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Abstract Background Cuprotosis has been identified as a novel way of cell death. The key regulator ferredoxin 1 (FDX1) was explored via pan-cancer analysis, and its prediction models were proposed across seven malignancies and two imaging modalities. Methods The prognostic value of FDX1 was explored via 1654 cases of 33 types of cancer in the Cancer Genome Atlas database. The MRI cohort of hepatocellular carcinoma in the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, and CT and MRI images from the Cancer Imaging Archive, REMBRANDT and Duke databases were exploited to formulate radiomic models to predict FDX1 expression. After segmentation of volumes of interest and feature extraction, the recursive feature elimination algorithm was used to screen features, logistic regression was used to model features, immunohistochemistry staining with FDX1 antibody was performed to test the radiomic model. Results FDX1 was found to be prognostic in various types of cancer. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of radiomic models to predict FDX1 expression reached 0.825 (95% CI = 0.739–0.911). Cross-tissue compatibility was confirmed in pan-cancer validation and test cohorts. Mechanistically, the radiomic score was significantly correlated with various immunosuppressive genes and gene mutations. The radiomic score was also found to be an independent prognostic factor, making it a potentially actionable biomarker in the clinical setting. Conclusions The expression of FDX1 could be non-invasively predicted via radiomics. The radiomic patterns with biological and clinical relevance across histology and modalities could have a broad impact on a larger population of patients.

Tropospheric ozone, mainly produced by chemical reactions that involve the photo-chemical oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the presence of nitrogen oxide (NOx), is an air pollutant that adversely impacts human health and natural vegetation. Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization over the last three decades, tropospheric ozone concentrations are rising at a rate of ~0.5%–2% per year. By 2040, ozone concentrations are projected to reach 35–48 ppb (currently ~31 ppb). Thus, the assessment of the effects of this increase on plant physiology is important for ensuring global food security and human health. In this paper, we review the effects of tropospheric ozone pollution on plant physiology, including the visible damage to leaves and roots, changes in photosynthetic rate, carbon sequestration capacity, and the structure of pollen grains. The results show that continuous exposure to high ozone concentrations cause: (1) visible foliar injury, and reduction in the photosynthetic rate and carbon sequestration capacity, which in turn affect the accumulation and distribution of dry matter and consequently reduces crop yields; and (2) damage to cell membranes, protein of pollen grains, and lipid peroxidation in cells, which may increase the risk of respiratory allergies in humans. The response of plants to ozone varies with species, plant growth stage and climatic conditions. Damaged fossil pollen grains have been observed in the sediments of the end-Devonian and the end-Permian, coeval with mass extinction events, which was attributed to increased ozone concentrations resulting from either volcanic eruptions or rapid global warming. These findings highlight the urgent need for research on the impacts of ozone on plant ecological habits in the natural environment, especially on below-ground ecological processes, as well as on measures to mitigate the impacts of ozone on crops and the selection of ozone-resistant crops.

Abstract Objective To generate an image‐driven biomarker (Rad_score) to predict tumor‐infiltrating regulatory T lymphocytes (Treg) in breast cancer (BC). Methods Overall, 928 BC patients were enrolled from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) for survival analysis; MRI (n = 71 and n = 30 in the training and validation sets, respectively) from the Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) were retrieved and subjected to repeat least absolute shrinkage and selection operator for feature reduction. The radiomic scores (rad_score) for Treg infiltration estimation were calculated via support vector machine (SVM) and logistic regression (LR) algorithms, and validated on the remaining patients. Results Landmark analysis indicated Treg infiltration was a risk factor for BC patients in the first 5 years and after 10 years of diagnosis (p = 0.007 and 0.018, respectively). Altogether, 108 radiomic features were extracted from MRI images, 4 of which remained for model construction. Areas under curves (AUCs) of the SVM model were 0.744 (95% CI 0.622–0.867) and 0.733 (95% CI 0.535–0.931) for training and validation sets, respectively, while for the LR model, AUCs were 0.771 (95% CI 0.657–0.885) and 0.724 (95% CI 0.522–0.926). The calibration curves indicated good agreement between prediction and true value (p > 0.05), and DCA shows the high clinical utility of the radiomic model. Rad_score was significantly correlated with immune inhibitory genes like CTLA4 and PDCD1. Conclusions High Treg infiltration is a risk factor for patients with BC. The Rad_score formulated on radiomic features is a novel tool to predict Treg abundance in the tumor microenvironment.

Background: With the rapid development of Web3D, virtual reality, and digital twins, virtual trajectories and decision data considerably rely on the analysis and understanding of real video data, particularly in emergency evacuation scenarios. Correctly and effectively evacuating crowds in virtual emergency scenarios are becoming increasingly urgent. One good solution is to extract pedestrian trajectories from videos of emergency situations using a multi-target tracking algorithm and use them to define evacuation procedures. Methods: To implement this solution, a trajectory extraction and optimization framework based on multi-target tracking is developed in this study. First, a multi-target tracking algorithm is used to extract and preprocess the trajectory data of the crowd in a video. Then, the trajectory is optimized by combining the trajectory point extraction algorithm and Savitzky–Golay smoothing filtering method. Finally, related experiments are conducted, and the results show that the proposed approach can effectively and accurately extract the trajectories of multiple target objects in real time. Results: In addition, the proposed approach retains the real characteristics of the trajectories as much as possible while improving the trajectory smoothing index, which can provide data support for the analysis of pedestrian trajectory data and formulation of personnel evacuation schemes in emergency scenarios. Conclusions: Further comparisons with methods used in related studies confirm the feasibility and superiority of the proposed framework.

Abstract Male breast cancer (MBC) is a rare but aggressive malignancy with cellular and immunological characteristics that remain unclear. Here, we perform transcriptomic analysis for 111,038 single cells from tumor tissues of six MBC and thirteen female breast cancer (FBC) patients. We find that that MBC has significantly lower infiltration of T cells relative to FBC. Metastasis-related programs are more active in cancer cells from MBC. The activated fatty acid metabolism involved with FASN is related to cancer cell metastasis and low immune infiltration of MBC. T cells in MBC show activation of p38 MAPK and lipid oxidation pathways, indicating a dysfunctional state. In contrast, T cells in FBC exhibit higher expression of cytotoxic markers and immune activation pathways mediated by immune-modulatory cytokines. Moreover, we identify the inhibitory interactions between cancer cells and T cells in MBC. Our study provides important information for understanding the tumor immunology and metabolism of MBC.

The MTCH2 protein is located on the mitochondrial outer membrane and regulates mitochondria-related cell death. This study set out to investigate the role of MTCH2 in the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of breast cancer (BC). MTCH2 expression levels in BC were analyzed using bioinformatics prior to verification by cell lines in vitro. Experiments of over-expression and siRNA-mediated knockdown of MTCH2 were conducted to assess its biological functions, including its effects on cellular proliferation and cycle progression. Xenografts were utilised for in vivo study and signaling pathway alterations were examined to identify the mechanisms driven by MTCH2 in BC proliferation and cell-cycle regulation. MTCH2 was up-regulated in BC and correlated with patients’ overall survival. Over-expression of MTCH2 promoted cellular proliferation and cycle progression, while silencing MTCH2 had the opposite effect. Xenograft experiments were utilised to confirm the in vitro cellular findings and it was identified that the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway was activated by MTCH2 over-expression and suppressed by its silencing. Moreover, the activation of IGF-1R rescued cellular growth and cycle arrest induced by MTCH2-silencing. Overall, this study reveals that expression of MTCH2 in BC is upregulated and potentiates cellular proliferation and cycle progression via the PI3K/Akt pathway.

Sansha is the largest city in Hainan with abundant tourism resources. However, the development of tourism there has been slow. Exploring the tourist destination image perceived by tourists can help understand the tourist experience and tourism development of the tourist destination. As the real tourism experience data of tourists, travel notes have become an important basis for the study of tourism image. In this context, this paper took Sansha travel notes on Hornet's Hive as the research object, used content analysis method to extract high frequency words of tourism image perception of Sansha tourists, and combined with "grounded theory" coding analysis, found that Sansha Island tourism development was insufficient, cultural tourism development was insufficient, and ecological environmental protection needed to be strengthened. According to the research findings, it was proposed to strengthen the development of island tourism resources, use the "interface" development thinking, and take the road of eco-tourism development, strengthen the development of cultural tourism resources, build a submarine wreck museum; To strengthen the protection of marine ecological environment and promote the transformation of fishermen to engage in tourism, in order to provide reference for the development of tourism in Sansha.

Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) is among the most prevalent cancers worldwide, ranking as the third most prevalent malignancy in incidence and mortality. The somatostatin receptor (SSTR) family comprises G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which couple to inhibitory G proteins (Gi and Go) upon binding to somatostatin (SST) analogs. GPCRs are involved in hormone release, neurotransmission, cell growth inhibition, and cancer suppression. However, their roles in COAD remain unclear. This study used bioinformatics to investigate the expression, prognosis, gene alterations, functional enrichment, and immunoregulatory effects of the SSTR family members in COAD. SSTR1-4 are differentially downregulated in COAD, and low SSTR2 expression indicates poor survival. Biological processes and gene expression enrichment of the SSTR family in COAD were further analyzed using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes and Gene Ontology. A strong correlation was observed between SSTR expression and immune cell infiltration. We also quantified SSTR2 expression in 25 COAD samples and adjacent normal tissues using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. We analyzed its correlation with the dendritic cell–integrin subunit alpha X marker gene. The biomarker exploration of the solid tumors portal was used to confirm the correlation between SSTR2 with immunomodulators and immunotherapy responses. Our results identify SSTR2 as a promising target for COAD immunotherapy. Our findings provide new insights into the biological functions of the SSTR family and their implications for the prognosis of COAD.

This study delves into the heritage language experiences of Australian-born Chinese immigrant children under the framework of family language policy. Storytelling as a narrative inquiry method is used to reveal the lived experiences of the protagonists in relation to heritage language and culture. The three family stories involved for case studies reveal different levels of parent agency in Chinese immigrant families regarding their children’s home language use and heritage language education. It is noted that the level of child agency corresponds with the level of their parent agency. Where parents strongly advocate and practice heritage language maintenance, stronger agency is observed in their children to continue the use and learning of their heritage language. In addition, maintaining harmony while parents are implementing family language policies and providing children with formal instruction in heritage language are conducive to heritage language development, particularly in terms of its literacy.

As the key technology of the new generation IP network,SRv6 has gradually become the direction of network evolution in the 5G and cloud networks.The problems how to solve the problems of excessive head overhead,low payload efficiency,and difficult upgrading from the existing network has become the focus of the industry.Based on this technical problem,header compression design principles were proposed firstly,including mechanism compatible with standard SRv6 header encapsulation,inheriting the advantages of standard SRv6 and IPv6,compatible with existing network address plan,achieving an effective balance of compression efficiency and processing performance,and interconnecting with existing networks.Secondly,a G-SID header compression solution was proposed based on common prefix stitching,the key technical capabilities of G-SID container,COC flavor,and SID index were defined,and a network orchestration solution for mixed deployment of compressed and uncompressed networks was proposed.Finally,the progress of the G-SID solution in the industry’s international standards was introduced,and has been verified by the interoperability of multi-vendor equipment,and the pilot deployment on the existing network was planned to promote the rapid deployment of SRv6 on the entire network.

The cascading impacts of climate-driven vegetation change on terrestrial invertebrates via trophic and habitat routes is a matter of outstanding concern. However, the combined responses of plant-animal associations in terrestrial ecosystems have seldom been reported on geological timescales, which raises the important questions of how frequently and to what extent such multi-trophic shifts in taxa have occurred during previous warming scenarios. Here we use a combination of mollusk, palynological, and climatic proxy evidence preserved within loess deposits in the southern Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) to demonstrate how long-term changes in hydroclimatic dynamics during the past 26 kyr were reflected in the subsequent ecological changes. Specifically, there was a shift from a predominantly cold-tolerant mollusk fauna in a dry-steppe environment under cold-dry conditions during the last glacial, to a predominantly thermal-mesophilous fauna in a meadow-steppe environment under a warm temperate climate in the early-middle Holocene. Warmth-adapted mollusk species such as Opeas striatissimum and Punctum orphana were found to have been associated with several deciduous tree taxa (e.g., Corylus, Quercus, and Pterocarya) in both the Holocene record and in the modern ecosystem (based on surveys of 356 surface-soil plots). This suggests there is a clear ecological interdependency between specific vegetation types and mollusk assemblages. As such, the long-term vegetation-mollusk fossil records highlight the indirect impacts of climate change on terrestrial invertebrate turnover via plant-derived food structure and habitat routes, with major implications for understanding how these ecosystems are likely to respond to future climate changes.

With the rapid development of Web Virtual Reality (WebVR) technology, increasing focus has been placed on this domain. WebVR indoor scenario design studies have been of important value in both academia and industry. However, many bottlenecks still need to be overcome, such as the weak computing capacity and limited memory space available in web browsers. In particular, there are many deficiencies in virtual scenes, i.e., lack of fidelity, low automation and poor scene interactability. In this paper, we propose a novel WebVR indoor furniture layout design framework to enhance the capabilities of automatic furniture layout and significantly enhance the interactiveness of virtual scenarios. In particular, we present a hand-drawn sketch recognition scheme based on the ResNet convolutional neural network (CNN), which can strongly improve scenario interactiveness by allowing the user to conveniently add new furniture by means of free-hand drawing operations rather than tedious manual drag-and-pull operations. In addition, based on a deep Q-learning network (DQN), the best positions (states) for these pieces of furniture (agents) in virtual scenarios can be automatically determined, making it easy to satisfy popular design principles. Finally, we report experiments conducted to validate the feasibility of our proposed framework, and the results fully demonstrate that this framework is completely feasible.

Abstract Under the task-based language teaching (TBLT) framework, this study investigated learners’ perceptions of a WeChat task being integrated into a Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) curriculum. The WeChat task linked up learners of Chinese from an Australian university with native speakers of Chinese as international students on the same campus. The learner-native speaker pair were required to complete weekly assigned communication sub-tasks through WeChat for ten weeks in semester 2 of 2017. Both a questionnaire survey and an interview were conducted for data collection. Findings show that participants were very positive with the WeChat task. They expressed their enjoyment and satisfaction in completing the question-asking and answering interactions with native speakers through WeChat. As an important component of the tertiary CFL curriculum, the WeChat task was a great learning task to supplement classroom learning. It is also an ideal learning task that makes use of the native speaker resources and mobile assisted language learning technology to achieve the best learning outcome in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

In recent years, the electric vehicles (EVs) power management strategy has been developed in order to reduce battery discharging power and fluctuation when an EV requires high and rapid discharging power due to frequent stop-and-go driving operations. A combination of lithium-ion battery and supercapacitor (SC) as the EV’s energy sources, known as a hybrid energy storage system (HESS), is a promising solution for fast discharging conditions. Effective power management to extensively utilize HESS can be developed if future power demand is accessible. A vehicular network as a typical form of the currently developed internet of things (IoT) has made future information obtainable by collecting information on surrounding data. This paper proposes a power management strategy for the HESS with the support of IoT. Since the obtained information from the vehicular network could not directly be used to improve HESS, a two-level control structure has been developed to perform future data prediction and power distribution. A fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is utilized in level one control structure to manage a HESS power split based on future information. Since FLC requires future information as a reference input, the future information is obtained by using an artificial neural network (ANN) in level two control structure. The ANN provides a direct prediction that could approximate the future power demand prediction with the assumption that the vehicular network scenario is deployed to obtain surrounding information. Simulation results demonstrate that the average discharging battery power and power variation are reduced by 46.1% and 52.3%, respectively, compared to the battery-only case.

In order to accurately evaluate the performance of a traction machine/drive system, it is necessary to have an accurate excitation source which considers current harmonics. In this paper, four machine/drive systems with different excitation sources have been modeled, simulated, and studied to evaluate the effects on permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) from different perspectives. In Model I, the excitation is an ideal sinusoidal current source with no harmonics. Model II is excited by an ideal sinusoidal voltage source regardless of the pulse width modification’s (PWM’s) influence. Model III takes into account the influence of current harmonics under space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) control. Model IV is based on the equivalent circuit extraction (ECE) model (a look-up table motor model). We simulate these four models and study the characteristics of the excitation sources, based on the observations of current harmonics, torque, electromagnetic force, computation time, and efficiency. Experiments are also conducted to show that Model III allows the most precise study of the considered system. Model IV is a good substitution, providing similar results with a shorter running time.

Affordance refers to the opportunity available to a learning activity. Taking affordance as a theoretical and analytical construct, this exploratory study investigates learners' attitudes and the opportunities WeChat may provide for Chinese cultural knowledge (CCK) learning. The aim is to find out the potential new affordances and compare learners with different language levels. 24 participants were paired with native Chinese speakers and required to complete three-stage activities with the integration of WeChat. This study adopted a mix-method approach. Data were collected through questionnaires, two rounds of semi-structured interviews, chat logs, and WeChat moments. It is found that most learners were positive toward the activities and WeChat provided learners with opportunities for interaction and collaboration, for resource sharing, for knowledge internalization and construction, and for sustainable learning and friendship maintaining. The affordance of knowledge internalization and construction was mentioned with the highest frequency in the interview. The findings that distinguish this study from previous ones are: (1) the affordance for sustainable learning, and (2) differences between high-level (HL) and low-level (LL) learners. In comparison, the activities won more supports from HL learners, and HL learners' frequency in leveraging the affordance for resource sharing and sustainable learning was also higher. Pedagogical implications and research recommendations were provided respectively in discussion and conclusion parts.

Technological advances have brought about the ever-increasing utilisation of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) media in the learning of a second language (L2). Computer-mediated communication, for example, provides a practical means for extending the learning of spoken language, a challenging process in tonal languages such as Chinese, beyond the realms of the classroom. In order to effectively improve spoken language competency, however, CALL applications must also reproduce the social interaction that lies at the heart of language learning and language use. This study draws on data obtained from the utilisation of CALL in the learning of L2 Chinese to explore whether this medium can be used to extend opportunities for rapport-building in language teaching beyond the face-to-face interaction of the classroom. Rapport's importance lies in its potential to enhance learning, motivate learners, and reduce learner anxiety. To date, CALL's potential in relation to this facet of social interaction remains a neglected area of research. The results of this exploratory study suggest that CALL may help foster learner-teacher rapport and that scaffolding, such as strategically composing rapport-fostering questions in sound-files, is conducive to this outcome. The study provides an instruction model for this application of CALL.