A Systematic Review of the Relationship Between Taste and Personality Traits: Phenomena and possible mechanisms.

Individuals exhibit variability in taste preferences, and personality plays a role in those variations. This study provides a comprehensive review of the relationship between taste preferences and personality traits, focusing on the five basic tastes (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami) and spiciness. Through a systematic review of the literature from the past 30 years, 24 of 2182 articles were selected using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis protocol.

Metacavities by harnessing the linear-crossing metamaterials.

The formed optical cavity mode intensively relies on the size and geometry of optical cavity. When the defect or impurity exists inside the cavity, the formed cavity mode will be destroyed. Here, we propose a metacavity consisting of arrays of linear-crossing metamaterials (LCMMs) with abnormal dispersion, where each LCMM offers both the directional propagation channel for all incident angles and the negative refraction across its neighboring LCMMs.

Functional and effective connectivity between reward and inhibitory control networks underlying subclinical binge eating.

Background: Knowledge is growing on the essential role of neural circuits involved in aberrant cognitive control and reward sensitivity for the onset and maintenance of binge eating.

Aims: To investigate how the brain's reward (bottom-up) and inhibition control (top-down) systems potentially and dynamically interact to contribute to subclinical binge eating.

Method: Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 30 binge eaters and 29 controls while participants performed a food reward Go/NoGo task.

The Association Between Psychological Capital and Self-Management Behaviors in Men with Gout: A Cross-Sectional Study in Southwest China.

Purpose: Gout is a common, chronic inflammatory joint disease, and men are more likely to suffer from gout. Improving patient self-management behaviors is a priority in gout healthcare. Psychological capital is associated with self-management behaviors in chronic diseases and can be improved through a number of interventions.

Efficacy and safety of consolidative thoracic radiotherapy after first-line chemoimmunotherapy in patients with extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Thoracic radiotherapy (TRT) has shown potential benefits in improving local control and overall survival (OS) in chemotherapy-responsive small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) cases. However, its role in the era of chemoimmunotherapy remains underexplored. In the current era of immunotherapy, this study evaluated the efficacy and safety of consolidative TRT (cTRT) in patients with extensive-stage SCLC (ES-SCLC) and assessed its impact on OS.

Atomically precise silver-based bimetallic clusters for electrocatalytic urea synthesis.

Electrocatalytic urea synthesis from CO and nitrate holds immense promise as a sustainable strategy, but its complicated synthesis steps and controversial C-N coupling mechanism restrict the design of efficient catalysts. Atomically precise metal cluster materials are ideal model catalysts for investigating the C-N coupling issues. Here we synthesize two atomically precise bimetallic clusters, AgPd(PTFE)(TPP) and AgAu(PTFE)(DPPP), both with icosahedral cores and similar ligands.

Purification, crystal structural characterization of porcine kidney dipeptidyl peptidase IV (PkDPP-IV) and its interaction with oyster derived inhibitory peptide ILAPPER.

Dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV) is an important target enzyme for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Increasing researchers try to screen DPP-IV inhibitory peptides while the cost of DPP-IV is high. In this study, PkDPP-IV was efficiently purified by acid precipitation, ammonium sulfate salting out and gel filtration chromatography with a purification of 283.

Shape-controlled asymmetric bowl-like PDA@Au substrates for sensitive SERS detection of anabolic androgenic steroids.

The widespread accumulation of androgenic steroid endocrine disruptors in water and food has garnered increasing attention due to their significant risks to ecosystems and human health. These steroids, which cannot be completely eliminated, highlight the urgent need for advanced detection technologies. In this study, we present a novel emulsion-induced interface-anisotropic assembly strategy to synthesize bowl-like mesoporous polydopamine (PDA) particles, which exhibit high sensitivity in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) detection.

Polydopamine Nanohydrogel Decorated Adhesive and Responsive Hierarchical Microcarriers for Deafness Protection.

Cisplatin-induced ototoxicity is attributed to the aberrant accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) within the inner ear. Antioxidants represented by α-lipoic acid (ALA) have been demonstrated to scavenge ROS in the cochlea, while effective delivery of these agents in vivo remains a major challenge. Here, a novel polydopamine (PDA) nanogel decorated adhesive and responsive hierarchical microcarriers for controllable is presented ALA delivery and deafness prevention.

Skeletal muscle-specific Bambi deletion induces hypertrophy and oxidative switching coupling with adipocyte thermogenesis against metabolic disorders.

Skeletal muscle plays a significant role in both local and systemic energy metabolism. The current investigation aims to explore the role of the Bambi gene in skeletal muscle, focusing on its implications for muscle hypertrophy and systemic metabolism. We hypothesize that skeletal muscle-specific deletion of Bambi induces muscle hypertrophy, improves metabolic performance, and activates thermogenic adipocytes via the reprogramming of progenitor of iWAT, offering potential therapeutic strategies for metabolic syndromes.

Identification of novel phenolic inhibitors from traditional Chinese medicine against toxic α-synuclein aggregation via regulating phase separation.

Parkinson's disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder without cure, is characterized by the pathological aggregation of α-synuclein (α-Syn) in Lewy bodies. Classic deposition pathway and condensation pathway contribute to α-Syn aggregation, and liquid-liquid phase separation is the driving force for condensate formation, which subsequently undergo liquid-solid phase separation to form toxic fibrils. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has a long history in treating neurodegenerative disease; herein, we identified chemicals from herbs that inhibit α-Syn aggregation.

Spiking-PhysFormer: Camera-based remote photoplethysmography with parallel spike-driven transformer.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) can help camera-based remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) in measuring cardiac activity and physiological signals from facial videos, such as pulse wave, heart rate and respiration rate with better accuracy. However, most existing ANN-based methods require substantial computing resources, which poses challenges for effective deployment on mobile devices. Spiking neural networks (SNNs), on the other hand, hold immense potential for energy-efficient deep learning owing to their binary and event-driven architecture.

Expression, purification and immunogenicity analyses of receptor binding domain protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 from delta variant.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The receptor binding domain (RBD), located at the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, contains most of the neutralizing epitopes during viral infection and is an ideal antigen for vaccine development. In this study, bioinformatic analysis of the amino acid sequence data of SARS-CoV-2 RBD protein for the better understanding of molecular characteristics was performed.

Photonics-assisted analog windowing and matched filtering.

In this paper, we propose an integrated method for windowing and matched filtering in the analog domain based on microwave photonic technology, which utilizes dispersion regulation of optical waveguide to achieve the windowing processing of broadband signals in the optical domain and the surface acoustic wave filter (SAWF) to achieve the following matched filtering processing in the radio frequency (RF) domain, thus realizing their integration processing in the analog domain. The proposed method is validated by simulation and experiment, in which the integrated processing of matched filtering and windowing in the analog domain for a linear frequency modulation (LFM) signal with a bandwidth of 1 GHz is carried out and the peak to sidelobe ratio (PSLR) of the output signal is -19.55 dB and the mainlobe width (MLW) broadens to 0.

Total hip arthroplasty in hip tuberculosis: a systematic review.

Objectives: Tuberculosis of the hip joint is a common form of bone tuberculosis that can cause severe joint destruction and affect quality of life. Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is an important way to treat hip joint-related diseases. In recent years, THA has been applied to treat tuberculosis of the hip joint and has achieved certain results.

Genetic Mechanism Analysis Related to Cold Tolerance of Red Swamp Crayfish, Procambarus clarkii.

In China, the red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii), a notorious invasive species, has become an important economic freshwater species. In order to compare the genetic diversity and population structure of crayfish from northern and southern China, we collected 60 crayfish individuals from 4 crayfish populations in northern China and 2 populations in southern China for sequencing using the 2b-RAD technique. Additionally, the whole genome sequence information obtained by 2b-RAD of 90 individuals from 2 populations in northern China and 7 populations in southern China were downloaded from NCBI.

An empirical study of LLaMA3 quantization: from LLMs to MLLMs.

The LLaMA family, a collection of foundation language models ranging from 7B to 65B parameters, has become one of the most powerful open-source large language models (LLMs) and the popular LLM backbone of multi-modal large language models (MLLMs), widely used in computer vision and natural language understanding tasks. In particular, LLaMA3 models have recently been released and have achieved impressive performance in various domains with super-large scale pre-training on over 15T tokens of data. Given the wide application of low-bit quantization for LLMs in resource-constrained scenarios, we explore LLaMA3's capabilities when quantized to low bit-width.

Potential drug targets for asthma identified through mendelian randomization analysis.

Background: The emergence of new molecular targeted drugs marks a breakthrough in asthma treatment, particularly for severe cases. Yet, options for moderate-to-severe asthma treatment remain limited, highlighting the urgent need for novel therapeutic drug targets. In this study, we aimed to identify new treatment targets for asthma using the Mendelian randomization method and large-scale genome-wide association data (GWAS).

Identification of pyrimidine metabolism-based molecular subtypes and prognostic signature to predict immune landscape and guide clinical treatment in prostate cancer.

Background: We previously described the enrichment of plasma exosome metabolites in CRPC, PCa, and TFC cohorts, and found significant differences in pyrimidine metabolites. The PMGs is associated with the clinical prognosis of several cancers, but its biological role in PCa is still unclear.

Methods: This study extracted 98 reliable PMGs, and analyzed their somatic mutations, expression levels, and prognostic significance.

Causal effects of retinol and vitamin D on tongue cancer risk: a mendelian randomization study.

Background: Previous studies have indicated that retinol and vitamin D may be associated with the oncogenesis of tongue cancer. Therefore, we aimed to assess the causal relationships of retinol and vitamin D with the risk of tongue cancer using the two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) method.

Methods: Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to retinol, vitamin D and tongue cancer were obtained from the up-to-date genome-wide association study (GWAS) catalogue, which was screened for instrumental variables (IVs).

Protective Effects of Mdivi-1 on Cognition Disturbance Following Sepsis in Mice via Alleviating Microglia Activation and Polarization.

Background: Neuroinflammation is one of the essential pathogeneses of cognitive damage suffering from sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE). Lots of evidences showed the microglia presented mitochondrial fragmentation during SAE. This study investigated the protective effects and novel mechanisms of inhibiting microglia mitochondrial fragmentation via mitochondrial division inhibitor 1 (Mdivi-1) on cognitive damage in SAE.

Nonpolar P-type Conjugated Small Molecules Enable High-Performance Organic Photodetectors for Potential Application in Optical Wireless Communication.

The high responsivity and broad spectral sensitivity of organic photodetectors (OPDs) present a bright future of commercialization. However, the relatively high dark current density still limits its development. Herein, two novel nonpolar p-type conjugated small molecules, NSN and NSSN, are synthesized as interface layers to enhance the performance of the OPDs, which not only can tune energy alignments and increase the reverse charge injection barrier but also can reduce the interfacial trap density.

Enabling High-Voltage and Long Lifespan Sodium Batteries via Single-Crystal Layer-Structured Oxide Cathode Material.

Manganese-based layer-structured transition metal oxides are considered promising cathode materials for future sodium batteries owing to their high energy density potential and industrial feasibility. The grain-related anisotropy and electrode/electrolyte side reactions, however, constrain their energy density and cycling lifespan, particularly at high voltages. Large-sized single-crystal O3-typed Na[NiMnCuTi]O was thus designed and successfully synthesized toward high-voltage and long-lifespan sodium batteries.

AutoGP: An Intelligent Breeding Platform for Enhancing Maize Genomic Selection.

In the face of climate change and the growing global population, there is an urgent need to accelerate the development of high-yielding crop varieties. To this end, vast amounts of genotype-to-phenotype data have been collected, and many machine learning (ML) models have been developed to predict phenotype from a given genotype. However, the requirement for high densities of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and the labor-intensive collection of phenotypic data are hampering the use of these models to advance breeding.

Arachidonic acid synergizes with aspirin preventing myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury and mitigates bleeding risk.

Aims: The therapeutic efficacy of coronary revascularization is compromised by myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (MI/R) injury. Higher levels of circulating arachidonic acid (AA) are reportedly associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease. The cyclooxygenase (COX) pathway metabolizes AA into prostaglandins (PGs) and the platelet-activating thromboxane A2 (TXA2), which is inhibited by aspirin.