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Amphiphilic GOC nanosheets in situ form a viscoelastic emulsion, which achieves mobility control ability to enhance oil recovery.

Zero-shot learning uses semantic attributes to connect the search space of unseen objects. In recent years, although the deep convolutional network brings powerful visual modeling capabilities to the ZSL task, its visual features have severe pattern inertia and lack of representation of semantic relationships, which leads to severe bias and ambiguity. In response to this, we propose the Graph-based Visual-Semantic Entanglement Network to conduct graph modeling of visual features, which is mapped to semantic attributes by using a knowledge graph, it contains several novel designs: 1. it establishes a multi-path entangled network with the convolutional neural network (CNN) and the graph convolutional network (GCN), which input the visual features from CNN to GCN to model the implicit semantic relations, then GCN feedback the graph modeled information to CNN features; 2. it uses attribute word vectors as the target for the graph semantic modeling of GCN, which forms a self-consistent regression for graph modeling and supervise GCN to learn more personalized attribute relations; 3. it fuses and supplements the hierarchical visual-semantic features refined by graph modeling into visual embedding. Our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on multiple representative ZSL datasets: AwA2, CUB, and SUN by promoting the semantic linkage modelling of visual features., 15 pages, 11 figures, on IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute respiratory infectious disease that is often accompanied by diarrhea, patients with symptoms such as diarrhea are more likely to develop severe pneumonia, while diarrhea is the most prominent among atypical symptoms. The incidence of diarrhea in COVID-19 patients is 2.0% to 49.5%. Moxibustion has been proven to have a therapeutic effect on diarrhea; however, there is no high-quality evidence on moxibustion for diarrhea in COVID-19 patients. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of moxibustion for the treatment of diarrhea in patients with COVID-19.Randomized controlled trials from December 2019 to December 2021 will be included without restrictions on language or publication date. PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Chinese Biomedical Databases, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang database, and VIP database will be searched. Two researchers will independently select studies, extract data and evaluate study quality. Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized trials will be used to assess the risk of bias of included studies. Statistical analyses will be performed using the Review Manager V.5.3 and stata 14.0.The results of this meta-analysis will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.This study will provide evidence for whether moxibustion therapy is beneficial to the treatment of diarrhea in COVID-19.Ethical approval is not required for this study. The systematic review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal, presented at conferences, and shared on social media platforms. This review would be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal or conference presentations.CRD42022302933.

Physical signs of patients indicate crucial evidence for diagnosing both location and nature of the disease, where there is a sequential relationship between the two tasks. Thus their joint learning can utilize intrinsic association by transferring related knowledge across relevant tasks. Choosing the right time to transfer is a critical problem for joint learning. However, how to dynamically adjust when tasks interact to capture the right time for transferring related knowledge is still an open issue. To this end, we propose a Task-Coupling Elastic Learning (TCEL) framework to model the task relatedness for classifying disease-location and disease-nature based on physical sign images. The main idea is to dynamically transfer relevant knowledge by progressively shifting task-coupling from loose to tight during the multi-stage training. In the early stage of training, we relax the constraints of modeling relations to focus more in learning the generic task-common features. In the later stage, the semantic guidance will be strengthened to learn the task-specific features. Specifically, a dynamic sequential module (DSM) is proposed to explicitly model the sequential relationship and enable multi-stage training. Moreover, to address the side effect of DSM, a new loss regularization is proposed. The extensive experiments on these two clinical datasets show the superiority of the proposed method over the baselines, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed task-coupling elastic mechanism.

Background/AimsLong non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in many diseases and participate in posttranscriptional regulatory networks in tumors. However, the functions of major lncRNAs in cervical cancer are unclear. Therefore, the aim of this study was to construct a lncRNA-mRNA coexpression functional network and analyze lncRNAs that might contribute to the pathogenesis of cervical cancer.MethodsDifferentially expressed lncRNAs (DElncRNAs) and mRNAs (DEmRNAs) between three pairs of cervical cancer tissues and adjacent mucosa were identified by lncRNA microarray analysis. LncRNA-mRNA correlation analysis and functional enrichment were performed on the DEGs. From the correlation network, PCBP1-AS1 was selected as a candidate for further analysis. PCBP1-AS1 expression was examined by qPCR, and Kaplan–Meier survival, clinicopathology, GSEA, and immune infiltration analysis of PCBP1-AS1 were performed. The immune responses of PCBP1-AS1 expression in cervical cancer were analyzed using TIMER and western blot. PCBP1-AS1 was knocked down and overexpressed to evaluate its role in cell proliferation, migration, and invasion.ResultsA total of 130 lncRNAs were significantly differentially expressed in cervical cancer patient samples compared with control samples. Differentially expressed mRNAs in the lncRNA-mRNA interaction network were involved in the EMT process. Combined with the Kaplan–Meier survival analyses, the coexpression network revealed that PCBP1-AS1 was significantly associated with OS and clinicopathological parameters in cervical cancer patients. Moreover, PCBP1-AS1 expression was not only significantly increased in cervical cancer specimens but also associated with tumor stage, TNM, and invasion. GSEA revealed that PCBP1-AS1 is closely correlated with cell biological function via the p53 and notch signaling pathways. TIMER analysis revealed that the numbers of NK cells and M2 macrophages decreased when PCBP1-AS1 expression was high, which was consistent with the western blot results in clinical samples. Furthermore, in vitro experiments showed that high expression of PCBP1-AS1 promoted cell proliferation, migration, and invasion.ConclusionsTranscriptomic and lncRNA-mRNA correlation analyses revealed that PCBP1-AS1 plays a key role as an independent prognostic factor in patients with cervical cancer. The identification of PCBP1-AS1 as a new biomarker for cervical cancer could help explain how changes in the immune environment promote cervical cancer development.

For organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells (PerSCs), the electron transport layer (ETL) plays a crucial role in efficient electron extraction and transport for high performance PerSCs. Fullerene and its derivatives are commonly used as ETL for p-i-n structured PerSCs. However, these spherical small molecules are easy to aggregate with high annealing temperature and thus induce morphology stability problems. N-type conjugated polymers are promising candidates to overcome these problems due to the tunable energy levels, controllable aggregation behaviors, and good film formation abilities. Herein, a series of perylene diimide (PDI) based polymers (PX-PDIs), which contain different copolymeried units (X), including vinylene (V), thiophene (T), selenophene (Se), dibenzosilole (DBS), and cyclopentadithiophene (CPDT), are introduced as ETL for p-i-n structured PerSCs. The effect of energy alignment, electron mobility, and film morphology of these ETLs on the photovoltaic performance of the PerSCs are fully investigated. Among the PX-PDIs, PV-PDI demonstrates the deeper LUMO energy level, the highly delocalized LUMO electron density, and a better planar structure, making it the best electron transport material for PerSCs. The planar heterojunction PerSC with PV-PDI as ETL achieves a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.14%, among the best values for non-fullerene based PerSCs.

The clinical application of paclitaxel (PTX) is limited due to its low solubility and severe side effects. In this study, an amphiphilic graft copolymer based on mPEG, deoxycholic acid and N-acetyl-L-cysteine modified hyaluronic acid (mPEG-HA(DCA)-NAC) was synthesized and used as a redox-sensitive nano-sized drug delivery system. The polymer was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) analysis. As an amphiphilic polymer, mPEG-HA(DCA)-NAC could self-assemble into micelles in aqueous milieu and encapsulate PTX in the hydrophobic core with high drug loading of 15.6% and high encapsulation efficiency of 73.8%. The PTX-loaded micelles had an average size of 147 nm and zeta potential of −38.3 mV. Physicochemical properties of the micelles were measured by TEM and XRD analysis. XRD analysis confirmed the successful encapsulation of PTX in an amorphous state. In vitro drug release study demonstrated the redox-sensitivity of the micelles. In vitro and in vivo antitumor efficacy study indicated that the PTX-loaded mPEG-HA(DCA)-NAC micelles had excellent antitumor effect but with low toxicity to the body. It can be concluded that the mPEG-HA(DCA)-NAC micellar system represents a promising nanocarrier for delivery of PTX.

2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine)9,9′-spirobifluorene represents one of the most effective hole transporting materials in high efficiency perovskite solar cells. Due to the electronic structural diversity of the perovskite material, 20 spirobifluorene derivatives were designed based on the 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine)9,9′-spirobifluorene structural template aiming to achieve suitable energy level alignment with perovskite materials that have lower valence band maximums. The designed molecules aim to obtain better absorption spectrum complementation with low-dimensional perovskite materials to eventually get solar cells with ideal efficiencies. The geometry changes caused by different substitutions of diphenylamine groups, the highest occupied molecular orbital energy level regulations by the introduction of nitrogen atoms and methoxy groups on different sites, the reorganization energy variations and the absorption spectra of all the novel structures were carefully predicated and compared with available experimental data. The relationships between the structural variations and the electronic and energy changes are qualitatively and quantitatively discussed.

This paper aimed to investigate the role of adenosine triphosphate-binding cassette (ABC) transporters on the efflux and the toxicity of nanoparticles in liver and kidney cells. In this study, we synthesized CdTe quantum dots (QDs) that were monodispersed and emitted green fluorescence (maximum peak at 530nm). Such QDs tended to accumulate in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2), human kidney cells 2 (HK-2), and Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells, and cause significant toxicity in all the three cell lines. Using specific inhibitors and inducers of P-glycoprotein (Pgp) and multidrug resistance associated proteins (Mrps), the cellular accumulation and subsequent toxicity of QDs in HepG2 and HK-2 cells were significantly affected, while only slight changes appeared in MDCK cells, corresponding well with the functional expressions of ABC transporters in cells. Moreover, treatment of QDs caused concentration- and time- dependent induction of ABC transporters in HepG2 and HK-2 cells, but such phenomenon was barely found in MDCK cells. Furthermore, the effects of CdTe QDs on ABC transporters were found to be greater than those of CdCl2 at equivalent concentrations of cadmium, indicating that the effects of QDs should be a combination of free Cd(2+) and specific properties of QDs. Overall, these results indicated a strong dependence between the functional expressions of ABC transporters and the efflux of QDs, which could be an important reason for the modulation of QDs toxicity by ABC transporters.

Accurate determination of the relationships among packing mode, molecular structure and charge transfer mobility for oligothiophene analogues has been significantly impeded, due to the lack of crystal structure information. In the current study, molecular dynamics (MD) were used to investigate the packing mode of non-, methyl- and ethyl-substituted poly(3-alkylthiophenes) (P3ATs). Obvious conformational changes were observed when comparing the packed and isolated oligothiophene molecules, indicating the important influence of packing mode on the geometric structures of these materials. Considering the crucial role played by reorganization energy (RE) in the charge transfer process, both quantum mechanics (QM) and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) were performed to examine the impact of different conformations on energy. Our simulations revealed that the geometric structures have distinct effects on the RE. Our data suggest that MD could give a reliable packing mode of oligothiophene analogues, and that QM/MM is indispensable for precisely estimating RE.

An effective yet easy-to-implement power-gating scheme is proposed to reduce leakage by two orders of magnitude. Proposed optimal zigzag ("OZ scheme") utilizes optimal combination of input-phase-forcing (IPF) and zigzag cut-off CMOS on critical paths, while uses high-V/sub TH/ cells on noncritical paths. Various low-leakage design alternatives including dual-V/sub TH/, off-off stacking, MTCMOS, and selective MTCMOS are compared with the proposed OZ scheme in terms of delay, leakage power, and area. With 65-nanometer technology and ten typical benchmark circuits, the OZ scheme has been shown to achieve 70% less leakage, 9.4% faster speed, and 37% smaller area than selective MTCMOS which is the most widely used power-gating approach to date.