Calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II α and β differentially regulate mammalian sleep.

While sleep is important, our understanding of its molecular mechanisms is limited. Over the last two decades, protein kinases including Ca/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) α and β have been implicated in sleep regulation. Of all the known mouse genetic mutants, the biggest changes in sleep is reported to be observed in adult mice with sgRNAs for Camk2b injected into their embryos: sleep is reduced by approximately 120 min (mins) over 24 h (hrs).

Calcineurin: An essential regulator of sleep revealed by biochemical, chemical biological, and genetic approaches.

Research into mechanisms underlying sleep traditionally relies on electrophysiology and genetics. Because sleep can only be measured on whole animals by behavioral observations and physical means, no sleep research was initiated by biochemical and chemical biological approaches. We used phosphorylation sites of kinases important for sleep as targets for biochemical and chemical biological approaches.

Low-cost 100 G PON based on a residual optical carrier for carrier recovery.

We experimentally demonstrate a cost-effective dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK) coherent passive optical network (PON) system that operates at 100 Gbits/s/λ. This system utilizes distributed feedback lasers (DFBs) and a carrier recovery algorithm facilitated by a bifunctional frequency-domain pilot tone (FPT). To reduce costs in coherent PON implementations, low-cost DFBs are employed as the sole light sources, replacing the more expensive external cavity lasers (ECLs) at both the optical line terminal (OLT) and the optical network units (ONUs).

New Design Scheme for and Application of Fresnel Lens for Broadband Photonics Terahertz Communication.

In terahertz communication systems, lens antennas used in transceivers are basically plano-convex dielectric lenses. The size of a plano-convex lens increases as the aperture increases, and thinner lenses have longer focal lengths. Through theory and simulation, we designed a Fresnel lens suitable for the terahertz band to meet the requirements of large aperture and short focal length, and simulated the performance, advantages, and disadvantages of the terahertz Fresnel lens.

One-shot pre-equalization scheme based on frequency pilot tones for bandwidth-limited IM/DD DCI transmission.

O-band intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) transmission offers a promising solution for high-speed data center interconnects (DCIs). Additionally, the introduction of bismuth-doped fiber amplifiers (BDFAs) results in less nonlinear impact and a higher link budget compared with semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). However, with these key issues resolved, the system bandwidth limitation emerges as the next critical bottleneck for high-speed O-band DCI transmission that limits overall performance.

Kalman filtering-based decision threshold dynamic optimization in photonics-aided millimeter-wave systems.

We propose a novel, to the best of our knowledge, decision threshold dynamic optimization (DTDO) method based on Kalman filtering to mitigate the nonlinear effect impacts of the time-domain jitter and saturation distortion on a bit error rate (BER) performance. This dynamic optimization method was validated in a photonics-aided W-band millimeter-wave system. Compared to nonlinear algorithms and clustering classification methods, DTDO offers lower complexity and superior dynamic tracking capabilities when optimizing the BER performance in photonics-aided systems.

466.4-Gbit/s PCS-64QAM wireless transmission enhanced by dual-polarized SISO link and vector-quantized variational autoencoders.

We successfully demonstrate photonics-assisted single-carrier 466.4 Gbit/s wireless transmission over 20 km SSMF and 6 m single-input single-output (SISO) wireless delivery at 92.5 GHz.

Photonics-aided exceeding 200-Gb/s wireless data transmission over outdoor long-range 2 × 2 MIMO THz links at 300 GHz.

Outdoor long-range terahertz (THz) communications often come at the expense of transmission rate. Moreover, the practicability of the single polarization optical/THz link, which is commonly used in the previous long-range THz demonstrations based on photonics, is extremely limited by the following two fatal defects. One is relying on active polarization control, and the other is not supporting the transparent bridging of optical polarization division multiplexed (PDM) signals for mature coherent optical communication networks.

Multidimensional QPSK symbol modulation scheme based on random sequence extraction for D-band photonics-aided wireless communication.

We propose a multidimensional (MD) quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) symbol modulation and demodulation scheme based on random sequence extraction, which overcomes the limitations of traditional QPSK signals in performing probabilistic shaping. Unlike probabilistic shaping (PS) and geometric shaping (GS), our approach does not require modifications to the existing digital signal processing (DSP) architecture; it only necessitates the addition of sequence modulation and demodulation modules. Additionally, the source entropy (SE) can be flexibly adjusted.

Toripalimab Plus Chemotherapy as a First-Line Therapy for Extensive-Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer: The Phase 3 EXTENTORCH Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) have poor prognoses and unmet medical needs.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of toripalimab plus etoposide and platinum-based chemotherapy (EP) vs placebo plus EP as a first-line treatment for patients with ES-SCLC.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 randomized clinical trial (EXTENTORCH study) enrolled patients from September 26, 2019, to May 20, 2021, and was conducted at 49 sites in China.

Microbubble tracking based on partial smoothing-based adaptive generalized labelled Multi-Bernoulli filter for super-resolution imaging.

Super-resolution ultrasound (SRUS) can image the vasculature at microscopic resolution according to microbubble (MB) localization, with velocity vector maps obtained based on MB tracking information. High MB concentrations can reduce the acquisition time of SRUS imaging, however adjacent and intersecting vessels are difficult to distinguish, thus decreasing resolution. Low acquisition frame rates affect the precision of flow velocity estimation.

Inhibition of HDAC8 mitigates AKI by reducing DNA damage and promoting homologous recombination repair.

Nephrotoxicity is a major side effect of platinum-based antineoplastic drugs, and there is currently no available therapeutic intervention. Our study suggests that targeting histone deacetylase 8 could be a potential treatment for cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). In a murine model of AKI induced by cisplatin, the administration of PCI-34051, a selective inhibitor of HDAC8, resulted in significant improvement in renal function and reduction in renal tubular damage and apoptosis.

Combined Metabolomics and Network Pharmacology Analysis Reveal the Effect of Rootstocks on Anthocyanins, Lipids, and Potential Pharmacological Ingredients of Tarroco Blood Orange ( L. Osbeck).

The benefits of citrus fruits are strongly associated with their secondary metabolites. In this study, we conducted widely targeted metabolomics analyses to compare the variability of the ingredients in four scion-rootstock combinations. A total of 376 differential metabolites were obtained by a multivariate statistical analysis, and a KEGG pathway analysis showed that the enriched metabolic pathways were mainly related to the biosynthesis of flavonoids as well as lipid metabolism.

Digital mobile fronthaul scheme based on diff-delta-sigma modulation and OCT precoding.

In this Letter, we experimentally demonstrate digital mobile fronthaul (MFH) for 65536 quadrature amplitude modulation (65536-QAM) signals based on a diff-delta-sigma modulation (D-DSM) scheme with orthogonal circulant matrix transform (OCT) precoding. By combining the D-DSM scheme with OCT precoding, we successfully solved the problem of uneven distribution of in-band quantization noise (IBN) while bringing about a quantization SNR gain of about 1.5 dB.

The miR-199a-5p/HIF1α dual-regulatory axis participates in hypoxia-induced aggressive phenotypes of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cells.

Background: The late-stage diagnosis and distant metastasis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remain a huge challenge to clinical treatment for OSCC. During the past decades, targeting glycolysis-inducing factors becomes an attractive new strategy in OSCC therapies.

Methods: OSCC cells were stimulated with hypoxia or transfected with agomir-199a-5p, antagomir-199a-5p, and siRNA for HIF1A, cell proliferation was detected by CCK-8 assay; HIF1α, GLUT1, HK2 and LDHA expression levels were examined with western blot; miR-199 expression was determined with RT-PCR; cell migratory and invasive abilities were examined using wound healing and transwell assays; the lactate and glucose in culture medium were also determined.

Gibberellic acid targeting ZBTB16 reduces NF-κB dependent inflammatory stress in sepsis-induced neuroinflammation.

Objective: Sepsis is frequently complicated by neuroinflammation. Gibberellic acid (GA3) is recognized for its anti-inflammatory properties. In this study, our objective was to investigate whether GA3 could alleviate Nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) -dependent inflammatory stress in sepsis-induced neuroinflammation.

Toxicology study profile of Nicotinamide mononucleotide after acute and 90-day sub chronic dosing in Wistar rats and mutagenicity tests.

Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) is an intermediate in biosynthesis pathway of Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), an essential cofactor in all living cells involved in fundamental biological processes. Evidence stemming from recent studies have unveiled numerous roles of NAD+ metabolism on aging, longevity, delaying the progression of age-related diseases. A three-study genetic toxicity (genetox) battery (bacterial mutagenesis, in vitro cytogenetics, and in vivo mammalian test) is usually required to confirm safety of a new dietary ingredient and this study showed the data from in vivo mutagenicity test for the first time.