest that by regulating PGR expression and consequently affecting the expression of target genes and steroidogenesis, unconservative_15_2570409 plays a role in follicular development during the periovulatory stage, which provides novel insights into the molecular mechanisms affecting Hu sheep prolificacy. • PGR is a direct target of unconservative_15_2570409. • Unconservative_15_2570409 mediates PGR transcriptional target genes by targeting PGR. • PGR affects steroidogenesis in sheep GCs through steroid hormone-related genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the problem of exponential stabilisation for fractional-order semilinear parabolic distributed parameter systems with actuator faults, and a reliable state feedback controller is proposed. First, the considered nonlinear fractional-order distributed parameter systems are reconstructed by Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy partial differential equation (PDE) model, where a finite number of actuators are active only at some specified points of the spatial domain. Then, based on the obtained fractional-order T-S fuzzy PDE model, a fractional-order Lyapunov technique is used to analyse the closed-loop exponential stability. By using the vector-valued Wirtinger's inequality, a reliable state feedback controller that can guarantee locally exponential stabilisation of the fractional-order semilinear PDE systems is presented in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glochidion plants and Epicephala moths played different roles and kept the balance in the mutualism. We studied the four coexisting Epicephala species on Glochidion sphaerogynum in detail and reconstructed the phylogenic tree of 40 Gracillariidae species. The results showed that one of them (Epicephala impolliniferens) did not pollinate G. sphaerogynum , because of lacking the specialized structure of carrying pollen. These results suggested that E. impolliniferens acted as a 'cheater' in the system. The phylogenetic analyses suggested that E. impolliniferens derived from a pollinating species, and had secondarily gave up the ability to pollinate. This is a typical phenomenon of mutualism reversal. The phenomenon exhibits the co-evolutionary diversification under selection pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balanced space‐fractional derivative is usually applied in modelling the state‐dependence, isotropy, and anisotropy in diffusion phenomena. In this paper, we introduce a class of space‐fractional reaction‐diffusion model with singular source term arising in combustion process. The fractional derivative employed in this model is defined in the sum of left‐sided and right‐sided Riemann‐Liouville fractional derivatives. With assistance of Kaplan's first eigenvalue method, we prove that the classic solution of this model may not be globally well‐defined, and the heat conduction governed by this model depends on the order of fractional derivative, the parameters in the equation, and the length of spatial interval. Finite difference method is implemented to solve this model, and an adaptive strategy is applied to improve the computational efficiency. The positivity, monotonicity, and stability of the numerical scheme are discussed. Numerical simulation and observation of the quenching and stationary solutions coincide the theoretical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new numerical approximation is discussed for the two dimensional multi-term time fractional integro-differential equation. The proposed technique is based on the high order orthogonal spline collocation (OSC) method for the spatial discretization, the classical L1 approximation for the Caputo fractional derivative, and an alternating direction implicit (ADI) method in time, combined with the second order fractional quadrature rule proposed by Lubich to approximate the integral term. Detailed analysis for the optimal error estimate of the proposed scheme is rigorously discussed. Numerical results are listed to support the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation Detecting cancer gene expression and transcriptome changes with mRNA-sequencing or array-based data are important for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying carcinogenesis and cellular events during cancer progression. In previous studies, the differentially expressed genes were detected across patients in one cancer type. These studies ignored the role of mRNA expression changes in driving tumorigenic mechanisms that are either universal or specific in different tumor types. To address the problem, we introduce two network-based multi-task learning frameworks, NetML and NetSML, to discover common differentially expressed genes shared across different cancer types as well as differentially expressed genes specific to each cancer type. The proposed frameworks consider the common latent gene co-expression modules and gene–sample biclusters underlying the multiple cancer datasets to learn the knowledge crossing different tumor types. Results Large-scale experiments on simulations and real cancer high-throughput datasets validate that the proposed network-based multi-task learning frameworks perform better sample classification compared with the models without the knowledge sharing across different cancer types. The common and cancer-specific molecular signatures detected by multi-task learning frameworks on The Cancer Genome Atlas ovarian, breast and prostate cancer datasets are correlated with the known marker genes and enriched in cancer-relevant Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome pathways and gene ontology terms. Availability and implementation Source code is available at: https://github.com/compbiolabucf/NetML. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to investigate the dose-dependent effect of 1α,25-(OH)2VD3 (Vit D3) on in vitro proliferation of goat luteinised granulosa cells (LGCs) and to determine the underlying mechanisms of its action by overexpressing and silencing vitamin D receptor (VDR) in LGCs. Results showed that VDR was prominently localised in GCs and theca cells (TCs) and its expression increased with follicle diameter, but was lower in atretic follicles than in healthy follicles. The proliferation rate of LGCs was significantly higher in the Vit D3-treated groups than in the control group, with the highest proliferation rate observed in the 10 nM group; this was accompanied by changes in the expression of cell cycle-related genes. These data indicate that Vit D3 affects LGC proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. Contrary to the VDR knockdown effects, its overexpression upregulated and downregulated cell cycle- and apoptosis-related genes respectively; moreover, supplementation with 10 nM of Vit D3 significantly enhanced these effects. These results suggest that changes in VDR expression patterns in LGCs may be associated with follicular development by regulation of cell proliferation and apoptosis. These findings will enhance the understanding of the roles of Vit D3 and VDR in goat ovarian follicular development. The primary localisation of vitamin D receptor (VDR) in ovarian granulosa cells indicates possible roles of vitamin D in follicular development, but the mechanism remains unclear. We demonstrated a dose-dependent effect of Vit D3 on proliferation of goat luteinised granulosa cells (LGC) and that VDR expression in LGCs may be associated with follicular development by regulation of cell proliferation and apoptosis. These findings could enhance the understanding of the molecular roles of Vit D3 and VDR in ovarian follicular development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Acoustical coupling for open cavity and an array of Helmholtz resonators in 3D. • Sound radiation modeling based on the coupled mode theory. • The mechanism of abatement of sound radiation from open cavity using Helmholtz resonator is investigated. • The natural frequency, location and internal resistance effect of the resonator is analyzed. • Experimental validation is conducted. This paper presents the theoretical and experimental investigations on the suppression of noise radiation from a point source inside an open cavity with three-dimensional configuration using several Helmholtz resonators (HRs). A theoretical model is established based on the modal superposition method to study the acoustical coupling between a rectangular open cavity and multiples HRs. Additionally, a baffled open cavity is considered to couple acoustically with a semi-infinite exterior field using the acoustic coupled mode theory. The theoretical model facilitates the understanding of the mechanism of the peak formation in the sound pressure level spectrum at the receiving points outside the cavity and the noise suppression mechanism by the HRs. In addition, the relationship between those sound peaks, and that of the resonances of the enclosed cavity and open cavity are investigated to have a good design of HR. The location and internal resistance of HR are optimised to obtain a desirable attenuation of noise radiation from the open cavity. Subsequently, experiments are performed to validate the proposed model and examine the feasibility of the HR in suppressing noise radiation from the open cavity. The noise reduction around the sound peak indicates that both the single and multiple sound peaks of the open cavity can be controlled successfully by adopting HRs. The practical significance of this study is to provide a new insight into sound reduction in an open acoustical system through suppressing the resonant response by resonators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) has now become an effective paradigm to collect massive data for various sensing applications. However, the interactions between mobile users and the platform, and the data release to third parties, pose severe challenges of privacy leakage for MCS systems, such as the leakage of users' identities and locations. Although several works on MCS have explored the privacy issues in task allocation, incentive, and data reporting, there is still a lack of a comprehensive privacy preserving framework for MCS to protect the privacy of users throughout users' involvement in crowdsensing tasks. In this article, we divide the life cycle of each crowdsensing task in MCS into four phases: task allocation, incentive, data collection, and data publishing, and design a privacy-preserving framework for MCS to protect users' privacy in the whole life cycle of MCS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tuning the morphology through processing additives represents one of the most promising strategies to boost the performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, it remains unclear how oligothiophene‐based solid additives influence the molecular packing and performance of OSCs. Here, two additives namely 2T and 4T, are introduced into state‐of‐the‐art PM6:Y6‐based OSCs to understand how they influence the film formation process, nanoscale morphology, and the photovoltaic performance. It is found that the 2T additive can improve the molecular packing of both donor polymer and non‐fullerene acceptor, resulting in lower Urbach energy and reduced energy loss. Furthermore, the blend film with 2T treatment displays enhanced domain purity and a more favorable distribution of the acceptor and donor materials in the vertical direction, which can enhance charge extraction efficiency while simultaneously suppressing charge recombination. Consequently, OSCs processed with 2T additive realize a promising efficiency of 18.1% for PM6:Y6‐based devices. Furthermore, the general applicability of the additive is demonstrated, and an impressive efficiency of 18.6% for PM6:L8‐BO‐based OSCs is achieved. These findings highlight that the uncomplicated oligothiophenes have excellent potential in fine‐adjustment of the active layer morphology, which is crucial for the future development of OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the ubiquitous usage of mobile devices, we are witnessing the emergence of commercial crowdsourcing applications that leverage the power of the crowd (workers) to collect massive data. However, the participation unbalance problem commonly occurs in existing location-dependent mobile crowdsourcing applications as workers tend to select nearby tasks while far away tasks are ignored. In this article, we propose a novel task bundling based incentive mechanism that dynamically bundles tasks with different popularity together to solve the participation unbalance problem. We consider the continuous sensing scenarios and categorize tasks into high-popularity (hot) tasks and low-popularity (cold) tasks at each round according to the real-time participation situation of tasks at the last round. We then formulate the task bundling problem as a multi-objective optimization problem, and propose a dynamic task bundling algorithm that dynamically bundles cold tasks with hot tasks at each round. The experimental results demonstrate that the bundling incentive mechanism has a more balanced participation for location-dependent tasks in mobile crowdsourcing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with adaptive robust stabilization in finite time for fractional-order chaotic and hyperchaotic Electromechanical Gyrostat Systems (EGSs) with unknown parameters and uncertainties. Firstly, a fractional-order EGS mathematical model is proposed, and the existence of chaotic and hyperchaotic attractors is verified with the related Lyapunov exponents, phase portraits and Poincaré sections. Then, fractional-order adaptive laws are proposed to estimate the unknown parameters. Based on the fractional-order convergence theory in finite time, a novel discontinuous state feedback controller with the proposed fractional-order adaptive laws is designed to stabilize the fractional-order EGSs in finite time globally, and the stabilization conditions are analytically addressed. Finally, numerical simulations are employed to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sex pheromone of Ectropis grisescens, one of the primary defoliator insects of tea plantations, has been identified, but its trapping parameters have not been optimized for field application. In this study, we investigated the effects of pheromone dose, trap height and trap type on the effectiveness of trapping E. grisescens in the field. Our results show that the optimal pheromone dose is 800 μg. The bucket-funnel trap hung 40 cm below the tea canopy had the highest trapping efficiency. This study establishes optimized parameters for the pheromone trapping of E. grisescens in tea plantations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we derive the improved regularity for two-dimensional nonlinear time fractional telegraph equations by virtue of the technic of decomposition at first. Then, the famous L 2 - 1 σ formula is adopted to approximate the Caputo derivative and the central finite difference method is used for spatial discretization. The convergence accuracy of the proposed method is second order in both temporal and spatial direction. Meanwhile, for the sake of reducing the time of solving the high dimensional nonlinear problems, an efficient time two-grid algorithm is proposed. Furthermore, stability analysis of the proposed scheme is studied by the energy method. At last, numerical experiments are presented to verify the validity of the theoretical statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, first, the breakage of a cutting tool with ultrasonic vibration was investigated using a scanning electron microscope. It was concluded that the breakage of a cutting tool with ultrasonic vibration has the features of fatigue fracture; i.e. it undergoes three stages: micro-crack generation, micro-crack spreading, and brittle fracture. Second, the reasons for the breakage of the cutting tool with ultrasonic vibration were analysed theoretically. The analytical results demonstrated two reasons: one is that the pulsating main cutting force and pulsating frictional force act periodically on the rake face of the cutting tool; the other is that the flank of the cutting tool is alternatively subjected to compressive stress and tensile stress. Furthermore, the influences of the main factors on the breakage of the cutting tool with ultrasonic vibration were studied experimentally. Finally, the breakage of the cutting tool was analysed using the finite element method (FEM). FEM simulation results demonstrate that the fatigue life and fatigue safety factor of the cutting tool decrease and the fatigue damage coefficient of the cutting tool increases with the increase in the amplitudes of the pulsating loads, reciprocating frictional force, and normal force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With new forms of media such as Twitter becoming increasingly popular, the Internet is now the main conduit of individual and interpersonal messages. A considerable amount of people express their personal opinions about news-related subject through Twitter, a popular SNS platform based on human relationships. It provides us a data source that we can use to extract peoples' opinions which are important for product review and public opinion monitoring. In this paper, a hybrid sentimental entity recognition model (HSERM) has been designed. Utilizing 100 million collected messages from Twitter, the hashtag is regarded as the label for sentimental classification. In the meanwhile, features as emoji and N-grams have been extracted and classified the collected topic messages into four different sentiment categories based on the circumplex sentimental model. Finally, machine learning methods are used to classify the sentimental data set, and an 89 % precise result has been achieved. Further, entities that are behind emotions could be gotten with the help of SENNA deep learning model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method for some time-fractional fourth-order differential equations. The method was recently employed to solve the problem and shown to converge with order. We find that the LDG method can actually achieve convergence rate equals. The claims are justified by numerical tests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a second-order scheme with nonuniform time meshes for Caputo–Hadamard fractional sub-diffusion equations with initial singularity is investigated. Firstly, a Taylor-like formula with integral remainder is proposed, which is crucial to studying the discrete convolution kernels and error estimate. Secondly, we come up with an error convolution structure (ECS) analysis for L log , 2 − 1 σ interpolation approximation to the Caputo–Hadamard fractional derivative. The core result in this paper is an ECS bound and a global consistency analysis established at an offset point. By virtue of this result, we obtain a sharp L 2 -norm error estimate of a second-order Crank–Nicolson-like scheme for Caputo–Hadamard fractional differential equations. Ultimately, an example is presented to show the sharpness of our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a high order finite difference scheme for a two dimensional nonlinear fractional Klein–Gordon equation in polar coordinates is proposed. The difficulty caused by the variable coefficient and the nonlinear term in the equation is carefully handled. Stability and convergence are analyzed using the matrix form of the scheme. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, finite difference schemes for differential equations with both temporal and spatial fractional derivatives are studied. When the order of the time fractional derivative is in, an alternating direction implicit (ADI) scheme with second-order accuracy in both space and time is constructed. For equations with time fractional derivatives of order lying in, a scheme is derived and solved by the generalized minimal residual method. We also propose a preconditioner to improve the efficiency for the implementation of the scheme in this situation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Barrier coverage is a fundamental problem for lots of applications in wireless sensor networks. In reality, sensor nodes’ true locations may not be known to us considering that not every sensor node is equipped with a GPS. The measured locations of sensor nodes obtained by applying node localization algorithm often have errors, which makes it difficult to form a line-based barrier with mobile sensor nodes. In this paper, we study how to efficiently schedule mobile sensor nodes to form a barrier when sensor nodes suffer from location errors. We explore the relationship between the existence of uncovered hole and location errors and find that the lengths of uncovered holes are decided by the cumulative location errors. We also propose a method in frequency domain to efficiently calculate the distributions of the cumulative location errors. The possibility of the existence of uncovered holes can be derived by analyzing the step responses of the cumulative location errors. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is reported that there are hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by seasonal flu all around the world every year. More other diseases such as chickenpox, malaria, etc. are also serious threats to people's physical and mental health. There are 250,000-500,000 deaths every year around the world. Therefore proper techniques for disease surveillance are highly demanded. Recently, social media analysis is regarded as an efficient way to achieve this goal, which is feasible since growing number of people have been posting their health information on social media such as blogs, personal websites, etc. Previous work on social media analysis mainly focused on English materials but hardly considered Chinese materials, which hinders the application of such technique to Chinese people. In this paper, we proposed a new method of Chinese social media analysis for disease surveillance. More specifically, we compared different kinds of methods in the process of classification and then proposed a new way to process Chinese text data. The Chinese Sina micro-blog data collected from September to December 2013 are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that a high classification precision of 87.49 % in average has been obtained. Comparing with the data from the authority, Chinese National Influenza Center, we can predict the outbreak time of flu 5 days earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we consider finite difference schemes for two dimensional time fractional diffusion-wave equations on an annular domain. The problem is formulated in polar coordinates and, therefore, has variable coefficients. A compact alternating direction implicit scheme with [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid networks, comprising a conventional cellular network overlaid with Device-to-Device (D2D), offer efficient way to improve system throughput. In this paper, a novel orthogonal frequency-division multiple access channel-assignment method is proposed for hybrid network. The proposed approach is optimal in terms of throughput and is subjected to a sensible QoS requirement, which guarantees that macrocell and D2D achieve a prescribed data rate and outage probability, respectively. Our solution consists of two phases. In the first phase, the minimum sub-channels are allocated to the macrocell to satisfy their data rate requirements. This problem is mapped to the 0-1 Knapsack Problem and solved by integer programming based Lagrange dual approach. In the second phase, the redundant sub-channels are allocated to D2D pairs to maximize the throughput of D2D networks. An interference management scheme is proposed to guarantee the outage probability of D2D communications. A cluster is taken as the unit for frequency reuse among D2D pairs. The problem of clustering is mapped to the MAX k-CUT problem in graph theory and is solved by graph-based heuristic algorithm. Extensive simulations demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed solution compared with the existing scheme. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a compact alternating direction implicit finite difference scheme for the two-dimensional time fractional diffusion-wave equation is developed, with temporal and spatial accuracy order equal to two and four, respectively. The second-order accuracy in the time direction has not been achieved in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a high order compact (HOC) scheme for time fractional Fokker–Planck equations with variable convection is constructed. The scheme is studied using its matrix form by the energy method. We find that the difficulty arising from the variable coefficient can be overcome by simple modifications of the coefficient matrices. The scheme is shown to be stable and convergent with order τ 2 − α + h 4 which is higher than some recently studied schemes. Numerical examples are given to justify the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a high-order finite difference scheme for a kind of nonlinear fractional Klein-Gordon equation is derived. The time fractional derivative is described in the Caputo sense. The solvability of the difference system is discussed by the Leray-Schauder fixed point theorem, while the stability and L∞ convergence of the finite difference scheme are proved by the energy method. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the theoretical results. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 31: 706-722, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic response of a towed cable system to ship maneuver is parametrically simulated. Three dimensionless parameters influence on towed cable system maneuverability is investigated. They are ratio of total length to turning radius R / L , ratio of cable mass to vehicle mass σ , and ratio of mass unit length to hydrodynamic force w / r . An oscillatory motion of towed vehicle is found in simulation of spiral towed courses. Features of this oscillation in different spiral courses are compared. The sharp turns, gradual turns and their transient states of towed cable dynamics for different course directions are discussed extensively. According to the characters of transient states and horizontal trajectories evolution of maneuvered cable system, the dynamic behaviors can be divided into three situations in Fig. 8 turning maneuvers. The behavior of towed cable system during a zigzag turning course is simulated in the end. Two ingredients of heave motion are found during small ratio of turning radii to length in this course. The primary damp to initial turning becomes weak and the response to alternative turns plays a more and more important role. The damping properties of the transient behavior in different maneuvers show a periodical invariance to σ during some turning maneuvers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, compact finite difference schemes for the modified anomalous fractional sub-diffusion equation and fractional diffusion-wave equation are studied. Schemes proposed previously can at most achieve temporal accuracy of order which depends on the order of fractional derivatives in the equations and is usually less than two. Based on the idea of weighted and shifted Grünwald difference operator, we establish schemes with temporal and spatial accuracy order equal to two and four respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]