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Abstract Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the main cause of disability, mental health disorder, and even death, with its incidence and social costs rising steadily. Although different treatment strategies have been developed and tested to mitigate neurological decline, a definitive cure for these conditions remains elusive. Studies have revealed that various neurotrophins represented by the brain‐derived neurotrophic factor are the key regulators of neuroinflammation, apoptosis, blood–brain barrier permeability, neurite regeneration, and memory function. These factors are instrumental in alleviating neuroinflammation and promoting neuroregeneration. In addition, neural stem cells (NSC) contribute to nerve repair through inherent neuroprotective and immunomodulatory properties, the release of neurotrophins, the activation of endogenous NSCs, and intercellular signaling. Notably, innovative research proposals are emerging to combine BDNF and NSCs, enabling them to synergistically complement and promote each other in facilitating injury repair and improving neuron differentiation after TBI. In this review, we summarize the mechanism of neurotrophins in promoting neurogenesis and restoring neural function after TBI, comprehensively explore the potential therapeutic effects of various neurotrophins in basic research on TBI, and investigate their interaction with NSCs. This endeavor aims to provide a valuable insight into the clinical treatment and transformation of neurotrophins in TBI, thereby promoting the progress of TBI therapeutics.

Gallbladder cancer is a highly aggressive malignancy with poor sensitivity to postoperative radiotherapy or chemotherapy; therefore, the development of individualized treatment strategies is paramount to improve patient outcomes. Both patient-derived tumor xenograft (PDX) and patient-derived tumor organoid (PDO) models derived from surgical specimens can better preserve the biological characteristics and heterogeneity of individual original tumors, display a unique advantage for individualized therapy and predicting clinical outcomes. In this study, PDX and PDO models of advanced gallbladder cancer were established, and the consistency of biological characteristics between them and primary patient samples was confirmed using pathological analysis and RNA-sequencing. Additionally, we tested the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs, targeted drugs, and immune checkpoint inhibitors using these two models. The results demonstrated that gemcitabine combined with cisplatin induced significant therapeutic effects. Furthermore, treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors elicited promising responses in both the humanized mice and PDO immune models. Based on these results, gemcitabine combined with cisplatin was used for basic treatment, and immune checkpoint inhibitors were applied as a complementary intervention for gallbladder cancer. The patient responded well to treatment and exhibited a clearance of tumor foci. Our findings indicate that the combined use of PDO and PDX models can guide the clinical treatment course for gallbladder cancer patients to achieve individualized and effective treatment.

Improper handling of sick and dead pigs may seriously affect public health, socio-economic conditions, and eventually cause environmental pollution. However, effective promotion of sick and dead pig (SDP) waste recycling has become the prime focus of current rural governance. Therefore, the study explores the impact of commitment, rewards, and punishments to capture the recycling behavior of farmers’ sick and dead pig waste management. The study employs factor analysis, the probit model, and the moderating effect model to craft the findings. The study’s empirical setup comprises the survey data collected from the Hebei, Shandong, and Henan provinces, representing the major pig-producing provinces in China. The study found that the commitment, reward, and punishment mechanisms are essential factors affecting the farmers’ decision-making on recycling sick and dead pig waste. The marginal effect analysis found that the reward and punishment mechanism is more effective than the farmers’ commitment. The study confirmed that in the recycling treatment of sick and dead pig waste, the farmers’ commitment and the government’s reward and punishment policy are the main factors that influence farmers to manage sick and dead pig waste properly. Therefore, the government should highlight the importance of effective waste management, and training facilities should also be extended firmly. The government should impose strict rules and regulations to restrict the irresponsible dumping of farm waste. Monitoring mechanisms should be put in place promptly.

We propose an optical-acoustic means to excite broadband terahertz antiferromagnetic (AFM) spin wave in a metal/insulator/antiferromagnet heterostructure. The AFM spin wave is excited by an ultrafast strain wave triggered by a femtosecond pulsed laser based on photoacoustic conversion. This spin wave comprises an AFM exchange spin wave and a magnetoelastic spin wave. Their dispersion curves are overlapped in a wide frequency range by manipulating the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, which is accompanied by lifting the degeneration of the spin-wave modes with opposite chirality. This optical-acoustic excitation of spin waves exploits the laser-induced ultrafast strain waves and avoids the thermal effect from the laser. It paves a way to develop novel AFM devices that can apply for ultrafast information processing and communication.

Currently, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, which leads to major changes in land use and land surface temperature (LST). The associated urban heat island (UHI) effects have multiple impacts on energy consumption and human health. A better understanding of how different land covers affect LST is necessary for mitigating adverse impacts, and supporting urban planning and public health management. This study explores a distance-based, a grid-based and a point-based analysis to investigate the influence of impervious surfaces, green area and waterbodies on LST, from large (distance and grid based analysis with 400 m grids) to smaller (point based analysis with 30 m grids) scale in the two mid-latitude cities of Paris and Geneva. The results at large scale confirm that the highest LST was observed in the city centers. A significantly positive correlation was observed between LST and impervious surface density. An anticorrelation between LST and green area density was observed in Paris. The spatial lag model was used to explore the spatial correlation among LST, NDBI, NDVI and MNDWI on a smaller scale. Inverse correlations between LST and NDVI and MNDWI, respectively, were observed. We conclude that waterbodies display the greatest mitigation on LST and UHI effects both on the large and smaller scale. Green areas play an important role in cooling effects on the smaller scale. An increase of evenly distributed green area and waterbodies in urban areas is suggested to lower LST and mitigate UHI effects.

Co-seismic changes of Wenchuan Ms8.0 earthquake and six strong aftershocks were recorded by 4 digital deformation instruments at Xuzhou seismostation at an epicentral distance of 1392 km. The result shows that the strain-step changes and wave motions are caused by the arrival of the corresponding surface waves. The shape and size of the step changes and the response time were different for different instruments, even they were located in the same rock body only 7.65 m to 10.57 m apart. This difference is probably a reflection of different instrument properties, such as sensitivity and frequency response. The earthquake-caused stress changes, which were mainly compression in Xuzhou, had an important triggering effect on far-field strain changes.

To study the gas potential of coalbed methane (CBM) in the Fukang area, southern Junggar Basin (SJB) of North China, different methods including multiple geophysical logging, the Kim method with proximate analysis data, and Langmuir adsorption were used to evaluate the gas content. Furthermore, the geological controls on gas content were evaluated. One hundred sixteen CBM wells with geophysical logging and 20 with field-measured gas content were adopted to assess the gas content in the Fukang area of SJB, NW China. The results show that the two geophysical logging variables (DEN and CNL) were favorable for evaluating the gas content due to the perfect correlation with the measured gas content. The gas content varies from 4.22 m3/t to 16.26 m3/t, and generally increases with increasing burial depth. The gas content in coal seams along the synclinal axis is significantly higher than that along the synclinal wing in the west zone. In the east zone, the gas content of the westward is higher than that of the eastward because of the fault coating effect by reverse fault. Generally, the gas content of the SJB is in the order of syncline > surrounding reverse fault > slope of syncline > slope of anticline > central of reverse fault, if only geological structure features are considered. The favorable areas for CBM concentration appear to be a composite gas controlling result of multiple geological factors. Two typical geological scenarios with low gas content and high gas content were revealed. In the Fukang area of SJB, the low gas content is mainly due to the normal fault and roof lithology of sandstone. The most favorable area of high gas content for CBM exploration and development is in the northeast, where reversed fault, synclinal axis, mudstone roof lithology, and burial depth coincide with high gas content.

Motivated by searching room-temperature superconductors that could be realized near ambient conditions, palladium hydrides were chosen as the research subject considering that they can stably exist under ambient conditions, and Li as an electron donor for its outstanding performance in chemically tuning stability. A novel cubic phase structure of Li2PdH6 with a remarkably high estimated Tc of ∼165 K at 90 GPa was found using particle swarm optimization algorithm calculations. The superconducting behavior persists down to 10 GPa with a high Tc of 106.382 K. Even though the parent binary Pd–H system is not a good superconductor, the introduction of extra electrons breaks up the H2 molecules, inducing the increase of atomic hydrogen compared with parent hydride, which is necessary for outstanding superconducting behavior. The existence of relatively soft phonons associated with the H atoms in phonon dispersion curves is responsible for its high-Tc. Our results indicated that the doping of Li to binary hydrides, especially to binary hydrides with low-Tc that exist under ambient pressure, can produce robust phonon-mediated superconductivity. This may be a strategy to design and optimize room-temperature superconductors that can be synthesized under modest pressure. The findings may pave the way for realizing new high-Tc superconductors in experiments under lower pressure than recently documented superconducting hydrides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chinese language and culture, there are many metaphorical habits that use upright or skew shapes to express morality. Three experiments were conducted to determine whether there is a psychological metaphor in the cognition of Chinese people. To explore the psychological metaphorical associations between moral concepts and upright/skew shapes, the Stroop-like paradigm was used in Experiment 1, which showed that participants responded faster to positive moral words. There are some disputes regarding whether the metaphorical association is unidirectional or bidirectional in mapping. In Experiment 2, the priming paradigm was adopted, and the results showed that the priming of upright/skew shapes affected the judgment of moral words, and the priming of moral words also affected the judgment of upright/skew shapes, indicating bidirectional mapping between moral concepts and upright/skew shapes. We also wanted to determine whether this metaphorical association had any effect on face recognition. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to judge neutral faces presented with quadrilateral or oblique quadrilateral faces. We found that participants tended to think that upright faces were more moral, while skew faces were more immoral. Our study found a psychological metaphorical association between moral concepts and upright/skew shapes, bidirectional mapping, and its effect on face cognition., Author(s): Cong-xing Wang [sup.1] , Yu-qin Yang [sup.1] [sup.2] , Zi-qing Ye [sup.3] , Jin-yun Wu [sup.1] , Ge Xu [sup.4] , Yi-duo Ye [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/020azk594, grid.411503.2, [...]

Abstract Background Microglial activation and the proinflammatory response are controlled by a complex regulatory network. Among the various candidates, macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) is considered an important cytokine. The up-regulation of M-CSF and its receptor CSF-1R has been reported in brain disease, as well as in diabetic complications; however, the mechanism is unclear. An elevated level of glycated albumin (GA) is a characteristic of diabetes; thus, it may be involved in monocyte/macrophage-associated diabetic complications. Results The basal level of expression of M-CSF/CSF-1R was examined in retinal microglial cells in vitro. Immunofluorescence, real-time PCR, immunoprecipitation, and Western blot analyses revealed the up-regulation of CSF-1R in GA-treated microglial cells. We also detected increased expression and release of M-CSF, suggesting that the cytokine is produced by activated microglia via autocrine signaling. Using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, we found that GA affects microglial activation by stimulating the release of tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-1β. Furthermore, the neutralization of M-CSF or CSF-1R with antibodies suppressed the proinflammatory response. Conversely, this proinflammatory response was augmented by the administration of M-CSF. Conclusions We conclude that GA induces microglial activation via the release of proinflammatory cytokines, which may contribute to the inflammatory pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. The increased microglial expression of M-CSF/CSF-1R not only is a response to microglial activation in diabetic retinopathy but also augments the microglial inflammation responsible for the diabetic microenvironment.