Spatiotemporal evolution of drought status and its driving factors attribution in China.

Drought has intensified in China in recent years, and it is urgent to clarify the characteristics of drought evolutions in different regions and its influencing factors. To this end, we selected six main influencing factors and analyzed their impact on drought patterns. The results show that drought is increasing in 78.

Influenza vaccine effectiveness against medically-attended influenza infection in 2023/24 season in Hangzhou, China.

From 2020, influenza viruses circulation was largely affected by the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, notably leading to the extinction of the B/Yamagata lineage and raising questions about the relevance of the quadrivalent influenza vaccine, which includes this lineage. Evaluating vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza infections is important to inform future vaccine programs. A test-negative case-control study was conducted in five tertiary hospitals in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province, China, enrolling medically-attended patients aged >6 months who presented with influenza-like illness (ILI) from October 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024.

The calcium-dependent protein kinase CmaCPK4 regulates sex determination in pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima D.).

Pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima D.) is typically monoecious with individual male and female flowers, and its yield is associated with the degree of femaleness, i.e.

The combination of microwave hyperthermia with TIPE2 impedes the growth of orthotopic colon cancer.

Background: Colon cancer (CC) is the main fatal disease of humans. Microwave hyperthermia (MH) is an adjuvant therapy for diverse cancers. Tumor necrosis factor-α induced protein-8-like 2 (TIPE2) is a tumor suppressor.

Core reference ontology for individualized exercise prescription.

"Exercise is medicine" emphasizes personalized prescriptions for better efficacy. Current guidelines need more support for personalized prescriptions, posing scientific challenges. Facing those challenges, we gathered data from established guidelines, databases, and articles to develop the Exercise Medicine Ontology (EXMO), intending to offer comprehensive support for personalized exercise prescriptions.

Improved self-training-based distant label denoising method for cybersecurity entity extractions.

The task of named entity recognition (NER) plays a crucial role in extracting cybersecurity-related information. Existing approaches for cybersecurity entity extraction predominantly rely on manual labelling data, resulting in labour-intensive processes due to the lack of a cybersecurity-specific corpus. In this paper, we propose an improved self-training-based distant label denoising method for cybersecurity entity extraction.

Application of Biochar-Based Materials for Effective Pollutant Removal in Wastewater Treatment.

With the growth of the global population and the acceleration of industrialization, the problem of water pollution has become increasingly serious, posing a major threat to the ecosystem and human health. Traditional water treatment technologies make it difficult to cope with complex pollution, so the scientific community is actively exploring new and efficient treatment methods. Biochar (BC), as a low-cost, green carbon-based material, exhibits good adsorption and catalytic properties in water treatment due to its porous structure and abundant active functional groups.

An Artificial Neural Network for Image Classification Inspired by the Aversive Olfactory Learning Neural Circuit in Caenorhabditis elegans.

This study introduces an artificial neural network (ANN) for image classification task, inspired by the aversive olfactory learning neural circuit in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Although artificial neural networks (ANNs) have demonstrated remarkable performance in various tasks, they still encounter challenges including excessive parameterization, high training costs and limited generalization capabilities, etc.

The role of IL‑17, IFN‑γ, 4‑1BBL and tumour‑infiltrating lymphocytes in the occurrence, development and prognosis of pancreatic cancer.

Immunotherapy has made progress in the treatment of tumours; however, in patients with pancreatic cancer, immunotherapy has not achieved effective results. The present study investigated changes in the immune microenvironment during tumour development and progression, and the relationship between the immune microenvironment and prognosis, to clarify the mechanism of immune escape in pancreatic cancer. A total of 40 patients with pancreatic cancer (including 22 with stage I-II disease and 18 with stage III-IV disease) and 20 patients with chronic pancreatitis were included in the present study.

Intermittent fasting triggers interorgan communication to suppress hair follicle regeneration.

Intermittent fasting has gained global popularity for its potential health benefits, although its impact on somatic stem cells and tissue biology remains elusive. Here, we report that commonly used intermittent fasting regimens inhibit hair follicle regeneration by selectively inducing apoptosis in activated hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs). This effect is independent of calorie reduction, circadian rhythm alterations, or the mTORC1 cellular nutrient-sensing mechanism.

Self-amplifying mRNA vaccines protect elderly BALB/c mice against a lethal respiratory syncytial virus infection.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) represents a significant threat, being a primary cause of critical lower respiratory tract infections and fatalities among infants and the elderly worldwide, and poses a challenge to global public health. This urgent public health challenge necessitates the swift development of safe and effective vaccines capable of eliciting robust immune responses at low doses. Addressing this need, our study investigated five self-amplifying RNA (sa-mRNA) candidate vaccines that encode the various pre-fusion conformations of the RSV fusion protein.

Influence of Environmental Conditions on the Escape Rates of Biocontained Genetically Engineered Microbes.

The development of genetically engineered microbes (GEMs) has resulted in an urgent need to control their persistence in the environment. The use of biocontainment such as kill switches is a critical approach to prevent the unintended proliferation of GEMs; however, the effectiveness of kill switches─reported as escape rates, i.e.

A Chemical Reprogramming Approach Efficiently Producing Human Retinal Pigment Epithelium Cells for Retinal Disease Therapies.

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) represent a promising cell source for generating functional cells suitable for clinical therapeutic applications, particularly in the context of autologous cell therapies. However, the production of hiPSCs through genetic manipulation, especially involving oncogenes, may raise safety concerns. Furthermore, the complexity and high costs associated with hiPSCs generation have hindered their broad clinical use.

CD55 characterizes regulatory T cells with reduced functionality and is downregulated in rheumatoid arthritis.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the role of CD55 in regulatory T cells (Tregs) and clarify its clinical relevance in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: Flow cytometry was used to examine the expression of Helios and CTLA-4 in CD55 + and CD55- Tregs in mouse peripheral blood and spleen. FoxP3 mice were employed to analyze the in vitro inhibitory function of CD55 + and CD55-Tregs.

Discovery of 6-Fluoro-5-{4-[(5-fluoro-2-methyl-3-oxo-3,4-dihydroquinoxalin-6-yl)methyl]piperazin-1-yl}--methylpyridine-2-carboxamide (AZD9574): A CNS-Penetrant, PARP1-Selective Inhibitor.

PARP inhibitors have attracted considerable interest in drug discovery due to the clinical success of first-generation agents such as olaparib, niraparib, rucaparib, and talazoparib. Their success lies in their ability to trap PARP to DNA; however, first-generation PARP inhibitors were not strictly optimized for trapping nor for selectivity among the PARP enzyme family. Previously we described the discovery of the second-generation PARP inhibitor AZD5305, a selective PARP1-DNA trapper.

Flexible Low-Temperature Zinc Ion Hybrid Capacitor with Ultra-long Cycle Life Based on Fe-MnO Electrode.

Zinc-ion hybrid capacitors (ZIHCs) are expected to become the next generation of energy storage devices, highly anticipated for their battery-like performance and lower cost. However, because of their unmanageable structural deformation and inadequate cycling capabilities, they face significant difficulties and challenges in practical production and applications. In this paper, we developed and assembled a flexible solid-state zinc ion hybrid capacitor, which utilizes a gel electrolyte, activated carbon (AC) as the anode, and porous Fe doped MnO (Fe-MnO) as the cathode.