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We designed this study to identify potential diagnostic and prognostic markers for lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Four gene expression profiles were downloaded from GEO and merged into a training cohort, and those genes that were differentially expressed between LUAD and normal samples were selected. We performed LASSO regression, SVM-RFE, and ROC curve analyses, and external validations were conducted using the GSE115002 dataset, TCGA + GTEx datasets, and tissue microarrays (TMAs) of 56 patients with LUAD from our hospital. Subsequent analyses included survival analyses, Cox regression, CIBERSORT, CCK-8, colony formation, and flow cytometry analyses. We observed that the expression of SH3GL2, CAV1, and GPC3 was reduced in LUAD samples in comparison to normal samples. Therefore, these genes were identified as diagnostic markers for LUAD, and validated using the GSE115002 and TCGA + GTEx datasets (AUC > 0.86 for all three). Notably, lower GPC3 expression levels were associated with worse prognoses. And GPC3 is an independent prognostic factor for LUAD; TMA analysis confirmed low GPC3 expression in tumors. Moreover, GPC3 overexpression inhibited cell viability and clonality but not cell apoptosis. In conclusion, we infer that GPC3 could serve as both a diagnostic and prognostic marker for LUAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm multi-label based ant colony system (MLACS) algorithm to address the vehicle routing problem with heterogeneous fleet, simultaneous pickup and delivery (VRPHSPD) problem which meet often in the real word. Leveraging the object-oriented principle, we build multi-attribute labels for various customers (demands), vehicles and routes. And then, we initialize the solution through nearest neighbor heuristic approach and minimize the number of vehicles required and total travel length by MLACS. To evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of MLACS, we compare it with other optimization algorithms using benchmark problems and practical problem. Our results show that the MLACS algorithm has significant advantages in achieving the objectives as well as computing time. In addition, a numerical simulation using the actual data shows that MLACS is also good at solving the real world problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Long non-coding RNAs play an important role in tumorigenesis, hence, identification of cancer-associated lncRNAs and investigation of their biological functions and molecular mechanisms are important for understanding the development and progression of cancer. Recently, the downregulation of lncRNA MEG3 has been observed in various human cancers. However, its role in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the expression pattern of MEG3 in NSCLC and to evaluate its biological role and clinical significance in tumor progression.Methods: Expression of MEG3 was analyzed in 44 NSCLC tissues and 7 NSCLC cell lines by qRT-PCR. Over-expression approaches were used to investigate the biological functions of MEG3 in NSCLC cells. Bisulfite sequencing was used to investigate DNA methylation on MEG3 expression. The effect of MEG3 on proliferation was evaluated by MTT and colony formation assays, and cell apoptosis was evaluated by Hoechst staining and Flow-cytometric analysis. NSCLC cells transfected with pCDNA-MEG3 were injection into nude mice to study the effect of MEG3 on tumorigenesis in vivo . Protein levels of MEG3 targets were determined by western blot analysis. Differences between groups were tested for significance using Student's t-test (two-tailed).Results: MEG3 expression was decreased in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumor tissues compared with normal tissues, and associated with advanced pathologic stage, and tumor size. Moreover, patients with lower levels of MEG3 expression had a relatively poor prognosis. Overexpression of MEG3 decreased NSCLC cells proliferation and induced apoptosis in vitro and impeded tumorigenesis in vivo. MDM2 and p53 protein levels were affected by MEG3 over-expression in vitro.Conclusions: Our findings indicate that MEG3 is significantly down-regulated in NSCLC tissues that could be affected by DNA methylation, and regulates NSCLC cell proliferation and apoptosis, partially via the activition of p53. Thus, MEG3 may represent a new marker of poor prognosis and is a potential therapeutic target for NSCLC intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy metal soil pollution severely threatens human health and food safety. This study used PRISMA to systematically review heavy metal-contaminated soil remediation patents in the Derwent Patent Database from 2003 to 2023. A total of 1744 patents were selected. The results of the analysis show that related patent applications are growing around the world. Among them, China has the most significant number of patents, but the layout of transnational patents needs to be revised. Countries have different preferences in transnational patent technology. Technological development is generally balanced, and there is no apparent monopoly. However, the need for continuous in-depth research on inventors is an obstacle to technological development. In addition, the technology in this field is concentrated in chemistry and engineering. Currently, the mainstream technology is soil remediation agents, and thermal desorption technology has also attracted much attention. Future technologies will use new polymer materials and advanced machinery to improve efficiency and control repair costs. In addition, remediation has shifted from the total amount of heavy metals to the control of practical parts. This study summarizes the current status of heavy metal-contaminated soil remediation technology and analyzes future development trends, providing a reference for technology development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tunnel Construction / Suidao Jianshe (Zhong-Yingwen Ban) is the property of Tunnel Construction Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Negative skin friction (NSF) is an undesirable effect of piles observed in the dredged slurry of coastal reclamation areas. Herein, a testing framework was developed to investigate the pile NSF development pattern in the Wenzhou dredged slurry treated using the vacuum preloading drainage reinforcement (VPLDR) method. The vacuum pressure (VP) loss in field projects can cause variations in pressures in the treatment area and the VPLDR duration. A method to quickly quantify the treatment effectiveness of VPLDR is needed to ensure consistency. Two VPLDR cases with varying negative vacuum pressures (NVPs) and duration time were implemented to determine the main operating strategy for controlling the artificial consolidation effect. The pore water pressure (PWP) of soil was found to be associated with the undrained shear strength (Su) and was the primary indicator of the VPLDR effectiveness. The moisture content and water discharge only slightly influenced the Su magnitude. The equivalent reinforcement effect was achieved in the field VPLDR treatments by maintaining a constant PWP. Four tests on the model pile subjected to ground surcharge loading were conducted to study the NSF under various soil specimens and axial loading. NSF was observed in piles with surcharge loading and was reduced significantly in the reinforced slurry by the VPLDR. The surcharge-induced pile settlement can be decreased further with a small level of pile top load. The appropriate VPLDR and top load can weak the NSF caused by stacking. Therefore, these factors should be considered during pile construction in reclamation areas to restrain NSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ichnofossils are well developed in clastic rock reservoirs in marine and transitional facies, which can considerably change the physical properties of the reservoir. However, this influence is not well understood, raising an important problem in the effective development of petroleum reservoirs. This paper analyzes continental shelf margin delta reservoirs through core observation, cast thin section observation and reservoir physical property test. Some important scientific insights are obtained: (1) The presence of Cruziana ichnofacies, including Asterosoma, Ophiomorpha, Planolites, Skolithos, Thalassinoides, and other ichnofossils can be used to identify in subaqueous distributary channels, subaqueous levee, frontal sheet sand, abandoned river channels, crevasse channels, main channels and channel mouth bars. Considerable differences in the types of ichnofossils and the degree of bioturbation can be observed in the different petrofacies. (2) Ichnofossils and bioturbation play a complex role in controlling reservoir properties. The reservoir physical properties have the characteristics of a decrease–increase–decrease curve with increasing bioturbation degree. This complex change is controlled by the sediment mixing and packing of bioturbation and the diagenetic environment controlled by the ichnofossils. (3) Sea-level cycle changes affect the modification of the reservoir through sediment packing. Bioturbation weakens the reservoir's physical property when sea level slowly rises and improves the reservoir's physical property when base level slowly falls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a switchable filter based on the microstrip line (ML) with reflectionless-bandpass-to-reflectionless-bandstop responses is designed, theoretically validated, and fabricated. This single-port reflectionless bandpass filter (R-BPF) consists of a BPF and a shunt-connected bandstop section with terminated absorption resistors. The single-port reflectionless bandstop filter (R-BSF) is made of a BSF and a parallel bandpass circuit with terminated absorption resistors. These two reflectionless operational modes, namely R-BPF and R-BSF, are allowed to reconfigure the multifunctional filtering device using PIN diodes. In addition, a theoretical analysis of terminal impedance is performed to illustrate the working mechanism of the reflectionless response. To demonstrate the application of the proposed designs, a prototype of the switchable filter for R-BPF to R-BSF responses is fabricated and measured. For the R-BPF mode, the 3-dB fractional bandwidth (FBW) is 36.75% (1.67–2.42 GHz) with a 10-dB reflectionless bandwidth (RBW) of 1.36–2.58 GHz (i.e., FBW of 61.9%). For the R-BSF mode, the 10-dB bandwidth is 13% (1.85–2.11 GHz) with a 10.7-dB RBW of 1–3 GHz (i.e., FBW of 100%). An acceptable agreement between the measured and simulated results has been achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tunnel Construction / Suidao Jianshe (Zhong-Yingwen Ban) is the property of Tunnel Construction Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Political culture plays an important role in the composition of national culture. During the history of building and defending the country, Vietnamese generations have created a unique political culture in which national consciousness is both the convergence point and the most important determinant of other values. This article focuses on learning about national consciousness and national sovereignty -- the core factors in the traditional Vietnamese political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tunnel Construction / Suidao Jianshe (Zhong-Yingwen Ban) is the property of Tunnel Construction Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Common spatial pattern (CSP) method is widely used for spatial filtering and brain pattern extraction from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in motor imagery (MI)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The participant-specific time window relative to the visual cue has a significant impact on the effectiveness of the CSP. However, the time window is usually selected experientially or manually. To solve this problem, we propose a novel feature selection approach for MI-based BCIs. Specifically, multiple time segments were obtained by decomposing each EEG sample of the MI task. Furthermore, the features were extracted by CSP from each time segment and were combined to form a new feature vector. Finally, the optimal temporal combination patterns for the new feature vector were selected based on four feature selection algorithms, i.e., mutual information, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, principal component analysis and stepwise linear discriminant analysis (denoted as MUIN, LASSO, PCA, and SWLDA, respectively), and the classification algorithm was employed to evaluate the average classification accuracy. With three BCI competition datasets, the results of the four proposed algorithms were compared with traditional CSP algorithm in classification accuracy. Experimental results show that compared with traditional algorithm, the proposed methods significantly improve performance. Specifically, the LASSO achieved the highest accuracy (88.58%) among the proposed methods. Importantly, the average classification accuracies using the proposed approaches significantly improved 10.14% (MUIN), 11.40% (LASSO), 6.08% (PCA), and 10.25% (SWLDA) compared to that using CSP. These results indicate that the proposed approach is expected to be practical in MI-based BCIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering is the property of Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The cover page of the journal "Journal of Materials Chemistry A" is presented.

The article presents abstracts on materials chemistry topic which include development of smart supercapacitor with deformable and healable functions, water purification through ultra-absorbent alkyne-rich porous covalent polycalixarene, and effect of guanidinium on mesoscopic perovskite solar cells.

Lithium sulfide (Li2S) has drawn special attention as a promising cathode material for emerging energy storage systems due to its high theoretical specific capacity and great compatibility with lithium metal-free anodes. However, Li2S cathodes urgently require a solution to increase their poor electrical conductivity and to suppress the dissolution of long-chain polysulfide (Li2Sn, 4 ≤n≤ 8) species into electrolyte. To this end, we report a free-standing Al2O3–Li2S–graphene oxide sponge (GS) composite cathode, in which ultrathin Al2O3 films are preferentially coated on Li2S by an atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. As a result, a combination of high electron conductivity (from GS) and strong binding with Li2Sn (from ultrathin Al2O3 films) was designed for cathodes. The newly developed Al2O3–Li2S–GS cathodes are able to deliver a highly reversible capacity of 736 mA h gLi2S−1 (427 mA h gcathode−1) at 0.2C, which is much higher than that of corresponding cathodes without Al2O3 (59%). Also, the long-term cycling stability of Al2O3–Li2S–GS cathodes was demonstrated up to 300 cycles at 0.5C with an excellent capacity retention of 88%. In addition, combined with density functional theory calculations, the promotional mechanism of ultrathin Al2O3 films was elucidated using extensive characterization. The ultra-thin Al2O3 film with optimal thickness not only acts as a physical barrier to Li2S nanoparticles, but provides a strong binding interaction to suppress Li2Sn species dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The front cover for this issue is presented.

The table of contents for this issue is presented.

Flexible lithium ion batteries with high energy density have recently received tremendous interest due to their potential applications in flexible electronic devices. Herein, we report a simple high energy ball-milling technique together with vacuum filtration to fabricate a highly flexible, conductive, robust and free-standing RGO/Co9S8 nanocomposite paper with high conductivity (121 S cm−1), tensile strength (50.4 MPa) and Young's modulus (3.5 GPa) which can be directly used as a free-standing anode for flexible LIBs without binders, conducting agents and metallic current collectors. The free-standing RGO/Co9S8 anode with a high mass active material loading of 66.7 wt% Co9S8 can deliver a high specific capacity of 1415 mA h gCo9S8−1 (944 mA h gelectrode−1) and maintain 573 mA h gCo9S8−1 (382.2 mA h gelectrode−1) after 500 cycles at a current density of 1C (1C = 545 mA g−1). More importantly, the rate capability was improved by introducing RGO. The RGO/Co9S8 anode exhibited impressive capacities of 1096.70 mA h gCo9S8−1 with a capacity recuperability of 69.4% as the current returned to 0.1C. These results demonstrate that the well designed nanocomposite is of great potential as an anode for flexible LIBs. As far as we know, such improved electrochemical performance can be attributed to the nanosized Co9S8 particles with a diameter of ∼25 nm homogeneously dispersed on the surface of high conductive graphene sheets that can be obtained owing to the milling impact stress, which enhances surface electrochemical reactivity and shortens the transport length of lithium ions and electrons. What's more, the large specific surface area of the graphene sheet enables the uniform distribution of Co9S8 and offers better ability to accommodate volume expansion/shrinkage of Co9S8 during repeated charge/discharge cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three pepsinogens (PG1, PG2, and PG3) were highly purified from the stomach of freshwater fish rice field eel ( Monopterus albus Zuiew) by ammonium sulfate fractionation and chromatographies on DEAE-Sephacel, Sephacryl S-200 HR. The molecular masses of the three purified PGs were all estimated as 36 kDa using SDS-PAGE. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) showed that p I values of the three PGs were 5.1, 4.8, and 4.6, respectively. All the PGs converted into corresponding pepsins quickly at pH 2.0, and their activities could be specifically inhibited by aspartic proteinase inhibitor pepstatin A. Optimum pH and temperature of the enzymes for hydrolyzing hemoglobin were 3.0-3.5 and 40-45°C. The K values of them were 1.2 × 10 M, 8.7 × 10 M, and 6.9 × 10 M, respectively. The turnover numbers ( k) of them were 23.2, 24.0, and 42.6 s. Purified pepsins were effective in the degradation of fish muscular proteins, suggesting their digestive functions physiologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction of a novel bioactive agent N-{[ N-(2-dimethylamino) ethyl] acridine-4-carboxamide}- α-alanine [ N-(ACR-4-CA)- α-ALA] with human serum albumin (HSA) was investigated by fluorescence spectroscopy, UV-vis absorption and circular dichroism spectrophotometric techniques under simulative physiological conditions. The fluorescence quenching of HSA by addition of N-(ACR-4-CA)- α-ALA is due to static quenching and hydrogen bonding. Moreover, hydrophobic interactions play a role in the binding of N-(ACR-4-CA)- α-ALA to HSA as well. The number of binding sites, n, and the binding constant values, K, were noted to be 0.88 and 3.4 × 10 L mol for N-(ACR-4-CA)- α-ALA at 293 K. The binding distances and the energy transfer efficiency between N-(ACR-4-CA)- α-ALA and protein were determined. The negative value of enthalpy change and positive value of entropy change in the present study indicated that both hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic forces played a major role in the binding of N-(ACR-4-CA)- α-ALA to HSA. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ceramic thermal control coating was produced in situ growth on the aluminum alloy by micro-plasma oxidation method. The coating possessed stable optical properties, high microhardness, and excellent adhesive power, low cost and so on, which can be widely used in the thermal control system of the spacecraft. In this article, the influence of oxidation time on the solar absorptance and emittance of the coating had been studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to characterize the phase composition and microstructure of the coating. The results show that the coating that is mainly composed of the α-Al2O3 and γ-Al2O3 phase has porous surface configurations. The coating can reach to a solar absorptance value higher than 0.91 and an infrared emittance value higher than 0.76, which can be used as a kind of important thermal control coating for space applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The black thermal control coating was produced by in situ growth on an aluminum alloy by a relatively new method: microarc oxidation (MAO). In this article, the black MAO thermal control coating that had a high solar absorptance and a high infrared emittance was produced in a 0.1 mol/L NaAlO2 electrolyte system. The optical properties and phase composition of the coating across the surface to the substrate–coating interface were studied by a spectrophotometer and X-ray diffraction. Experimental results show that the MAO coating can reach a solar absorptance value >0.90 and an infrared emittance value >0.77. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]