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Understanding the dynamic deformation process of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) during the inclusion of guest molecules is vitally important to further increase their stimulus-response performances. Although some techniques have captured the equilibrium deformation structures of COFs, the methods for directly observing transient intermediate structures are still lacking. Here we report on the dark-field microscopic (DFM) imaging approach to in situ monitor the guest-induced deformation evolution of individual COF-300 crystals in real time. We observe not only transient and nonequilibrium intermediate deformation states but also local surface curvature-driven diverse adsorption behaviors of single COF-300 particles for dichloromethane at a relatively high pressure, undergoing one, two, and multiple expansion-contraction deformations as well as contraction-to-expansion transition. With the ability of DFM to offer spatiotemporally resolved reaction information on single COF-300, the origin of surface curvature dominated deformations of COF-300 is ascribed to the significant differences in the adsorption capacity for dichloromethane at the curved tip and flat side regions. Both operando DFM imaging and theoretical calculation reveal that dichloromethane can be adsorbed preferentially by curved tip regions of COF-300, initiating the surface curvature dominated nonequilibrium deformations.

The object and evidence are two important parts of financial fraud detection (FFD). In traditional FFD tasks, the detected object generally refers to the enterprise involved in typical financial fraud events, and the evidence comes from corporate statements such as auditing report, etc. Thus, previous FFD methods based on financial statements are limited by the scope of detected objects and the availability of evidence. In this study, we design a financial event library to enlarge the detection scope and expand the source of evidence to financial news, and thus financial entities involved in high-risk events are extracted. The financial event library contains common negative events, each of which corresponds to a negative behaviour that may increase financial risk. Moreover, we propose a novel method to convert the event detection task into the Q&A mode task, which also contributes to the enlargement of the original hand-built dataset. Compared with existing methods on the enlargement of financial dataset, our approach does not require additional annotation. We apply our method into Chinese financial news corpus, and achieves good performance in the extraction task.

Either NPR1 or TGA1 serve as master redox-sensitive transcriptional regulators for the transcription of PR genes in plants. The redox modification of the two co-activators involved in BABA-induced priming resistance against Botrytis cinerea in grapes was examined in this study. The results showed that 10 mmol L−1 BABA could effectively trigger a priming defense in grapes as manifested by augmented expression levels of PR genes upon inoculation with B. cinerea. Moreover, transcriptome profiling analysis revealed that all of the sets of key genes in the enzymatic ROS scavenging system, the PPP and AsA-GSH cycle were in harmony and were transcriptionally induced in BABA-primed grapes with pathogenic infection; in addition, this enhanced expression caused the accelerated accumulation of reductive substances, namely, AsA, GSH and NADPH, resulting in reduced intercellular conditions. Under reduced conditions, the interaction of VvTGA1 and VvNPR1 in the Y2H assay implied that VvTGA1 can provide the DNA binding capacity required by VvNPR1 for activation of VvPR genes. Consequently, the transactivation of VvNPR1 by the promoters of VvPR1, VvPR2 and VvPR5 was determined via a DLR assay, and it induced the transcription of the VvPR genes. In parallel, the redox-modified reducing condition achieved with an abundant supply of reductive substances was closely associated with the translocation of NPR1 for interaction with TGA in the nucleus. Thus, the posttranslational modification and subsequent interaction of the two redox-sensitive co-activators of VvNPR1 and VvTGA1 under reduced conditions may be responsible for BABA-induced priming for effective disease resistance in grapes.

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a rare genetic imprinting disorder resulting from the expression loss of genes on the paternally inherited chromosome 15q11-13. Early-onset life-thriving obesity and hyperphagia represent the clinical hallmarks of PWS. The noncoding RNA gene SNORD116 within the minimal PWS genetic lesion plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of the syndrome. Despite advancements in understanding the genetic basis for PWS, the pathophysiology of obesity development in PWS remains largely uncharacterized. Here, we aimed to investigate the signatures of adipose tissue development and expansion pathways and associated adipose biology in PWS children without obesity-onset at an early stage, mainly from the perspective of the adipogenesis process, and further elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms.We collected inguinal (subcutaneous) white adipose tissues (ingWATs) from phase 1 PWS and healthy children with normal weight aged from 6 M to 2 Y. Adipose morphology and histological characteristics were assessed. Primary adipose stromal vascular fractions (SVFs) were isolated, cultured in vitro, and used to determine the capacity and function of white and beige adipogenic differentiation. High-throughput RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) was performed in adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AdMSCs) to analyze transcriptome signatures in PWS subjects. Transient repression of SNORD116 was conducted to evaluate its functional relevance in adipogenesis. The changes in alternative pre-mRNA splicing were investigated in PWS and SNORD116 deficient cells.In phase 1 PWS children, impaired white adipose tissue (WAT) development and unusual fat expansion occurred long before obesity onset, which was characterized by the massive enlargement of adipocytes accompanied by increased apoptosis. White and beige adipogenesis programs were impaired and differentiated adipocyte functions were disturbed in PWS-derived SVFs, despite increased proliferation capacity, which were consistent with the results of RNA-seq analysis of PWS AdMSCs. We also experimentally validated disrupted beige adipogenesis in adipocytes with transient SNORD116 downregulation. The transcript and protein levels of PPARγ, the adipogenesis master regulator, were significantly lower in PWS than in control AdMSCs as well as in SNORD116 deficient AdMSCs/adipocytes than in scramble (Scr) cells, resulting in the inhibited adipogenic program. Additionally, through RNA-seq, we observed aberrant transcriptome-wide alterations in alternative RNA splicing patterns in PWS cells mediated by SNORD116 loss and specifically identified a changed PRDM16 gene splicing profile in vitro.Imbalance in the WAT expansion pathway and developmental disruption are primary defects in PWS displaying aberrant adipocyte hypertrophy and impaired adipogenesis process, in which SNORD116 deficiency plays a part. Our findings suggest that dysregulated adiposity specificity existing at an early phase is a potential pathological mechanism exacerbating hyperphagic obesity onset in PWS. This mechanistic evidence on adipose biology in young PWS patients expands knowledge regarding the pathogenesis of PWS obesity and may aid in developing a new therapeutic strategy targeting disturbed adipogenesis and driving AT plasticity to combat abnormal adiposity and associated metabolic disorders for PWS patients.

BACKGROUND: Ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) is a promising technique for improving the detection of breast cancer. Image quality of USCT has a major impact on the breast cancer diagnosis. OBJECTIVE: This paper investigates the combination of variational mode decomposition (VMD) and coherent factor method for USCT image quality enhancement. METHODS: The signals can be decomposed into multiple intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) sifting through the frequency by VMD method. Refactoring the remaining IMFs, spatio-temporally smoothed coherence factor (STSCF) beamforming method is applied to reconstructed data for USCT. RESULTS: The validation of combination the VMD and STSCF is described through the breast phantom experiment and in vivo experiments. The evaluation indicators such as contrast ratio (CR), contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and signal to noise ratio (SNR) have been better improved in the experimental results. For the breast phantom, the proposed method gives a higher resolution and the better contrast properties for the hyperechoic cyst. The borders of cysts and tumors in the breast phantom can be distinguished clearly. For volunteer breast experiments, artifacts are removed more efficiently while the clutters are suppressed simultaneously. CONCLUSION: The combination of VMD and STSCF can further reduce the noise and suppress the side lobes.

Objectives: This paper aims to explore the factors influencing the spatial cognition of the visually impaired in familiar environments. Background: Massage hospitals are some of the few places that can provide work for the visually impaired in China. Studying the spatial cognition of the visually impaired in a massage hospital could be instructive for the design of working environments for the visually impaired and other workplaces in the future. Methods: First, the subjective spatial cognition of the visually impaired was evaluated by object layout tasks for describing the spatial relationships among object parts. Second, physiological monitoring signal data, including the electrodermal activity, heart rate variability, and electroencephalography, were collected while the visually impaired doctors walked along prescribed routes based on the feature analysis of the physical environment in the hospital, and then their physiological monitoring signal data for each route were compared. The visual factors, physical environmental factors, and human–environment interactive factors that significantly impact the spatial cognition of visually impaired people were discussed. Conclusions: (1) visual acuity affects the spatial cognition of the visually impaired in familiar environments; (2) the spatial cognition of the visually impaired can be promoted by a longer staying time and the more regular sequence of a physical environment; (3) the spatial comfort of the visually impaired can be improved by increasing the amount of greenery; and (4) the visual comfort of the visually impaired can be reduced by rich interior colors and contrasting lattice floor tiles.

Microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) has been existing problems such as poor applicability to real wastewater and lack of cost-effective electrode materials in the practical application of refractory wastewater. A hydrolysis-acidification combined MEC system (HAR-MECs) with four inexpensive stainless-steel and conventional carbon cloth cathodes for the treatment of real textile-dyeing wastewater, which was fully evaluated the technical feasibility in terms of parameter optimization, spectral analysis, succession and cooperative/competition effect of microbial. Results showed that the optimum performance was achieved with a 12 h hydraulic retention time (HRT) and an applied voltage of 0.7 V in the HAR-MEC system with a 100 μm aperture stainless-steel mesh cathode (SSM-100 μm), and the associated optimum BOD

Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives, a popular choice for terrorists, have been used in many violent terrorist attacks all over the world. However, simple, rapid, and on-site detection methods of TATP are still lacking. Herein, we present a visual colorimetric method for on-site and rapid detection of TATP based on a Fe(II)-promoted thermal decomposition process of TATP. We discovered that TATP can be decomposed into H2O2 under heating conditions, and it reacts with Fe2+ to produce hydroxyl radicals (˙OH) and Fe3+via the Fenton reaction. The resulting ˙OH and Fe3+ further oxidize colorless 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) to a yellow oxidized product (oxTMB). These reaction processes remarkably promote the chemical equilibrium shift and decrease the activation energy. Using the TATP-Fe2+-TMB ternary chromogenic system, the present colorimetric assay for TATP shows a dynamic range of 0.5–30 μM with a low detection limit of 0.12 μM. Additionally, common substances (e.g., inorganic salts, small organic substances, and polymers) do not interfere with TATP detection. This assay can be used for analyzing TATP in real water and camouflage samples. Furthermore, a test-paper-based method was also successfully developed for visual, rapid and on-site detection of TATP.

The large-scale application of the bioelectrochemical system (BES) is limited by the cost-effective electrode materials. In this study, five kinds of stainless-steel materials were used as the cathode of the BES coupled with anaerobic digestion (BES-AD) for the treatment of diluted N, N-dimethylacetamide (DMAC) wastewater. Compared with a carbon-cloth cathode, BES-AD with a stainless-steel cathode had more engineering due to its low cost, although the operating efficiencies were slightly inferior. Stainless-steel mesh with a 100 µm aperture (SSM-100 μm) was the most cost-effective electrode and the implanted BES exhibited better COD removal efficiency, electrochemical performance and biodegradability. Analysis of microbial community revealed the synergetic effect between exoelectrogen and fermentative bacteria had been strengthened in the SSM-100 μm cathode biofilm. Function analysis of the microbial community based on PICRUSt predicted metagenomes revealed that the metabolic pathways of xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism in the SSM-100 μm cathode were stimulated.

Treatment of nitrate-rich wastewater is important but challenging for the conventional biological denitrification process. Here, we propose combining the electrochemical reduction and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) processes together for treatment of nitrate-rich wastewater. This article reviews the mechanism and current research status of electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonium as well as the mechanism and applicability of the anammox process. This article discusses the principles, superiorities and challenges of this combined process. The feasibility of the combined process depends on the efficiency of electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonium and the conditions in the anammox process to use the reduced ammonium as the substrate to achieve deep nitrogen removal. The article provides a feasible strategy for using the electrochemical reduction and anammox combined process to treat nitrate-rich wastewater.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the correlation of phosphorylated ribosomal S6 protein (P-S6) content in blood and brain tissue in mice and rats with seizure. METHODS: Seizure models were induced by intraperitoric injection of kainic acid (KA) in C57BL/mice and SD rats. Flow cytometry was used to detect the content of P-S6 in blood; Western blot was used to detect the expression of P-S6 in brain tissues. The correlation between P-S6 expression in blood and in brain tissue was examine by Pearson analysis, and the correlation between P-S6 expression in blood and the severity of seizure was also observed. RESULTS: Western blotting analysis showed that the expression of P-S6 was significantly increased in peripheral blood and brain tissue in mice 1 h after KA-induced seizure, and the expression levels increased to (1.49±0.45) times ( P < 0.05) and (2.55±0.66) times ( P < 0.01) of the control group, respectively. Flow cytometry showed that the positive percentage and average fluorescence intensity of P-S6 in the blood of mice increased significantly 1 h after KA-induced seizures ( P < 0.01), which was consistent with the expression of P-S6 in brain tissue ( r=0.8474, P < 0.01). Flow cytometry showed that the average fluorescence intensity of P-S6 in blood increased from 14.89±9.75 to 52.35±21.72 ( P < 0.01) in rats with seizure, which was consistent with the change of P-S6 in brain tissue ( r=0.9385, P < 0.01). Rats with higher levels of seizure were of higher levels of P-S6 in peripheral blood. CONCLUSION: Consistent correlation of P-S6 expression is demonstrated in peripheral blood and in brain tissue after KA-induced seizure, suggesting that the expression of P-S6 in blood can accurately reflect the changes of mTOR signaling pathway in brain tissue.

In this work, a 6-pass hot-rolling process followed by air cooling is studied by means of a coupled multi-scale simulation approach. The finite element method (FEM) is utilized to obtain macroscale thermomechanical parameters including temperature and strain rate. The microstructure evolution during the recrystallization and austenite (γ) to ferrite (α) transformation is simulated by a mesoscale cellular automaton (CA) model. The solute drag effect is included in the CA model to take into account the influence of manganese on the γ/α interface migration. The driving force for α-phase nucleation and growth also involves the contribution of the deformation stored energy inherited from hot-rolling. The simulation renders a clear visualization of the evolving grain structure during a multi-pass hot-rolling process. The variations of the nonuniform, deformation-stored energy field and carbon concentration field are also reproduced. A detailed analysis demonstrates how the parameters, including strain rate, grain size, temperature, and inter-pass time, influence the different mechanisms of recrystallization. Grain refinement induced by recrystallization and the γ→α phase transformation is also quantified. The simulated final α-fraction and the average α-grain size agree reasonably well with the experimental microstructure.

Currently, little information is available on how the particle size would influence the physicochemical characteristics, nitrogen conversion activity and microbial community in the anammox sludge granules. This study was targeting to answer the question by studying anammox granular sludge with average particle sizes ranging from 0.5 − 1.0, 1.0 − 1.5, 1.5 − 2.0 and > 2.0 mm. Results indicated that the wet density and settling velocity were positively correlated with particle size. However, the volatile suspended sludge/suspended sludge (VSS/SS) ratio and particle integrity coefficient (IC) decreased with an increase in particle size. The granular sludge with a particle size of 1.0 − 1.5 mm had the largest extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) content and protein/polysaccharide (PN/PS) ratio. The removal efficiency of ammonium and nitrite as well as the specific anammox activity (SAA) increased with an increase in particle size. High-throughput sequencing showed that the richness and diversity of the microbial community decreased firstly and then increased with an increase in particle size. The granular sludge with a particle size of 1.0 − 1.5 mm had the lowest diversity, but that of 0.5 − 1.0 mm had the largest biomass and relative abundance values of anammox bacteria. The granular sludge size should be controlled below 1.5 mm to maintain the predominant microorganisms of anammox bacteria, while particle sizes of 1.5 − 2.0 mm should be selected to maintain high nitrogen removal performance.

The water quality prediction performance of machine learning models may be not only dependent on the models, but also dependent on the parameters in data set chosen for training the learning models. Moreover, the key water parameters should also be identified by the learning models, in order to further reduce prediction costs and improve prediction efficiency. Here we endeavored for the first time to compare the water quality prediction performance of 10 learning models (7 traditional and 3 ensemble models) using big data (33,612 observations) from the major rivers and lakes in China from 2012 to 2018, based on the precision, recall, F1-score, weighted F1-score, and explore the potential key water parameters for future model prediction. Our results showed that the bigger data could improve the performance of learning models in prediction of water quality. Compared to other 7 models, decision tree (DT), random forest (RF) and deep cascade forest (DCF) trained by data sets of pH, DO, CODMn, and NH3-N had significantly better performance in prediction of all 6 Levels of water quality recommended by Chinese government. Moreover, two key water parameter sets (DO, CODMn, and NH3-N; CODMn, and NH3-N) were identified and validated by DT, RF and DCF to be high specificities for perdition water quality. Therefore, DT, RF and DCF with selected key water parameters could be prioritized for future water quality monitoring and providing timely water quality warning.

Sequence labeling is the basis for many tasks in natural language processing (NLP). It plays an important role in tasks such as word segmentation, named entity recognition (NER), and part-of-speech (POS)tagging. The current mainstream method for sequence labeling is to combine neural network with conditional random field (CRF). The common model is usually a bidirectional RNN-CRF model, which can solve the problem that the labeling task with traditional method cannot be combined well with the context. This paper proposes a Chinese sequence labeling model based on bidirectional GRU-CNN-CRF, which can pay more attention to local features and context relationships, and has better performance in word segmentation and NER. This paper takes the corpus provided by Chinese Wikipedia as the training data set and preprocesses the text by word embedding. The data are then processed through a three-tier architecture of bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), Convolution Neural Network (CNN)and CRF, and finally complete the task of sequence annotation. Compared with the traditional Chinese word segmentation system, this method is more accurate. And it performs better than bidirectional GRU-CRF model on NER issues.

Quick Response Code, abbreviated as QR code, is a two dimensional matrix which is extensively used both in the automotive industry and the general commercial applications currently. Compared with traditional barcodes, QR code is prevalent for its enormous information capacity and efficient error correction mechanism. Moreover, the standard QR codes possess a high decode rate at the expense of the aesthetic appearance. With an intension to resolve the contradiction, we propose a novel aesthetic QR code generation method. Differing from previous works, which mainly rely on the error correction mechanism, we first enhance the contrast of the background image so that more modules can be eliminated after initial threshold based module elimination, while maintaining the readability and demonstrate visual information to customers simultaneously. User interaction can be further adopted to delete modules as customer required using error correction mechanism.

The authors combine feature-based kernel with extension path graph kernel into a multiple kernels learning method. Feature-based kernel method, extension path graph kernel method and multiple kernels learning method are conducted on experiment on the most authoritative five evaluation corpuses. Experimental results indicate that the performance of the fused kernel method in five corpus sets is superior to that of the two separate single-kernel method.

Xi'an Qujiang New District is a new district with cultural and tourism industries as its main developing engines. In recent years, the district has grown into one of the major landmark regions of western China based on its considerable advantage in cultural relics, culture and tourism. In order to discuss the develop mode of Qujiang New District and serve China's urban development, this research focusing on Qujiang New District landscape ecology and using the established landscape hierarchical evaluation index system, conducted a survey on people's satisfaction and suggestions to Qujiang environment. The result shows that people are satisfied with the overall planning, overall regional eco-environment, and completeness of life and service facilities. However, people are less satisfied with organizational management, water quality environment, and food culture diversity. It is suggested that construction of the Qujiang New District should be carried out more comprehensively in theme. More green energy should be used; quality and appearance of construction should be improved. Harmonize residential environment with the colors, architecture type and environment landscape of surrounding historical buildings. Increase investment in public resource, make the management more people-oriented and improve management efficiency. This survey provides evaluation index and scientific basis to improve human-environment relation in cities.

As urban construction development, urban landscape ecological environment is drawing wide attention. Therefore, it is important to build urban landscape ecological evaluation system adapt to city development. This paper comprehensively studied major problems in urban landscape construction. By giving overall consideration to regional ecological environment, social cultural and residential environment, man-made physical environment, eco-civilization construction as well as organizational management, a landscape hierarchical evaluation index system composed of one target level, four standard levels and 27 indexes is built. Based on this index system and through comprehensive evaluation, we can provide basic statistics for landscape ecological planning in city planning and construction as well as evaluation index and scientific basis in order to improve human-environment relation in cities.