Deep clustering representation of spatially resolved transcriptomics data using multi-view variational graph auto-encoders with consensus clustering.

The rapid development of spatial transcriptomics (ST) technology has provided unprecedented opportunities to understand tissue relationships and functions within specific spatial contexts. Accurate identification of spatial domains is crucial for downstream spatial transcriptomics analysis. However, effectively combining gene expression data, histological images and spatial coordinate data to identify spatial domains remains a challenge.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy: a half-century historical perspective.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has evolved significantly over fifty years into a powerful analytical technique. This review aims to achieve five main goals. (1) Providing a comprehensive history of SERS's discovery, its experimental and theoretical foundations, its connections to advances in nanoscience and plasmonics, and highlighting collective contributions of key pioneers.

Skin Effect of Nonlinear Optical Responses in Antiferromagnets.

Nonlinear optics plays important roles in the research of fundamental physics and the applications of high-performance optoelectronic devices. The bulk nonlinear optical responses arise from the uniform light absorption in noncentrosymmetric crystals, and hence are usually considered to be the collective phenomena of all atoms. Here we show, in contrast to this common expectation, the nonlinear optical responses in antiferromagnets can be selectively accumulated near the surfaces, representing a skin effect.

Enhanced quasi-meshing hotspot effect integrated embedded attention residual network for culture-free SERS accurate determination of Fusarium spores.

Determination of Fusarium spores is essential for precision control of Fusarium head blight and ensuring agri-food safety. As a highly sensitive real-time detection technique with rich fingerprint information and little influence from water, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been widely applied in the determination of microorganisms. However, fungi determination faces significant challenges including low sensitivity, and poor specificity.

Green Carbon Dots/CaCO/Abamectin Colloidal Pesticide Formulation for Safer and More Effective Pest Management.

An ideal green leaf-deposited pesticide formulation should offer advantages such as good water dispersibility, strong foliar affinity, sustained or controlled release of active ingredients, photostability and rain-fastness, minimal nontarget toxicity, use of nontoxic organic solvents, and degradable adjuvants. In line with this objective, we present green preparation of a colloidal pesticide formulation using optimized lysine-derived carbon dots (LysCDs)-modified CaCO (LysCDs/CaCO) particles as the carrier and abamectin (Abm) as the active ingredient. The loading capacity of abamectin in this colloidal pesticide (LysCDs/CaCO/Abm) is 1.

Solvents with different moisture levels: Critical impact factors on fluorescence-scintillation properties of liquid scintillators.

Liquid scintillator consists of an organic solvent and one or more scintillation solutes, which can emit light pulses after absorbing X- and γ-rays, or high-energy particles. It has the characteristics of strong neutron/γ-ray (n/γ) discrimination, short decay time, unlimited size and low cost, which plays an important role in high-sensitivity and large-scale radiation detection, especially in the construction and safe operation of nuclear facilities. However, the impact of solvent selection and moisture content on the fluorescence-scintillation properties of scintillators has not been adequately investigated in the literature.

Autoregulation of TRF2 through G-Quadruplex-Specific Interaction between the Gene and N-Terminal Domain of the Protein.

Telomere repeat-binding factor 2 (TRF2) is a key component of the shelterin complex which guards the integrity of the telomere. Most of the TRF2 discussed previously was focused on the telomere, and relatively less is discussed on aspects other than that. It is proved that TRF2 also localizes to other potential G-quadruplex-forming sequences among the whole genome besides the telomere.

Histological Validation of Multi-Echo Gradient Echo (MGRE)-Derived Myelin Water Fraction (MWF) at 9.4 T and the Influence of Orientation on Quantification.

Myelin is essential in the nervous system of mammals. As the location and degree of myelin loss can reflect varied pathophysiological status, noninvasive measurement of myelin is of high importance. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique of myelin water fraction (MWF) derived from multi-echo gradient echo (MGRE) sequence is a promising tool for the quantification of myelin content due to the low specific absorption rate (SAR) compared with the spin-echo sequence, time efficiency, and wide availability.

Visual Detection of Methylglyoxal in Multiple Scenarios via NIR-Excitable Reversible Ratiometric Fluorescent Hydrogel Sensor.

Methylglyoxal is considered a key indicator in evaluating wine flavor and quality, as well as an important marker for diabetic pathological syndromes. Rapid and accurate quantitative detection of methylglyoxal is essential in scenarios of wine production standards and human health monitoring. Herein, we report a visual method for detecting methylglyoxal via an NIR-excitable reversible ratiometric fluorescent hydrogel sensor, where NIR-excited upconversion nanoparticles serve as energy donors and eosin B acts as the energy acceptor, together forming an integrated ratiometric nanophotonic probe that ensures the accuracy of detection without being affected by various background fluorescence interference in different scenarios.

Robust thoracic CT image registration with environmental adaptability using dynamic Welsch's function and hierarchical structure-awareness strategy.

Background: Robust registration of thoracic computed tomography (CT) images is strongly impacted by motion during acquisition, high-density objects, and noise, particularly in lower-dose acquisitions. Despite the enhanced registration speed achieved by popular deep learning (DL) methods, their robustness is often neglected. This study aimed to develop a robust thoracic CT image registration algorithm to address the aforementioned issues.

RRM1 promotes homologous recombination and radio/chemo-sensitivity via enhancing USP11 and E2F1-mediated RAD51AP1 transcription.

Ribonucleotide reductase M1 (RRM1), the catalytic subunit of ribonucleotide reductase, plays a pivotal role in converting ribonucleotides (NTP) into deoxyribonucleotides (dNTP), essential for DNA replication and repair. Elevated RRM1 expression is associated with various human cancers, correlating with poorer prognosis and reduced overall survival rates. Our previous study found that RRM1 will enter the nucleus to promote DNA damage repair.

Selective cesium extraction from highly saline solution using hybrid capacitive deionization with zinc-doped manganese hexacyanoferrate electrode.

Recently, hybrid capacitive deionization (HCDI) has garnered significant attention for its potential in the selective extraction of cesium (Cs) from radioactive wastewater and salt lakes, which is crucial for resolving the supply-demand imbalance of cesium resources and eliminating radioactive contamination. However, developing HCDI electrodes capable of effectively separating and extracting Cs remains a significant challenge. In this work, we proposed an innovative strategy involving the doping of inactive metal ions to develop zinc-doped manganese hexacyanoferrate (ZMFC) as an HCDI cathode.

Developing Multiple Media Approach to Investigate Reproducible Characteristic VOCs of Lung Cancer Cells.

Cellular volatile organic compound (VOC) detection is crucial for studying lung cancer biomarkers. However, the reported VOC biomarkers from the same cell line seem to be inconsistent across different research groups. It is possibly related to the variation in culture media, and the result obtained by a conventional single medium approach (SMA) depends on what medium is used in the cell experiment.

Hypocrellin A from an ethnic medicinal fungus protects against NLRP3-driven gout in mice by suppressing inflammasome activation.

Abnormal activation of NLRP3 inflammasome causes the progression of gout, and no small-molecule inhibitor of NLRP3 has been approved yet for clinical use. In this study we established a nigericin-induced inflammasome activation cell model for screening of a natural product library by measuring IL-1β secretion in cell supernatants. Among 432 compounds tested, we found that hypocrellin A (HA), one of the major active components of a traditional ethnic medicinal fungus Hypocrella bambusea in the Northwest Yunnan of China, exhibited the highest inhibition on IL-1β production (IC = 0.

Meniscus injury prediction model based on metric learning.

A meniscus injury is a prevalent condition affecting the knee joint. The construction of a subjective prediction model for meniscus injury represents a potentially invaluable diagnostic tool for physicians. Nevertheless, given the variability of pathological manifestations among individual patients, machine learning-based models may produce errors when attempting to predict specific medical records.

Dose optimization of extended collimators in boron neutron capture therapy.

In this paper, we propose the design of extending collimators aimed at reducing the radiation dose received by patients with normal tissues and protecting organs at risk in Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT). Three types of extended collimators are studied: Type 1, which is a traditional design; Type 2, which is built upon Type 1 by incorporating additional polyethylene material containing lithium fluoride (PE(LiF)); Type 3, which adds lead (Pb) to Type 1. We evaluated the dose distribution characteristics of the above-extended collimators using Monte Carlo methods simulations under different configurations: in air, in a homogeneous phantom, and a humanoid phantom model.

Improving Energy Resolution of CdSe-Based γ-Ray Detectors through Asymmetric Schottky Contact Engineering Using Oxygen Plasma Treatment.

When creating a Schottky contact to suppress the leakage current of semiconductor γ-ray detectors and improve their energy resolution, it is successfully employed the fact that the formation of a Schottky barrier is determined not only by the difference in the electrode and semiconductor work functions but also affected by the semiconductor surface state. Oxygen plasma (OP) treatment has been used to modify the surface states of CdSe single crystals (SCs) prior to the Au electrode deposition, thereby creating a Schottky contact at the metal-semiconductor interface. The -type Schottky contact formation has been confirmed by the - characteristics and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy analysis.

Identification of a novel anti-ROR1 nanobody through phage display and its biochemical characterization.

In this study, we aimed to develop nanobodies targeting receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (ROR1) for cancer diagnosis and therapy. We immunized alpacas with ROR1, extracted RNA from their blood, and converted it to complementary DNA (cDNA) to amplify the VHH (variable domain of heavy-chain antibodies) sequence. This sequence was used to construct a phage library with a capacity of 8 ×10.

Synergistic inhibitory effect of atmospheric pressure plasma and berberine on non‑small cell lung cancer cells via inducing apoptosis.

Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a type of lung cancer, the incidence and mortality rate have been high, and the use of monotherapy is easy to make patients develop tolerance. Atmospheric pressure plasma (APP) is an emerging technology for killing cancer cells in recent years, and combination of berberine (BBR) mechanism has not been fully elucidated for NSCLC. The article's primary goal is to investigate the effect of combination on NSCLC and its associated characterization.

Development of tough and stiff elastomers by leveraging hydrophilic-hydrophobic supramolecular segment interaction.

The presence of supramolecular interactions plays a crucial role in the formation of resilient multifunctional elastomers. Nevertheless, achieving elastomers with fabulous mechanical properties remains a significant challenge due to the incomplete understanding of the underlying principles. In this study, we have presented a simple yet efficient approach for manipulating the microstructure, resulting in a significant enhancement of the mechanical properties of the elastomers.

Dysregulation of Fatty Acid Metabolism in Breast Cancer and Its Targeted Therapy.

Breast cancer has become the number one cancer worldwide, there are challenges in its prevention, diagnosis and treatment, especially the pathogenesis of triple negative breast cancer has not been clear and the treatment dilemma of metastatic breast cancer. Metabolic reprogramming is currently considered to be one of the hallmarks of cancer, and metabolic alterations in breast cancer, including enhanced glycolysis, tricarboxylic acid cycle activity, glutamine catabolism, and fatty acid biosynthesis, are manifested differently in different breast cancer subtypes and have a complex relationship with tumor growth, metastasis, death, and drug resistance. At present, inhibitors of fatty acid synthesis and oxidation related enzymes have a certain effect in the treatment of breast cancer.

Mechanistic insights into CO reduction to CO by group 5 transition metal monoxide cations.

The reduction of carbon dioxide (CO) by transition-metal oxides in the gas phase serves as a unique model system for understanding transition metal-based catalytic systems in CO utilization. In this work, thermochemistry and reaction mechanisms attributed to the two-state reactivity scenario of CO reduction by group 5 transition metal monoxide cations are extensively investigated using quantum chemical calculations. The interaction between the VO cation with CO exhibits an endothermic feature, whereas the reaction involving the TaO cation showcases a more pronounced exothermic behavior than the NbO cation, in accordance with previously reported reaction rates.