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We prepared a rhodamine-TEMPO chromophore-radical dyad (RB-TEMPO) to study the radical enhanced intersystem crossing (REISC). The visible light-harvesting chromophore rhodamine is connected with the TEMPO (a nitroxide radical) via a C–N bond. The UV-vis absorption spectrum indicates negligible electron interaction between the two units at the ground state. Interestingly, the fluorescence of the rhodamine moiety is strongly quenched in RB-TEMPO, and the fluorescence lifetime of the rhodamine moiety is shortened to 0.29 ns, from the lifetime of 3.17 ns. We attribute this quenching effect to the intramolecular electron spin–spin interaction between the nitroxide radical and the photoexcited rhodamine chromophore. Nanosecond transient absorption spectra confirm the REISC in RB-TEMPO, indicated by the detection of the rhodamine chromophore triplet excited state; the lifetime was determined as 128 ns, which is shorter than the native rhodamine triplet state lifetime (0.58 μs). The zero-field splitting (ZFS) parameters of the triplet state of the chromophore were determined with the pulsed laser excited time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance (TREPR) spectra. RB-TEMPO was used as a photoinitiator for the photopolymerization of pentaerythritol triacrylate (PETA). These studies are useful for the design of heavy atom-free triplet photosensitizers, the study of the ISC, and the electron spin dynamics of the radical-chromophore systems upon photoexcitation.

The widespread application of ‘two-line’ hybrid rice, based on temperature- and photoperiod-sensitive genic male-sterile lines, plays an important role in ensuring global food security. Such lines are fertile in short-day/low-temperature conditions when used for self-breeding, and sterile in long-day/high-temperature conditions when used for hybrid seed production. However, fertility instability and low hybrid seed production of sterile lines are urgent problems. The aim of this study was to increase the stability of pollen sterility by studying the critical sterile-inducing temperature and stigma vitality of 97 newly selected male-sterile lines in China from 2017 to 2020. Sterility gene source analysis showed that 89.7% of the materials contained the tms5 sterile gene. After 6 days of treatment at 23.5°C during the reproductive period, 42 male-sterile lines were sterile. After 10 days of treatment at 23.5°C, the sterility of 12 sterile lines remained stable, indicating a high level of safety for hybrid seed production. After 10 days of low-temperature treatment at 19°C, the fertile pollen rate of 47 of the 97 sterile lines was >70%, indicating a high level of seed reproduction safety. Only six of these 47 male-sterile lines could maintain low fertility after 10 days of treatment at 23.5°C, indicating that they could be used safely for both hybrid seed production and sterile line reproduction. The results of delayed pollination showed that among the six lines, only Zhong 7S had high stigma vitality, and BYXA1S and H10S-2 had medium stigma vitality. Therefore, those three sterile lines have the potential for safe hybrid seed production and high-yield seed reproduction. Based on our research, we propose a new breeding standard of dual-purpose male-sterile lines to promote the development of two-line hybrid rice.

Metabolic reprogramming is a common phenomenon in cancer, with aerobic glycolysis being one of its important characteristics. Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α ( HIF1Α) is thought to play an important role in aerobic glycolysis. Meanwhile, naringin is a natural flavanone glycoside derived from grapefruits and many other citrus fruits. In this work, we identified glycolytic genes related to HIF1Α by analyzing the colon cancer database. The analysis of extracellular acidification rate and cell function verified the regulatory effects of HIF1Α overexpression on glycolysis, and the proliferation and migration of colon cancer cells. Moreover, naringin was used as an inhibitor of colon cancer cells to illustrate its effect on HIF1Α function. The results showed that the HIF1Α and enolase 2 ( ENO2) levels in colon cancer tissues were highly correlated, and their high expression indicated a poor prognosis for colon cancer patients. Mechanistically, HIF1Α directly binds to the DNA promoter region and upregulates the transcription of ENO2; ectopic expression of ENO2 increased aerobic glycolysis in colon cancer cells. Most importantly, we found that the appropriate concentration of naringin inhibited the transcriptional activity of HIF1Α, which in turn decreased aerobic glycolysis in colon cancer cells. Generally, naringin reduces glycolysis in colon cancer cells by reducing the transcriptional activity of HIF1Α and the proliferation and invasion of colon cancer cells. This study helps to elucidate the relationship between colon cancer progression and glucose metabolism, and demonstrates the efficacy of naringin in the treatment of colon cancer.

Background With the establishment of the cardiac-gut axis concept, increasing evidence has suggested the involvement and important regulatory role of the gut microbiota (GM) in cardiovascular diseases. Whereas, the relationship between GM and atrial fibrillation (AF) still poorly understood.Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate whether there were differences in GM between AF patients and healthy controls, and to discover the factors that affecting the changes of GM.Methods In this study, we enrolled 30 hospitalized patients with AF and 30 matched patients with sinus rhythm (SR). GM species in fecal samples were evaluated through amplicon sequencing targeting the 16Sribosomal RNA gene. GM species richness, diversity, differential abundance of individual taxa between AF and SR were analyzed.Results AF patients showed decreased species richness and α-diversity compared to SR patients, but there was no statistical difference. The phylogenetic diversity was significant decreased in AF group (PBifidobacterium and a greater abundance of Lactobacillus, Fusobacterium, Haemophilus in AF group compared with the SR group.Conclusions In AF patients, the GM phylogenetic diversity and β-diversity decreased, the relative abundance altered in several taxa and the bacterial community structure changed. GM dysbiosis might play a crucial part in the occurrence and development of AF.Clinical Trial Registration: chictr.org.cn identifier: ChiCTR2100050063

Research shows that many investors are loss averse (reluctant to sell investments that have lost value). However, there is open debate about whether mutual fund investors suffer from loss aversion. We use over 300,000 Chinese mutual fund investor accounts from five open‐end funds to test for loss aversion using survival analysis controlling for time‐varying covariates (Cox analysis). We find strong evidence of loss aversion as these investors are between 60% and 91% less likely to sell a fund that is down in value across the five funds. We also find that more sophisticated investors are less loss averse.

Background Esophageal carcinoma is an invasive malignancy with a poor prognosis. Inflammatory cells are related to the prognosis in many malignancies; however, the prognostic values of preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCCs) are contentious. Methods We performed a retrospective study on 178 patients who had proven ESCC and underwent R0 resection. A complete peripheral blood cell count on all patients 1 week before surgery was used to calculate NLR, LMR and PLR. All patients were grouped by the median count of NLR, LMR and PLR respectively. Kaplan-Meier curves were adopted to test the difference of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) between the high group of NLR, LMR and PLR and the low group. All data analysis was performed by SPSS. P

Yu Jin,* Zhenxia Li,* Yanran Wu, Hairui Li, Zhen Liu, Lu Liu, Ningjuan Ouyang, Ting Zhou, Bing Fang, Lunguo Xia Department of Orthodontics, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; College of Stomatology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; National Center for Stomatology; National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Stomatology, Shanghai, 200011, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Lunguo Xia; Bing FangDepartment of Orthodontics, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, College of Stomatology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, 500 Quxi Road, Shanghai, 200011, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 21 23271699Email xialunguo@hotmail.com; fangbing@sjtu.edu.cnPurpose: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common disease for human beings, characterized by severe inflammation, cartilage degradation, and subchondral bone destruction. However, current therapies are limited to relieving pain or joint replacement and no effective treatment methods have been discovered to improve degenerative changes. Currently, a variety of evidences have indicated that aberrant mechanical stimuli is closely associated with articular joint pathogenesis, while the detailed underlying mechanism remains unelucidated. In the present study, we determined to investigate the impact of excessive high fluid shear stress (FSS) on primary chondrocytes and the underlying epigenetic mechanisms.Materials and Methods: Phalloidin staining and EdU staining were used to evaluate cell morphology and viability. The mRNA level and protein level of genes were determined by qPCR, Western blot assay, and immunofluorescence staining. Mechanistic investigation was performed through RNA-sequencing and CUT&Tag sequencing. In vivo, we adopted unilateral anterior crossbites (UAC) mice model to investigate the expression of H3K4me3 and ZBTB20 in aberrant force-related cartilage pathogenesis.Results: The results demonstrated that FSS greatly disrupts cell morphology and significantly decreased chondrocyte viability. Aberrant FSS induces remarkable inflammatory mediators production, leading to cartilage degeneration and degradation. In depth mechanistic study showed that FSS results in more than 10-fold upregulation of H3K4me3, and the modulatory effect of H3K4me3 on cartilage was obtained by directly targeting ZBTB20. Furthermore, Wnt signaling was strongly activated in high FSS-induced OA pathogenesis, and the negative impact of ZBTB20 on chondrocytes was also achieved through activating Wnt signaling pathway. Moreover, pharmacological inhibition of H3K4me3 activation by MM-102 or treatment with Wnt pathway inhibitor LF3 could effectively alleviate the destructive effect of FSS on chondrocytes. In vivo UAC mice model validated the dysregulation of H3K4me3 and ZBTB20 in aberrant force-induced cartilage pathogenesis.Conclusion: Through the combination of in vitro FSS model and in vivo UAC model, KMT2B-H3K4me3-ZBTB20 axis was first identified in aberrant FSS-induced cartilage pathogenesis, which may provide evidences for epigenetic-based therapy in the future.Keywords: osteoarthritis, fluid shear stress, H3K4me3, epigenetic, cartilage degeneration

Appropriate inflammation is an effective weapon for the body to fight against harmful stimuli, while excessive or prolonged inflammatory reactions could lead to tissue destruction, fibrosis, and even organ failure. The timely termination of inflammatory response is of great significance for maintaining the homeostasis of the body. Unlike the past perception that the regression of inflammation is a passive process, it is now considered that the regression of inflammation is a carefully coordinated active process. Specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) play an important role in limiting the inflammatory response, promoting the regression of inflammation, and maintaining homeostasis. Increasing evidence suggests that exogenous treatment with SPMs could effectively improve symptoms in various inflammatory-related diseases. In this review, we briefly address the current family members of SPMs. We elaborated on the extensive regulation of SPMs of multiple immune cells in various inflammatory-related diseases and the related mechanisms. Our research provides a theoretical basis for promoting an understanding of the role and mechanism of SMPs in inflammation.

In this paper, we propose an effective method for fast and accurate scene parsing called Bidirectional Alignment Network (BiAlignNet). Previously, one representative work BiSeNet~\cite{bisenet} uses two different paths (Context Path and Spatial Path) to achieve balanced learning of semantics and details, respectively. However, the relationship between the two paths is not well explored. We argue that both paths can benefit each other in a complementary way. Motivated by this, we propose a novel network by aligning two-path information into each other through a learned flow field. To avoid the noise and semantic gaps, we introduce a Gated Flow Alignment Module to align both features in a bidirectional way. Moreover, to make the Spatial Path learn more detailed information, we present an edge-guided hard pixel mining loss to supervise the aligned learning process. Our method achieves 80.1\% and 78.5\% mIoU in validation and test set of Cityscapes while running at 30 FPS with full resolution inputs. Code and models will be available at \url{https://github.com/jojacola/BiAlignNet}., accepted by ICIP-2021

Representation of semantic context and local details is the essential issue for building modern semantic segmentation models. However, the interrelationship between semantic context and local details is not well explored in previous works. In this paper, we propose a Dynamic Dual Sampling Module (DDSM) to conduct dynamic affinity modeling and propagate semantic context to local details, which yields a more discriminative representation. Specifically, a dynamic sampling strategy is used to sparsely sample representative pixels and channels in the higher layer, forming adaptive compact support for each pixel and channel in the lower layer. The sampled features with high semantics are aggregated according to the affinities and then propagated to detailed lower-layer features, leading to a fine-grained segmentation result with well-preserved boundaries. Experiment results on both Cityscapes and Camvid datasets validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach. Code and models will be available at \url{x3https://github.com/Fantasticarl/DDSM}., accepted by ICIP-2021

Developmental defects of primitive choanae, an anatomical path to connect the embryonic nasal and oral cavity, result in disorders called choanal atresia (CA), which are associated with many congenital diseases and require immediate clinical intervention after birth. Previous studies revealed that reduced retinoid signaling underlies the etiology of CA. In the present study, by using multiple mouse models which conditionally deleted Rdh10 and Gata3 during embryogenesis, we showed that Gata3 expression is regulated by retinoid signaling during embryonic craniofacial development and plays crucial roles for development of the primitive choanae. Interestingly, Gata3 loss of function is known to cause hypoparathyroidism, sensorineural deafness and renal disease (HDR) syndrome, which exhibits CA as one of the phenotypes in humans. Our model partially phenocopies HDR syndrome with CA, and is thus a useful tool for investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms of HDR syndrome. We further uncovered critical synergy of Gata3 and retinoid signaling during embryonic development, which will shed light on novel molecular and cellular etiology of congenital defects in primitive choanae formation.

This paper primarily studies the effects of irrational factors (investor sentiment) on analysts' forecast bias and the impacts of rational factors (conflicts of interest) on the sentiment-forecast bias nexus. Empirical findings show that investor sentiment does have significant positive impacts on analysts' forecast bias. This effect still holds after controlling for rational factors (commission relationship, underwriting relationship and reputation factors). Moreover, investor sentiment has more notable impacts on analysts' forecast bias for those who are under the pressure of conflicts of interest, particularly for the commission relationship. The stronger the commission relationship is, the greater the analysts' forecast bias. Our results provide new insight into the mechanism through which investor sentiment affects returns.

We study dividend fund buying behavior using over 80,000 individual Chinese mutual fund investors from a private Chinese mutual fund account dataset. Based on a variety of specifications and logistic regressions, we empirically investigate investors' characteristics in choosing dividend-paying and/or growth mutual funds under different market scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this research represents an initial attempt to study individual dividend investors in mutual fund markets. We find that older Chinese investors prefer dividend-paying funds less than growth funds, but this depends on different market conditions, and the age effect shows a nonlinear mode when considering age grouping. Moreover, investors' prior experience plays a crucial role in choosing the fund type; however, the conclusions vary with market scenarios. In addition, female investors prefer more dividend-paying funds than do male investors, but investing experience counteracts this difference. We also find that geographic location is a contributor when investors decide the fund type.

Ethnopharmacological relevance Lianhuaqingwen (LHQW) is a Chinese medicine, developed from appropriate addition and reduction of combined traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Yinqiao San and Maxing Shigan decoction. LHQW has been used in routine influenza treatment for decades and plays a role in a broad-spectrum therapy on various influenza viruses. Aims of the study: The therapeutic effects of LHQW in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have not been fully elucidated. A retrospective study was conducted in patients with COVID-19 to evaluate the influence of LHQW on laboratory results related to the disease, and to provide evidence for the clinical practice of TCM. Materials and methods We retrospectively collected 248 patients who met the moderate type COVID-19 diagnostic criteria, and received treatment in Tongji Hospital. Patients were divided into control (158 cases, standard treatment) and LHQW treatment (90 cases, standard treatment combined with LHQW) groups according to the different treatments administered. All laboratory data were obtained after 5–7 days’ treatment. Results In this study, the average patient age was 58.95 years and 131 patients were male. The two groups were comparable in demographic characteristics, symptoms, and treatment. Compared with in the control group, D-dimer and erythrocyte sedimentation rate were significantly lower in the LHQW treatment group (2.47 ± 4.67 vs. 1.68 ± 3.61; 44.47 ± 30.24 vs. 35.39 ± 27.43; both P, Graphical abstract Image 1

In green computing, the green evaluation of complex software system is an important research topic. Its task is to determine whether the software system meets the performance design constraints, such as time or energy consumption, under the premise of the function correctness. In software design phase, if the model based detection technology is used to do the green evaluation for software design, the redesign of software because the green indicator does not meet the design constraints can be avoided. Based on above ideas, we propose Energy Consumption Time State Transition Matrix(ETSTM) as the green software model, which can effectively model software logic, time and energy consumption. Through this way, we can realize the integration of software logic function and performance in one model. Then we put forward the maximum and minimum energy consumption path algorithm, and energy consumption analysis method under the constraint of multiple properties, which can provide theoretical support and technical means for model-based software green evaluation. At last, by modeling and verifying software of an intelligent sweeping robot based on ETSTM, the effectiveness of above method is proved.