Manipulation in root-associated microbiome via carbon nanosol for plant growth improvements.

Background: Modulating the microbiome with nanomaterials has been proposed to improve plant growth, and reduce reliance on external inputs. Carbon Nanosol (CNS) was attracted for its potential to improve plant productivity. However, the mechanism between CNS and rhizosphere microorganisms remained largely elusive.

Environmental simulation and refrigeration demand analysis for shield tunnel construction in hot summer and cold winter regions.

The thermal hazards generated during the tunnel boring machine construction process significantly impact the physical and mental health of personnel. A field test was conducted on the tunnel of Metro Line 1 in Changsha, China, where the average temperature in the work zone reached up to 33.16 °C, and the air velocity was generally below 0.

[Changes in Serum , PCⅢ, SE-CAD Levels in AML Patients after Chemotherapy with DCAG Regimen and Their Relationship with Prognosis].

Objective: To investigate the changes in serum homeobox A9 ( ), soluble E-cadherin (SE-CAD) and type Ⅲ procollagen (PCⅢ) levels in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients after chemotherapy with DCAG regimen and their relationship with prognosis.

Methods: The clinical data of 80 patients with relapsed/refractory AML diagnosed and treated in our hospital from March 2018 to December 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. According to different treatment regimen, the patients were divided into DCAG group (=40) and CAG group (=40).

Deformation and Annealing Behavior of Cr Coating Prepared by Pack-Cementation on the Surface of Austenitic Stainless Steel.

In this paper, a Cr coating was prepared by induction heating and pack-cementation chromizing on AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel. Then, the cold-rolling deformation and annealing treatment were introduced to refine the coarse matrix grains caused by pack-chromizing and improve the overall performance of 304 austenitic stainless steel. The phase composition, element distribution, and microstructure of the coating were carefully characterized.

Efficacy of intramedullary bridge fixation for midshaft clavicle fractures: a retrospective analysis of a novel technique.

Background: The aim of this study was to explore the efficacy of a novel intramedullary fixation technique using the ortho-bridge system (OBS) for midshaft clavicle fractures.

Methods: A total of 63 patients were included in this study: 35 underwent plate internal fixation (LP group) and 28 underwent OBS intramedullary fixation (OBS group). Surgical time, intraoperative blood loss, incision length, fracture healing time, removal of the internal fixation agent, visual analog scale (VAS) score for shoulder pain, Constant-Murley shoulder score and complication occurrence were compared between the two groups.

Genome-wide identification of the N-methyladenosine regulatory genes reveals NtFIP37B increases drought resistance of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.).

Background: N-methyladenosine (mA) is one of the common internal RNA modifications found in eukaryotes. The mA modification can regulate various biological processes in organisms through the modulation of alternative splicing, alternative polyadenylation, folding, translation, localization, transport, and decay of multiple types of RNA, without altering the nucleotide sequence. The three components involved in mA modification, namely writer, eraser, and reader, mediate the abundance of RNA mA modification through complex collaborative actions.

Genome-wide identification and analysis of WD40 proteins reveal that NtTTG1 enhances drought tolerance in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum).

Background: WD40 proteins, which are highly prevalent in eukaryotes, play important roles in plant development and stress responses. However, systematic identification and exploration of WD40 proteins in tobacco have not yet been conducted.

Results: In this study, a total of 399 WD40 regulatory genes were identified in common tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum).

A Novel Multi-Functional Fluorescence Probe for the Detection of Al/Zn/Cd and its Practical Applications.

A novel multi-functional fluorescence probe HMIC based on hydrazide Schiff base has been successfully synthesized and characterized. It can distinguish Al/Zn/Cd in ethanol, in which fluorescence emission with different colors (blue for Al, orange for Zn, and green for Cd) were presented. The limits of detection of HMIC towards three ions were calculated from the titration curve as 7.

JNKs protect from cholestatic liver disease progression by modulating Apelin signalling.

Background & Aims: Cholestatic liver injury is associated with c-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNK) activation in distinct cell types. Its hepatocyte-specific function during cholestasis, however, has not yet been established. Therefore, in our present study, we investigated the role of JNK1/2 during cholestasis and dissected its hepatocyte-specific function.

Impact of PNPLA3 I148M on alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency-dependent liver disease progression.

Background And Aims: Genetic risk factors are major determinants of chronic liver disease (CLD) progression. Patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 (PNPLA3) I148M polymorphism and alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) E342K variant, termed PiZ, are major modifiers of metabolic CLD. Both variants are known to affect metabolic CLD through increased endoplasmic reticulum stress, but their combined effect on CLD progression remains largely unknown.

Intermittent Fasting Primes the Tumor Microenvironment and Improves Nanomedicine Delivery in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Fasting has many health benefits, including reduced chemotherapy toxicity and improved efficacy. It is unclear how fasting affects the tumor microenvironment (TME) and tumor-targeted drug delivery. Here the effects of intermittent (IF) and short-term (STF) fasting are investigated on tumor growth, TME composition, and liposome delivery in allogeneic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) mouse models.

Colitis ameliorates cholestatic liver disease via suppression of bile acid synthesis.

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a chronic cholestatic liver disease characterized by chronic inflammation and progressive fibrosis of the biliary tree. The majority of PSC patients suffer from concomitant inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which has been suggested to promote disease development and progression. However, the molecular mechanisms by which intestinal inflammation may aggravate cholestatic liver disease remain incompletely understood.

Long-term hypercaloric diet exacerbates metabolic liver disease in PNPLA3 I148M animals.

Background & Aims: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a major health burden associated with the metabolic syndrome leading to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and ultimately liver cancer. In humans, the PNPLA3 I148M polymorphism of the phospholipase patatin-like phospholipid domain containing protein 3 (PNPLA3) has a well-documented impact on metabolic liver disease. In this study, we used a mouse model mimicking the human PNPLA3 I148M polymorphism in a long-term high fat diet (HFD) experiment to better define its role for NAFLD progression.

A novel digital biomarker of sarcopenia in frail elderly: New combination of gait parameters under dual-task walking.

Background: Frailty caused by deterioration in multiple physiological systems has led to a significant increase in adverse events such as falls, disability, and death in frail older people. Similar to frailty, sarcopenia, defined as loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, is tightly related to mobility disorders, falls, and fractures. With population aging, co-occurrences of frailty and sarcopenia are increasingly common in the elderly, which are more deleterious for the health and independence of older adults.

Effects of smoking on the severity and transmission of pulmonary tuberculosis: A hospital-based case control study.

Introduction: There is a high incidence of both smoking and tuberculosis (TB) in China. This study examined the risk factors for severe pulmonary TB (PTB) and positive tubercle bacilli in sputum.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective case-control study in a tertiary hospital from January 2017 to December 2018 ( = 917).

The relationship between the interactive behavior of industry-university-research subjects and the cooperative innovation performance: The mediating role of knowledge absorptive capacity.

Introduction: Industry-university-research cooperation innovation, which is often characterized by resource complementarity and the sharing technology, has become one of the most preferred innovation cooperation methods for enterprises. However, various problems still occur in the process of industry-university-research cooperations, such as poor innovation performance and difficulty in sustaining cooperation. Existing studies mostly focus on the macroscopic perspectives of geographic location, cooperation scale, concentration, and diversification of industry-university-research cooperation subjects, and fail to explore the microscopic behavioral mechanisms.

Biomechanical study of the stiffness of the femoral locking compression plate of an external fixator for lower tibial fractures.

Background: A locking compression plate (LCP) of the distal femur is used as an external fixator for lower tibial fractures. However, in clinical practice, the technique lacks a standardized approach and a strong biomechanical basis for its stability.

Methods: In this paper, internal tibial LCP fixator (Group IT-44), external tibial LCP fixator (Group ET-44), external distal femoral LCP fixator (Group EF-44, group EF-33, group EF-22), and conventional external fixator (Group CEF-22) frames were used to fix unstable fracture models of the lower tibial segment, and anatomical studies were performed to standardize the operation as well as to assess the biomechanical stability and adjustability of the distal femoral LCP external fixator by biomechanical experiments.

The mean diffusivity of forceps minor is useful to distinguish amnestic mild cognitive impairment from mild cognitive impairment caused by cerebral small vessel disease.

Objectives: In recent years, the desire to make a more fine-grained identification on mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has become apparent, the etiological diagnosis of MCI in particular. Nevertheless, new methods for the etiological diagnosis of MCI are currently insufficient. The objective of this study was to establish discriminative measures for amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) and MCI caused by cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD).

Stability for IT2 T-S fuzzy systems under alternate event-triggered control.

In this paper, an alternate event-triggered control is proposed to achieve stability of interval type-2 Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems. Comparing with the existing literature, this new control strategy displays an almost complete aperiodic feature which eliminates the conservativeness caused by time-triggered property of the traditional aperiodically intermittent control. Moreover, with two events being triggered alternately in this control strategy through examining two predetermined conditions, the efficiency of control can be further improved and the resources consumption can be greatly reduced.

First-Principles Study on the Adsorption Behavior of O on the Surface of Plutonium Gallium System.

To deeply understand the adsorption process of oxygen on the surface of a plutonium gallium system and to reveal the chemical reaction mechanism at the initial stage of oxidative corrosion on the surface of plutonium gallium alloy at a theoretical level, the adsorption behavior of oxygen molecules on the surface of a plutonium gallium system was investigated by a first-principles approach based on density flooding theory. The results show that the molecular bond length increases and finally breaks when the surface oxygen molecule is adsorbed on the surface of plutonium gallium system and dissociates into two atomic states. The most likely adsorption position of oxygen molecules on the surface of plutonium gallium system is hole-site vertical adsorption with the adsorption energy size of 10.

Bipartite synchronization of signed networks via aperiodically intermittent control based on discrete-time state observations.

In this paper, bipartite synchronization of signed networks with stochastic disturbances via aperiodically intermittent control is investigated. The aperiodically intermittent control presented is based on discrete-time state observations rather than continuous-time ones. To formulate signed networks and exhibit the competitive relation, a structurally balanced signed network is built and all the units are divided into two subcommunities.

Stabilization of Discrete-Time Stochastic Delayed Neural Networks by Intermittent Control.

This article investigates the stabilization of discrete-time stochastic neural networks with time-varying delay via aperiodically intermittent control (AIC). A comprehensive analysis of the stabilization of discrete-time delayed systems via AIC is provided, where the Lyapunov function method and the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional method are investigated, respectively. Then, three stabilization criteria are given, which extend previous works from the continuous-time framework to the discrete-time one, and the average activation time ratio (AATR) of AIC is estimated.

Meso-substituted boron-dipyrromethene compounds: synthesis, tunable solid-state emission, and application in blue-driven LEDs.

In this work, we depict the synthesis and characterization of a series of meso-substituted boron-dipyrromethene (BODIPY) compounds. Their optical and electrochemical properties were investigated systematically. All these compounds exhibited intense absorption bands in the ultraviolet (UV) and visible regions, which arise from the π-π* transitions based on their BODIPY core segments.