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Abstract Class I KNOTTED-like homeobox (KNOXI) genes are parts of the regulatory network that control the evolutionary diversification of leaf morphology. Their specific spatiotemporal expression patterns in developing leaves correlate with the degrees of leaf complexity between simple-leafed and compound-leafed species. However, KNOXI genes are not involved in compound leaf formation in several legume species. Here, we identify a pathway for dual repression of MtKNOXI function in Medicago truncatula. PINNATE-LIKE PENTAFOLIATA1 (PINNA1) represses the expression of MtKNOXI, while PINNA1 interacts with MtKNOXI and sequesters it to the cytoplasm. Further investigations reveal that UNUSUAL FLORAL ORGANS (MtUFO) is the direct target of MtKNOXI, and mediates the transition from trifoliate to pinnate-like pentafoliate leaves. These data suggest a new layer of regulation for morphological diversity in compound-leafed species, in which the conserved regulators of floral development, MtUFO, and leaf development, MtKNOXI, are involved in variation of pinnate-like compound leaves in M. truncatula.

Objective: In the RECO study, we investigated the impact of the operator's choice of stent retriever size on patients with internal carotid artery (ICA) occlusion. Methods: Data from the RECO Registry, a prospective multicentre study, were utilized. Patients who underwent mechanical thrombectomy (MT) were divided according to the size of the stent into the RECO 4 × 20 group, the RECO 5 × 30 group and the RECO 6 × 30 group. The outcome measures assessed in the study were the 3-month modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score, occurrence of any intracranial haemorrhage (aICH), workflow timing, recanalization success rate, number of attempts, and all-cause mortality within a 3-month period. Results: Analysis was conducted on a total of 89 patients with ICA occlusion. RECO 4 × 20, 5 × 30, and 6 × 30 stent retrievers were used in 19 (21.3%), 52 (58.4%), and 18 (20.2%) patients, respectively. The demographic and baseline characteristics showed considerable similarity across the three groups. The puncture-to-recanalization time of the RECO 6 × 30 group [56.5 min (IQR, 41.5–80.8)] was significantly shorter than that of the RECO 4 × 20 group [110 min (IQR, 47–135)]. In 10 out of 18 patients (55.6%), the RECO 6 × 30 stent retriever achieved reperfusion (modified Thrombolysis in Cerebral Infarction [mTICI] score 2b-3) after the initial attempt, surpassing the rates of 31.6% in the RECO 4 × 20 group and 32.7% in the RECO 5 × 30 group. In the RECO 4 × 20 group, the median number of passes was 2 (IQR, 1–3); in the RECO 5 × 30 group, it was 2 (IQR, 1–3); and in the RECO 6 × 30 groups, it was 1 (IQR, 1–2.5). There were no statistically significant differences observed among the three groups concerning aICH or good outcomes (mRS score 0–2). Conclusion: Our study demonstrated the practical implications of stent-retriever size selection in the context of the MT for ICA occlusion. The routine use of a RECO 6 × 30 stent retriever holds the potential for early revascularization in clinical practice. The significant reduction in the puncture-to-reperfusion time and the greater first-pass effect associated with this stent size underscore its efficiency in treating ICA occlusion.

With the development of Fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication, mobile networks are dedicated to accommodating more subscribers and diversified service scenarios. 5G is then expected to significantly enhance the quality of experience on services, and pave way for the interconnection of everything. Starting from the development trends of radio accoss network (RAN), this paper investigates its evolution progress and key technologies, including wireless access, optical bearing, interfaces for fronthaul and midhaul, control and management, as well as network slicing. Finally, the urgent challenges are described from the perspective of RAN evolution towards 5G.

It is essential to estimate the quality of transmission (QoT) of lightpaths before their establishment for efficient planning and operation of optical networks. Due to the nonlinear effect of fibers, the deployed lightpaths influence the QoT of each other; thus, multi-channel QoT estimation is necessary, which provides complete QoT information for network optimization. Moreover, the different interfering channels have different effects on the channel under test. However, the existing artificial-neural-network-based multi-channel QoT estimators (ANN-QoT-E) neglect the different effects of the interfering channels in their input layer, which affects their estimation accuracy severely. In this paper, we propose a self-attention mechanism-based multi-channel QoT estimator (SA-QoT-E) to improve the estimation accuracy of the ANN-QoT-E. In the SA-QoT-E, the input features are designed as a sequence of feature vectors of channels that route the same path, and the self-attention mechanism dynamically assigns weights to the feature vectors of interfering channels according to their effects on the channel under test. Moreover, a hyperparameter search method is used to optimize the SA-QoT-E. The simulation results show that, compared with the ANN-QoT-E, our proposed SA-QoT-E achieves higher estimation accuracy, and can be directly applied to the network wavelength expansion scenarios without retraining.

Abstract Background The prevention of pneumonia is critical for patients with acute ischaemic stroke (AIS). The six subscales in the Braden Scale seem to be related to the occurrence of pneumonia. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility of using the Braden Scale to predict the occurrence of pneumonia after AIS. Methods We studied a series of consecutive patients with AIS who were admitted to the hospital. The cohort was subdivided into pneumonia and no pneumonia groups. The scores on the Braden Scale, demographic characteristics and clinical characteristics were obtained and analysed by statistical comparisons between the two groups. We investigated the predictive validity of the Braden Scale by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Results A total of 414 patients with AIS were included in this study. Of those 414 patients, 57 (13.8%) patients fulfilled the criteria for post-stroke pneumonia. There were significant differences in age and histories of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), dysphagia and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score between the two groups, and the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score in the pneumonia group was significantly higher than that in the no pneumonia group (P

Formation of nodules on legume roots results from symbiosis with rhizobial bacteria. Here, we identified two GATA transcription factors, MtHAN1 and MtHAN2, in Medicago truncatula, which are the homologs of HANABA TARANU (HAN) and HANABA TARANU LIKE in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our analysis revealed that MtHAN1 and MtHAN2 are expressed in roots and shoots including the root tip and nodule apex. We further show that MtHAN1 and MtHAN2 localize to the nucleus where they interact and that single and double loss-of-function mutants of MtHAN1 and MtHAN2 did not show any obvious phenotype in flower development, suggesting their role is different than their closest Arabidopsis homologues. Investigation of their symbiotic phenotypes revealed that the mthan1 mthan2 double mutant develop twice as many nodules as wild type, revealing a novel biological role for GATA transcription factors. We found that HAN1/2 transcript levels respond to nitrate treatment like their Arabidopsis counterparts. Global gene transcriptional analysis by RNA sequencing revealed different expression genes enriched for several pathways important for nodule development including flavonoid biosynthesis and phytohormones. In addition, further studies suggest that MtHAN1 and MtHAN2 are required for the expression of several nodule-specific cysteine-rich genes, which they may activate directly, and many peptidase and peptidase inhibitor genes. This work expands our knowledge of the functions of MtHANs in plants by revealing an unexpected role in legume nodulation.

Using free-space optics (FSO) in the mobile fronthaul/backhaul networks is a promising solution that can potentially enhance the capacity of mobile networks. The main challenge of establishing FSO-based fronthaul/backhaul networks is the dynamic feature of the networks, i.e., the fragile links under adverse weather conditions and the dynamic traffic demands among small cells. Topology reconfiguration is proposed to dynamically rearrange the FSO links. In this paper, two types of network reconfigurations are investigated, in which the proactive network reconfiguration is to proactively optimize the topology of the FSO-based fronthaul/backhaul networks for each specific time period based on the statistics of the network, and the reactive reconfiguration is to actively adjust the topology when traffic demands and link states are changed. The proactive network reconfiguration is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, which jointly optimizes the network throughput and power consumption of the FSO-based fronthaul/backhaul networks. A greedy algorithm is proposed to derive the solution of the proposed problem. After the network topology having been reconfigured by solving the MINLP problem, two reactive reconfiguration algorithms are designed to optimally adjust the network topology once a link failure and demand explosion occur, respectively, to further enhance the network throughput and reduce the power consumption. The performance of the algorithms is demonstrated via extensive simulations.

Polar auxin transport mediated by PIN-FORMED (PIN) proteins is critical for plant growth and development. As an environmental cue, shade stimulates hypocotyls, petiole, and stem elongation by inducing auxin synthesis and asymmetric distributions, which is modulated by PIN3,4,7 in Arabidopsis. Here, we characterize the MtPIN1 and MtPIN3, which are the orthologs of PIN3,4,7, in model legume species Medicago truncatula. Under the low Red:Far-Red (R:FR) ratio light, the expression of MtPIN1 and MtPIN3 is induced, and shadeavoidance response is disrupted in mtpin1 mtpin3 double mutant, indicating that MtPIN1 and MtPIN3 have a conserved function in shade response. Surprisingly, under the normal growth condition, mtpin1 mtpin3 displayed the constitutive shade avoidance responses, such as the elongated petiole, smaller leaf, and increased auxin and chlorophyll content. Therefore, MtPIN1 and MtPIN3 play dual roles in regulation of shadeavoidance response under different environments. Furthermore, these data suggest that PIN3,4,7 and its orthologs have evolved conserved and specific functions among species.

ObjectiveThis experimental study investigated the protective function of quercetin on the liver, spleen, and kidneys of Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats and explores its mechanism of action on autophagy-related factors and pathways.Materials and methodsGK rats were randomly divided into three groups: DM, DM + L-Que, and DM + H-Que, with age-matched Wistar rats serving as the control group. The control and DM groups were gavaged with saline, and the quercetin-treated group was gavaged with quercetin for 8 weeks each. Weekly blood glucose levels were monitored. Upon conclusion of the experiment, blood samples were gathered for lipid and hepatic and renal function analyses. The histopathologic morphology and lipid deposition in rats were examined. Disease-related targets were identified using molecular docking methods and network pharmacology analysis. Subsequently, immunohistochemical analysis was performed, followed by Western blotting to evaluate the levels of autophagy-related proteins and proteins in the AKT/PI3K/mTOR pathway, as well as their phosphorylation levels.ResultsThe results showed that, compared with the control group, the DM group exhibited significant increases in blood glucose, serum liver and kidney markers, liver fat vacuoles, and inflammatory cell infiltration. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) results indicated that quercetin reduced the extensive expression of AKT, P62, and mTOR in the liver and spleen of diabetic rats. The expression of autophagy and pathway-related proteins, such as P62, PI3K, P-PI3K, Akt, P-AKT, mTOR, and P-mTOR, was upregulated, while the expression of LC3A/LC3B, Beclin-1, Pink-1, and Parkin was downregulated. Conversely, the quercetin group showed a reduction in liver and kidney injury serum markers by decreasing lipid deposition and cell necrosis, indicating that quercetin has protective effects on the liver, spleen, and kidneys of GK rats. Additionally, in the quercetin group, the expression of autophagy and pathway-related proteins such as LC3A/LC3B, Beclin-1, Pink-1, and Parkin was upregulated, while the expression of P62, PI3K, P-PI3K, Akt, P-AKT, mTOR, and P-mTOR was downregulated, with statistically significant correlations.ConclusionQuercetin markedly ameliorates liver, spleen, and kidney damage in GK rats, potentially through the inhibition of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, promoting autophagy. This research offers a rationale to the therapeutic potential of quercetin in mitigating organ damage associated with diabetes.

BackgroundElectrocardiogram (ECG) signals are inevitably contaminated with various kinds of noises during acquisition and transmission. The presence of noises may produce the inappropriate information on cardiac health, thereby preventing specialists from making correct analysis.MethodsIn this paper, an efficient strategy is proposed to denoise ECG signals, which employs a time-frequency framework based on S-transform (ST) and combines bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) and non-local means (NLM). In the method, the ST maps an ECG signal into a subspace in the time frequency domain, then the BEMD decomposes the ST-based time-frequency representation (TFR) into a series of sub-TFRs at different scales, finally the NLM removes noise and restores ECG signal characteristics based on structural self-similarity.ResultsThe proposed method is validated using numerous ECG signals from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database, and several different types of noises with varying signal-to-noise (SNR) are taken into account. The experimental results show that the proposed technique is superior to the existing wavelet based approach and NLM filtering, with the higher SNR and structure similarity index measure (SSIM), the lower root mean squared error (RMSE) and percent root mean square difference (PRD).ConclusionsThe proposed method not only significantly suppresses the noise presented in ECG signals, but also preserves the characteristics of ECG signals better, thus, it is more suitable for ECG signals processing.

The problem of regular wave diffraction from segmented arc-shaped breakwater (ASB) structures was studied. Based on the linear potential flow theory, the velocity potential of the entire fluid domain was derived using the characteristic function expansion method. The accuracy of the current model was verified by comparing the results of this study with published computational results. The numerical results revealed variations in the wave load and wave surface of the segmental ASB with the gap width between the arcs, opening angle, wave incidence angle, porosity coefficient, and number of segments of the segmental ASB. The results showed that the segmented ASB reduced the wave load on the breakwater, and the proper gap width between the arcs significantly increased the wave dissipation capacity of the breakwater. This study will be of guidance to actual marine engineering.

How to sustainably produce bauxite by effective reverse froth flotation of kaolinite at low temperature is an urgent problem to be solved in the field of mineral processing. In this work, a novel amino-based Gemini surfactant butadiyl-1, 4-bis (dimethyl dodecylammonium bromide) (BBDB) was prepared and first utilized as a novel collector for kaolinite flotation. Its flotation performance for kaolinite was compared with that of the common monomolecular surfactant 1-dodecylamine (DDA) by micro-flotation tests. The tests results indicated that 95% kaolinite recovery was obtained using 2.0 × 10−4 mol/L BBDB at 25 ℃, which was half of the dosage when DDA obtained the maximum kaolinite recovery of 81%. At extremely low temperature (0 ℃), 3.0 × 10−4 mol/L BBDB could still collect 91% kaolinite, while DDA showed a frustrating ability. The contact angle tests indicated that BBDB could still significantly improve the hydrophobicity of the kaolinite surface (contact angle 71.7°) than DDA (contact angle only 25.8°) at 0 ℃. The Krafft point comparison tests indicated that BBDB had a much lower Krafft point (below 0 ℃) than DDA. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)-spectrum analysis and zeta potential measurements showed that BBDB was physically adsorbed on the surface of kaolinite through electrostatic interaction.

The partial air cushion supported catamaran (PACSCAT) is a novel Surface Effect Ship (SES) and possesses distinctive resistance performance due to the presence of planing bottom. In this paper, the design of PACSCAT and air cushion system are described in detail. Model tests were carried out for Froude numbers ranging from 0.1 to 1.11, the focus is on the influence of air cushion system on resistance characteristics. Drag-reducing effect of air cushion system was proved by means of contrast tests in cuhionborne and non-cushionborne mode. Wave-making characteristics reflect that the PACSCAT would eventually enter planing regime, in which the air could just escape under the seals and the hull body could operate in a steady state. To acquire different air cushion pressure, air flow rate and leakage height were adjusted during tests. Experimental results show that the resistance performance in planing regime would decrease evidently as the increased air flow rate, however, the scheme with medium leakage height presents the best resistance performance in the hump region.

Air-cushion-assisted platforms (ACAPs) are floating platforms supported by both buoyancy pontoon and air cushion, which have merits of wave bending moment reduction, better stability, and hydrodynamic performance. However, there is barely a concise method that can quickly predict the motion response of ACAPs. In this paper, a simplified panel method (sPM) was presented for evaluating the hydrodynamics of ACAPs. The sPM extends the conventional boundary integral equation (BIE) to include the radiation solutions of pulsating air pressure but ignores some unimportant air-water cross terms in motion equations whose coefficients cannot be directly derived from conventional Green’s function methods. The effectiveness of the sPM was validated by experimental data from an ACAP model with one air chamber and analytical results from an oscillating water column (OWC). The numerical results demonstrate that the sPM can give desirable predictions for motion responses of the ACAP and inner pressure of the OWC as compared with results from the literature, which suggests the sPM could be approximately applied to evaluation of hydrodynamic performance of ACAPs and OWCs.