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For Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe nanocomposite magnets, which exhibit great superiority in theoretical energy products, it is a great challenge to obtain controlled nano-scale microstructural features while eliminating the harmful metastable phases due to the general metastable fabrication methods. Here, we report a strategy to control the nano-scale features and simultaneously eliminate metastable phases for Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe nanocomposites through low-temperature pre-deformation of amorphous alloys combined with subsequent thermal annealing. The resultant bulk Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe nanostructure exhibits desired ultrafine grain sizes, ∼20 nm for soft-magnetic α-Fe phase with a high fraction of Vα-Fe ≈ 30 wt% and ∼33 nm for hard-magnetic Nd2Fe14B phase. The desired microstructure results in a larger coercivity (Hci = 4.1 kOe) and higher saturation magnetization (Ms = 1.51 T) compared to those (Hci = 3.3 kOe and Ms = 1.35 T) of the counterpart without pre-deformation, contributing to a high energy density of 26.3 MGOe. This energy density is 200% larger than that of the counterpart without pre-deformation and far beyond that (around 20 MGOe) of previously reported bulk Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe nanocomposites with Vα-Fe ≥ 20 wt%. The superior property stems from the purposely introduced low-temperature pre-deformation that changed the structure and local chemistry of the amorphous alloy, facilitating the decomposition of harmful metastable phases and the formation of Nd2Fe14B phase during annealing processes, which lowers the temperature, from 750 to 700 °C for producing the Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe nanostructure and thus yields ultrafine nanograins. These results demonstrate an effective means to prepare high-performance bulk Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe nanocomposite magnets.

To study the interaction mechanism of shaking table-test structure in shaking table test, an analytical model of shaking table array-test structure was established. Based on the analytical model, the influence of structure damping, frequency, and shaking table output on the accuracy of shaking table test was analysed. The analysis showed that compared with the actual frequency and theoretical response of the test structure, the measured structure frequency is decreased by 6.3%, and the peak value of seismic response of test structure is amplified 1.96 times. The interaction leads to 32% reduction of the waveform reproduction performance of shaking table. At the structure frequency and its surrounding frequency bands, the amplitude–frequency characteristic of shaking table is amplified 5.26 times, and the phase lag is 122.38° in the phase–frequency characteristic of shaking table. Based on the above results, it was indicated that the method that taking the output of shaking table as the input of structure will cause significant accuracy reduction when the interaction cannot be ignored. Finally, suggestions were given to improve the accuracy of shaking table test.

In order to process and utilize the astrakanite resources comprehensively, the technology of (NH4)2SO4 salting-out method was proposed. On the base of the salt-water system phase equilibrium theory, The phase equilibrium solubilities of the quaternary system Na+, Mg2+, NH4+//SO42−-H2O and its subsystems at 288.15K were determined by isothermal method, and the phase diagrams were drawn. The results showed that the phase diagram of Na+, Mg2+, NH4+//SO42−-H2O system at 288.15K exists three co-saturation points and five crystallization fields, which the largest crystallization field is MgSO4·(NH4)2SO4·6H2O. The technique of processing astrakanite was proposed. The Mg–N compound fertilizer can be yielded with astrakanite and (NH4)2SO4 as the raw materials at 288.15K, and then Na2SO4·10H2O would be obtained when the remaining mother liquor was cooled to 273.15K. The method can separate and process astrakanite effectively with the advantages of simple operation, energy saving, environmental protection and so on, and can realize recycling production.

The analysis and communication of underwater images are often impeded by various elements such as blur, color cast, and noise. Existing restoration methods only address specific degradation factors and struggle with complex degraded images. Furthermore, traditional convolutional neural network (CNN) based approaches may only restore local color while ignoring global features. The proposed hybrid attention network combining CNN and Transformer focuses on addressing these issues. CNN captures local features and the Transformer uses multi-head self-attention to model global relationships. The network also incorporates degraded channel attention and supervised attention mechanisms to refine relevant features and correlations. The proposed method fared better than existing methods in a variety of qualitative criteria when evaluated against the public EUVP dataset of underwater images.

Abstract Many functional materials are approaching their performance limits due to inherent trade‐offs between essential physical properties. Such trade‐offs can be overcome by engineering a material that has an ordered arrangement of structural units, including constituent components/phases, grains, and domains. By rationally manipulating the ordering with abundant structural units at multiple length scales, the structural ordering opens up unprecedented opportunities to create transformative functional materials, as amplified properties or disruptive functionalities can be realized. In this perspective article, a brief overview of recent advances in the emerging ordered functional materials across catalytic, thermoelectric, and magnetic materials regarding the fabrication, structure, and property is presented. Then the possibility of applying this structural ordering strategy to highly efficient neuromorphic computing devices and durable battery materials is discussed. Finally, remaining scientific challenges are highlighted, and the prospects for ordered functional materials are made. This perspective aims to draw the attention of the scientific community to the emerging ordered functional materials and trigger intense studies on this topic.

Permanent-magnet materials are critical components for green energy technologies, but the intrinsic trade-off between saturation magnetization and coercivity limits their achievable energy density. Here, a new concept of ordered structures is proposed to develop high-performance permanent magnets. This strategy enables a rare combination of high magnetization and high coercivity by introducing new magnetization reversal mechanisms associated with ordered structures. Implications and challenges of building ordered structures for strong magnets are discussed. This Perspective aims to draw the attention of materials research community to the emerging ordered magnets and to motivate active investigations on this topic for creating transformative magnets.

Ferredoxin 1 (FDX1), an iron-sulphur protein, is responsible for electron transfer in a range of metabolic redox reactions. Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is an aggressive cancer characterised by metabolic reprogramming, and FDX1 is a critical regulator of cuproptosis. However, the expression profile and prognostic value of FDX1 associated with clinicopathological features in ccRCC remain largely unelucidated. In this study, we integrated a series of public bioinformatic analysis to explore the mRNA and protein profiles of FDX1 across human cancers and cell lines and validated its expression and prognostic value, especially in ccRCC. In this study, FDX1 mRNA and protein expression were aberrantly downregulated and associated with ccRCC grade, stage, and nodal metastasis, whereas in adjacent non-tumour kidney tissue, it was abundantly expressed and cytoplasmically localised in renal tubular epithelial cells. Multivariate analysis indicated that low FDX1 expression contributed to unfavourable overall and disease-free survival. The functional enrichment of FDX1 co-expressed genes in ccRCC involved mainly mitochondrial dysfunction in various metabolic processes and biological oxidation, besides iron-sulphur cluster biogenesis. Furthermore, FDX1 modulates immunological infiltration to affect prognosis. Thus, FDX1 downregulation is mechanistically because of ccRCC tumourigenesis and is a promising prognostic biomarker to stratify patients with ccRCC.

PurposeTo evaluate the impact of histological subtype on the survival of patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and tumor thrombus (TT).Patients and methodsWe retrospectively analyzed 350 patients with RCC and TT admitted to Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital between January 2006 and June 2021. The patients underwent radical nephrectomy and thrombectomy using robot-assisted laparoscopic, laparoscopic, or open surgery. The clinical and pathological parameters of the patients were taken from their medical records. Survival was calculated with the Kaplan–Meier method. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to evaluate the prognostic significance of variables on overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS).ResultsTT levels 0–IV were observed in 132 (37.71%), 43 (12.29%), 134 (38.29%), 20 (5.71) and 21 (6.00%) patients, respectively. Papillary (pRCC), clear cell, and other histological subtypes of RCC were detected in 28 (8.00%), 286 (81.71%), and 36 (10.29%) patients, respectively. Compared to the clear cell cohort, collecting systemic invasion (46.43 vs. 25.17%; p = 0.030) and lymph node metastasis (39.29 vs. 11.54%; p < 0.01) were more common in the pRCC cohort. Kaplan–Meier analyses showed that patients with pRCC and other subtypes had significantly worse OS and PFS compared to patients with the clear cell subtype (p < 0.05). Multivariate analyses revealed that histology was independently associated with reduced OS and PFS, including among patients without lymph node and distant metastasis (N0M0).ConclusionPapillary or other subtypes have a considerably shorter OS and PFS compared to clear cell subtype in RCC patients with TT. Strict follow-up and surveillance should be performed for papillary or other subtypes RCC with TT.

Heterostructured materials are an emerging class of materials with superior performances that are unattainable by their conventional homogeneous counterparts. They consist of heterogeneous zones with dramatic (>100%) variations in mechanical and/or physical properties. The interaction in these hetero-zones produces a synergistic effect where the integrated property exceeds the prediction by the rule-of-mixtures. The heterostructured materials field explores heterostructures to control defect distributions, long-range internal stresses, and nonlinear inter-zone interactions for unprecedented performances. This paper is aimed to provide perspectives on this novel field, describe the state-of-the-art of heterostructured materials, and identify and discuss key issues that deserve additional studies. IMPACT STATEMENT This paper delineates heterostructured materials, which are emerging as a new class of materials with unprecedented properties, new materials science and economic industrial production.

PurposeTo investigate the significance of demographic and pathological characteristics on the survival outcomes of urachal adenocarcinoma (UrAC), primary bladder adenocarcinoma (BAC) and urothelial carcinoma with glandular differentiation (UCGD) in China.Materials and MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed cases with non-distant metastases (≤ T4M0). Of 106 patients, 30 (28.3%), 40 (37.7%), and 36 (34.0%) met the criteria for UrAC, primary BAC, and UCGD, respectively. Data on patient demographics, tumor pathology, and survival outcomes were collected. The median follow-up was 36 months. Survival was analyzed using multivariate Cox regression.ResultsPatients with UrAC were younger (51.87 ± 15.25 years) than those with primary BAC (60.50 ± 12.56 years) and UCGD (63.83 ± 11.60 years) (P

Birt–Hogg–Dube syndrome is an autosomal dominant condition that arises from germline folliculin (FLCN) mutations. It is characterized by skin fibrofolliculomas, lung cysts, pneumothorax, and renal cancer. Here, we present the case of a 36-year-old woman with asymptomatic, multiple renal tumors and a history of spontaneous pneumothorax. Genetic analysis revealed a hotspot FLCN germline mutation, c.1285dupC (p.H429fs), and a novel somatic mutation, c.470delT (p.F157fs). This information and the results of immunohistochemical analysis of the renal tumors indicated features compatible with a tumor suppressor role of FLCN. Two transcription factors, oncogenic TFEB and TFE3, were shown to be regulated by FLCN inactivation, which results in their nuclear localization. We showed that a deficiency in the tumor suppressor FLCN leads to deregulation of the mammalian target of rapamycin signaling (mTOR) pathway. A potential link between FLCN mutation and ciliary length was also examined. Thus, the mutation identified in our patient provides novel insights into the relationship among FLCN mutations, TFEB/TFE3, mTOR, and cilia. However, an in-depth understanding of the role of folliculin in the molecular pathogenesis of renal cancer requires further study.

Heterostructures with large microstructural heterogeneities have been introduced in structural materials for superior strength-ductility combinations, but their effects on functional properties remain little explored. Here I highlight the enormous potential of heterostructures to resolve conflicting properties in functional materials. The challenges, strategies and prospects of heterostructured functional materials are discussed. Rational design of heterostructures will open up new opportunities for creating functional materials with unprecedented performance or new functionalities. This Perspective aims to draw the attention of scientific community to the emerging heterostructured functional materials and to trigger intense fundamental and applied researches on this topic.

The mesoscale description of the subcellular organization informs about cellular mechanisms in disease state. However, applications of soft X-ray tomography (SXT), an important approach for characterizing organelle organization, are limited by labor-intensive manual segmentation. Here we report a pipeline for automated segmentation and systematic analysis of SXT tomograms. Our approach combines semantic and first-applied instance segmentation to produce separate organelle masks with high Dice and Recall indexes, followed by analysis of organelle localization based on the radial distribution function. We demonstrated this technique by investigating the organization of INS-1E pancreatic β-cell organization under different treatments at multiple time points. Consistent with a previous analysis of a similar dataset, our results revealed the impact of glucose stimulation on the localization and molecular density of insulin vesicles and mitochondria. This pipeline can be extended to SXT tomograms of any cell type to shed light on the subcellular rearrangements under different drug treatments.

Scarcity goods have generally been perceived as high in value in real-world and empirical studies. However, few studies have investigated this value over time, such as performance in intertemporal decision making. This study’s chief objective was to determine how scarcity evaluation changes temporally. We used the electroencephalogram technique and an outcome evaluation task with the valuation of scarcity and ordinary rewards delivered at different times to explore the effect of scarcity on delay discounting. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) results show that ordinary goods were associated with a more negative amplitude than scarcity goods, and that rewards delivered in the future evoked more negative deflection compared to those delivered immediately. The prominent FRN effect was derived mainly from ordinary trials rather than scarcity trials in the immediate condition and in the future rather than only in the immediate condition. The Frontal Asymmetry Index (FAI) results show that the scarcity condition was associated with greater relative left frontal cortical activity than the ordinary condition when delivered immediately. The frontal asymmetry indicated greater approach motivation. Our electrophysiology data indicate that scarcity goods have a perceived high value, particularly when delivered immediately.

BackgroundBrucellosis is a critical zoonotic disease in the world, it is the non-specific arthralgia that make brucellosis patients easily misdiagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in endemic regions. Elevated rheumatoid factor (RF) is an essential indicator of RA, and the RF in brucellosis patients is significantly higher than healthy people. Therefore, this study further explored the distribution of RF and the relevant factors of the RF positivity in brucellosis patients with arthralgia, in order to strengthen the recognition of physicians for brucellosis patients with RF positivity, especially in brucellosis-endemic areas, so as to avoid misdiagnosis and untimely treatment that may lead to malignant outcomes.Methodology and principal findingsThe medical records of all 572 brucellosis inpatients were collected in the Sixth People's Hospital of Shenyang, China from 2015 to 2016. After excluding 106 patients without arthralgia, 5 patients who unwilling to perform RF testing and 16 patients with diseases that may affect RF, 445 brucellosis inpatients with arthralgia were involved in this retrospective cross-sectional study. 143 (32.1%) patients with RF >10 IU/ml were classified into the RF positive group, with an average level of 16.5[12.2, 34.7] IU/ml, of which 45 (10.1%) patients were high-positive with RF >30 IU/ml. Multivariate logistic regression model was used to further analyze the relevant factors of the RF positivity and found that age, wrist joint pain and elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) were positively associated with RF positivity, with OR of 1.02 (P = 0.024), 8.94 (P = 0.008) and 1.79 (P = 0.019), respectively.ConclusionThe prevalence of positive RF in brucellosis patients with arthralgia was critical, nearly one-third of patients had RF positive. Elderly men brucellosis patients with arthralgia, wrist joint pain and elevated CRP were at high risk of positive RF. It is reminded that physicians should focus on differential diagnosis during clinical diagnosis and treatment, especially in brucellosis-endemic regions.

The rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology has brought extensive IoT services to entities. However, most IoT services carry the risk of leaking privacy. Privacy-preserving set intersection in IoT is used for a wide range of basic services, and its privacy protection issues have received widespread attention. The traditional candidate protocols to solve the privacy-preserving set intersection are classical encryption protocols based on computational difficulty. With the emergence of quantum computing, some advanced quantum algorithms may undermine the security and reliability of traditional protocols. Therefore, it is important to design more secure privacy-preserving set intersection protocols. In addition, identity information is also very important compared to data security. To this end, we propose a quantum privacy-preserving set intersection protocol for IoT scenarios, which has higher security and linear communication efficiency. This protocol can protect identity anonymity while protecting private data.

Belief bias is the tendency in syllogistic reasoning to rely on prior beliefs rather than to fully obey logical principles. Few studies have investigated the age effect on belief bias. Although several studies have recently begun to explore this topic, little is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying such an effect. Accordingly, we investigated belief bias in older and young adults and explored the roles of working memory (WM) and need for cognition (NFC) in the relationship between age and reasoning performance. We found that older adults showed a lower accuracy rate compared with young adults when conclusion believability and logical validity were incongruent. However, older adults showed a higher accuracy rate compared with young adults when conclusion believability and logical validity were congruent. The results indicated that in comparison with young adults, prior beliefs hampered logical reasoning more significantly in older adults under incongruent conditions and boosted logical reasoning more significantly under congruent conditions. Moreover, the logic index in older adults was significantly lower than in young adults, and the interaction index of believability and validity in older adults was significantly below zero. Furthermore, NFC mediated the age effect on reasoning performance under the two conditions. By contrast, WM mediated the age effect on reasoning performance only under incongruent conditions and did not act as a mediator under congruent conditions.

To solve the problem of cold protection for marine equipment against cold caused by the harsh polar environment, electrical tracing is commonly used in engineering. In this paper, numerical simulation and experimental methods are used to analyze the influencing factors of thermal balance of electric heat tracing tread plate components in typical polar environment with wind speed ranging from 0 to 40 m/s and temperature ranging from -40 ℃ to 0 ℃. Based on numerical simulation and experimental test, the convective heat transfer coefficient of electric heating tread plate components at different wind speeds and temperatures is obtained. The results show that increasing wind speed and decreasing temperature will increase the convective heat transfer coefficient of the tread plate. Wind speed is the main factor affecting the heat transfer of the tread plate, while temperature has little effect. Finally, based on the experimental data and the classical theory of convective heat transfer of plate components, a prediction model of convective heat transfer coefficient of electric heating tread plate components is established, and the correctness of the model is verified by numerical simulation.

Prion disease is a group of transmissible neurodegenerative disorders affecting humans and animals. The prion hypothesis postulates that PrPSc, the pathogenic conformer of host-encoded prion protein (PrP), is the unconventional proteinaceous infectious agent called prion. Supporting this hypothesis, highly infectious prion has been generated in vitro with recombinant PrP plus defined non-protein cofactors and the synthetically generated prion (recPrPSc) is capable of causing prion disease in wild-type mice through intracerebral (i.c.) or intraperitoneal (i.p.) inoculation. Given that many of the naturally occurring prion diseases are acquired through oral route, demonstrating the capability of recPrPSc to cause prion disease via oral transmission is important, but has never been proven. Here we showed for the first time that oral ingestion of recPrPSc is sufficient to cause prion disease in wild-type mice, which was supported by the development of fatal neurodegeneration in exposed mice, biochemical and histopathological analyses of diseased brains, and second round transmission. Our results demonstrate the oral transmissibility of recPrPSc and provide the missing evidence to support that the in vitro generated recPrPSc recapitulates all the important properties of naturally occurring prions.

Realizing grain alignment along easy magnetization axis in bulk SmCo7 nanocrystalline materials is crucial for their development as high-performance high-temperature magnets, yet it remains challenging. Here, we report the fabrication of anisotropic bulk SmCo7 nanocrystalline magnets with a small grain size of ∼20 nm and a (00l) texture using high-pressure thermal compression starting from partially amorphous precursors. The synthesized magnet exhibits a high energy product of 18.4 MGOe, 40% larger than the reported highest value (13 MGOe) for bulk nanostructured SmCo7 magnets, and outperforms its anisotropic coarse-grained counterpart. Moreover, our magnet shows a low coercivity temperature coefficient of β = −0.19%/°C. These findings make an important step toward the fabrication of oriented bulk nanostructures for practical applications.

Despite the fact that people make decisions for others as often as they make decisions for themselves, little is known about how decisions for others are different from those made for the self. In two experiments, we investigated the effect of social distance (i.e., making decisions for oneself, a friend, or a stranger) on risk preferences in both gain and loss situations. We found that people were more risk averse in gain situations when they made decisions for themselves than for a stranger (Studies 1 and 2), but were equally risk averse for themselves and their friends (Study 2). However, people were more risk seeking in loss situations when they made decisions for themselves than for their friends as well as for a stranger, and were more risk seeking for their friends than for a stranger (Study 2). Furthermore, the effect of social distance on risk preferences was stronger in loss than in gain situations. Mediation analysis indicated that outcome-induced loss aversion was responsible for effects of social distance on risk preferences. These findings demonstrate that social distance influences risk preferences via perceived loss aversion, which sheds new light on self-other differences in decision making.

Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of biological pathogens and sociomoral violations. Homogeneity of its two types, namely, core and moral disgust has been under intensive debate. To examine the dynamic relationship between them, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures while participants performed a modified oddball task. ERP analysis revealed that N1 and P2 amplitudes were largest for the core disgust pictures, indicating automatic processing of the core disgust-evoking pictures. N2 amplitudes were higher for pictures evoking moral disgust relative to core disgust and neutral pictures, reflecting a violation of social norms. The core disgust pictures elicited larger P3 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in comparison with the moral disgust pictures which, in turn, elicited larger P3 and LPP amplitudes when compared to the neutral pictures. Taken together, these findings indicated that core and moral disgust pictures elicited different neural activities at various stages of information processing, which provided supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.

The automatic collection of power grid situation information, along with real-time multimedia interaction between the front and back ends during the accident handling process, has generated a massive amount of power grid data. While wireless communication offers a convenient channel for grid terminal access and data transmission, it is important to note that the bandwidth of wireless communication is limited. Additionally, the broadcast nature of wireless transmission raises concerns about the potential for unauthorized eavesdropping during data transmission. To address these challenges and achieve reliable, secure, and real-time transmission of power grid data, an intelligent security transmission strategy with sensor-transmission-computing linkage is proposed in this paper. The primary objective of this strategy is to maximize the confidentiality capacity of the system. To tackle this, an optimization problem is formulated, taking into consideration interruption probability and interception probability as constraints. To efficiently solve this optimization problem, a low-complexity algorithm rooted in deep reinforcement learning is designed, which aims to derive a suboptimal solution for the problem at hand. Ultimately, through simulation results, the validity of the proposed strategy in guaranteed communication security, stability, and timeliness is substantiated. The results confirm that the proposed intelligent security transmission strategy significantly contributes to the safeguarding of communication integrity, system stability, and timely data delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis and communication of underwater images are often impeded by various elements such as blur, color cast, and noise. Existing restoration methods only address specific degradation factors and struggle with complex degraded images. Furthermore, traditional convolutional neural network (CNN) based approaches may only restore local color while ignoring global features. The proposed hybrid attention network combining CNN and Transformer focuses on addressing these issues. CNN captures local features and the Transformer uses multi-head self-attention to model global relationships. The network also incorporates degraded channel attention and supervised attention mechanisms to refine relevant features and correlations. The proposed method fared better than existing methods in a variety of qualitative criteria when evaluated against the public EUVP dataset of underwater images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]