Mounting evidence has demonstrated the vital importance of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and exosomes in the formation of the premetastatic niche. However, the molecular mechanisms by which ...tumor-derived exosomal miRNAs interact with TAMs underlying premetastatic niche formation and colorectal cancer liver metastasis (CRLM) remain largely unknown.
Transmission electron microscopy and differential ultracentrifugation were used to verify the existence of exosomes. In vivo and in vitro assays were used to identify roles of exosomal miR-934. RNA pull-down assay, dual-luciferase reporter assay, etc. were applied to clarify the mechanism of exosomal miR-934 regulated the crosstalk between CRC cells and M2 macrophages.
In the present study, we first demonstrated the aberrant overexpression of miR-934 in colorectal cancer (CRC), especially in CRLM, and its correlation with the poor prognosis of CRC patients. Then, we verified that CRC cell-derived exosomal miR-934 induced M2 macrophage polarization by downregulating PTEN expression and activating the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Moreover, we revealed that hnRNPA2B1 mediated miR-934 packaging into exosomes of CRC cells and then transferred exosomal miR-934 into macrophages. Interestingly, polarized M2 macrophages could induce premetastatic niche formation and promote CRLM by secreting CXCL13, which activated a CXCL13/CXCR5/NFκB/p65/miR-934 positive feedback loop in CRC cells.
These findings indicate that tumor-derived exosomal miR-934 can promote CRLM by regulating the crosstalk between CRC cells and TAMs. These findings reveal a tumor and TAM interaction in the metastatic microenvironment mediated by tumor-derived exosomes that affects CRLM. The present study also provides a theoretical basis for secondary liver cancer.
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Routes for advancing SnTe thermoelectrics Chen, Zhiyu; Guo, Xuming; Zhang, Fujie ...
Journal of materials chemistry. A, Materials for energy and sustainability,
01/2020, Volume:
8, Issue:
33
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Conventional PbTe-based semiconductors have been leading the developments in the thermoelectrics community due to their rich capabilities in optimizing the electronic and phonon transport properties. ...However, growing environmental concerns related to Pb toxicity is guiding thermoelectrics research toward the lead-free route. As an alternative analog of PbTe, SnTe has recently attracted increasing research interest for thermoelectric energy conversion. The key challenges for enhancing the thermoelectric performance of SnTe to be comparable with that of p-type PbTe include decreases in the carrier concentration, energy offset between the light valence band (L band) and heavy valence band (Σ band), and lattice thermal conductivity. In this review, the recent progresses made in SnTe alloys are first outlined. Based on the insights gained into the intrinsic nonstoichiometry as well as the electronic and phonon transport properties of SnTe materials, fundamental and successful strategies focusing on confronting the challenges faced by figure-of-merit
zT
enhancement in SnTe are discussed and highlighted, aiming at providing a straightforward overview on the underlying physics of these effective strategies. Eventually, future challenges and outlook are summarized for boosting advancements in environment-friendly SnTe thermoelectric materials.
Effective strategies focusing on improving the thermoelectric performance of environment-friendly SnTe alloys.
Contrast enhancement has an important role in image processing applications. Conventional contrast enhancement techniques either often fail to produce satisfactory results for a broad variety of ...low-contrast images, or cannot be automatically applied to different images, because their parameters must be specified manually to produce a satisfactory result for a given image. This paper describes a new automatic method for contrast enhancement. The basic procedure is to first group the histogram components of a low-contrast image into a proper number of bins according to a selected criterion, then redistribute these bins uniformly over the grayscale, and finally ungroup the previously grouped gray-levels. Accordingly, this new technique is named gray-level grouping (GLG). GLG not only produces results superior to conventional contrast enhancement techniques, but is also fully automatic in most circumstances, and is applicable to a broad variety of images. An extension of GLG, selective GLG (SGLG), and its variations will be discussed in Part II of this paper. SGLG selectively groups and ungroups histogram components to achieve specific application purposes, such as eliminating background noise, enhancing a specific segment of the histogram, and so on. The extension of GLG to color images will also be discussed in Part II.
Falling nets are a type of fishing gear that appeared and developed rapidly in the northern of South China Sea in the early 1990s. We have developed Light-emitting diode (LED) fishing lamps to ...replace metal halide (MH) lamps that reduce fuel consumption without reducing the catches. We conducted marine light-fishing experiments in the northern South China Sea during September 20 to 26, 2019 and August 29 to 31, 2021. The results in the first fishing experiment show that there is no significant change in catch of the falling-net fishing vessel when the white LED lamps (with a total power of 36 kW) were used instead of MH lamps (with a total power of 120 kW). Coleoidea catches of the falling-net fishing vessel increased significantly when white LED lamps (with a total power of 36 kW) and cyan LED lamps (with a total power of 6.0 kW) were used. The results in the second fishing experiment show that the total weight of catches of the cyan LED fishing lamps is more than that of the white LED fishing lamps, and the cyan LED light can attract Penaeus merguiensis, Thryssa dussumieri and Sardinella zunasi more effectively than the white LED light.
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The key module for autonomous mobile robots is path planning and obstacle avoidance. Global path planning based on known maps has been effectively achieved. Local path planning in unknown dynamic ...environments is still very challenging due to the lack of detailed environmental information and unpredictability. This paper proposes an end-to-end local path planner n-step dueling double DQN with reward-based ϵ-greedy (RND3QN) based on a deep reinforcement learning framework, which acquires environmental data from LiDAR as input and uses a neural network to fit Q-values to output the corresponding discrete actions. The bias is reduced using n-step bootstrapping based on deep Q-network (DQN). The ϵ-greedy exploration-exploitation strategy is improved with the reward value as a measure of exploration, and an auxiliary reward function is introduced to increase the reward distribution of the sparse reward environment. Simulation experiments are conducted on the gazebo to test the algorithm's effectiveness. The experimental data demonstrate that the average total reward value of RND3QN is higher than that of algorithms such as dueling double DQN (D3QN), and the success rates are increased by 174%, 65%, and 61% over D3QN on three stages, respectively. We experimented on the turtlebot3 waffle pi robot, and the strategies learned from the simulation can be effectively transferred to the real robot.
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A compact, accurate, and bitwidth-programmable in-memory computing (IMC) static random-access memory (SRAM) macro, named CAP-RAM, is presented for energy-efficient convolutional neural network (CNN) ...inference. It leverages a novel charge-domain multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) mechanism and circuitry to achieve superior linearity under process variations compared to conventional IMC designs. The adopted semi-parallel architecture efficiently stores filters from multiple CNN layers by sharing eight standard 6T SRAM cells with one charge-domain MAC circuit. Moreover, up to six levels of bit-width of weights with two encoding schemes and eight levels of input activations are supported. A 7-bit charge-injection SAR (ciSAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) getting rid of sample and hold (S&H) and input/reference buffers further improves the overall energy efficiency and throughput. A 65-nm prototype validates the excellent linearity and computing accuracy of CAP-RAM. A single <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">512\times 128 </tex-math></inline-formula> macro stores a complete pruned and quantized CNN model to achieve 98.8% inference accuracy on the MNIST data set and 89.0% on the CIFAR-10 data set, with a 573.4-giga operations per second (GOPS) peak throughput and a 49.4-tera operations per second (TOPS)/W energy efficiency.
Increasing studies have shown that circular RNAs (circRNAs) participate in the pathogenesis and progression of many diseases. However, the function of circRNAs in obstructive sleep apnea ...(OSA)-induced pancreatic damage has not been fully elucidated. In this study, the altered circRNA profiles in a chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) mouse model were investigated, aiming to provide novel clues for delineating the underlying mechanisms of OSA-induced pancreatic injury.
A CIH mouse model was established. circRNA microarray was then applied to profile circRNA expression in pancreatic samples from CIH groups and controls. Our preliminary findings were validated by qRT-PCR. Subsequently, GO and KEGG pathway analyses were carried out to annotate the biological functions of target genes of circRNAs. Lastly, we constructed a circRNA-miRNA-mRNA (ceRNA) network according to the predicted circRNA-miRNA and miRNA-mRNA pairs.
A total of 26 circRNAs were identified to be differentially expressed, with 5 downregulated and 21 upregulated in the CIH model mice. Six selected circRNAs were preliminarily used to confirm the results by qRT-PCR, which were consistent with microarray. GO and pathway analysis indicated that numerous mRNAs were involved in the MAPK signaling pathway. The ceRNA analysis displayed the broad potentials of the dysregulated circRNAs to modulate their target genes by acting as miRNAs sponges.
Taken together, our study first revealed the specific expression profile of circRNAs in CIH-induced pancreatic injury, which suggested a novel focus for investigating the molecular mechanism of OSA-induced pancreatic damage through modulating circRNAs.
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In deep mine, coal is usually subjected to coupled high gas pressure and static compressive stress. The coal may be also subjected to dynamic loading due to the sudden fracture of hard roof during ...mining. In our previous study, the behaviour of gas-containing coals with initial gas pressure was investigated subjected to uniaxial static compression. In this study, the dynamic compressive behaviour of gas-containing coals with gas pressure and static axial preloading is investigated using a modified Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) system. The dynamic behaviours of gas-containing coals under SHPB tests are studied by varying initial gas pressure and axial static preloading. The testing results include strain measurements and energy dissipation. In addition, the wave impedance method is used to quantify damage of gas-containing coals under coupled gas-static-dynamic load. It is found that the dynamic compressive strength of gas-containing coal under coupled load decreases with the increasing initial gas pressure. The gas-containing coal with higher gas pressure and axial static preloading is more vulnerable to dynamic loading. The findings can be applied to mining design or support design in deep mining of high-gas-containing coal seam.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Coloring in apple fruit due to anthocyanin accumulation is inhibited by high temperature; however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In the present study, total anthocyanin and cyanidin ...3-galactoside contents were determined and compared between cv. 'Redchief Delicious' apple fruits at 25 °C and 35 °C treatments. The high temperature (35 °C) treatment substantially decreased total anthocyanin and cyanidin 3-galactoside contents. The transcriptomes of 25 °C- and 35 °C-treated apples were analyzed by high-throughput RNA sequencing. A total of 8354 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected at four time points corresponding to the two temperature treatments. The up-regulated DEGs were annotated using GO as well as KEGG databases. A network module of 528 genes (including 21 transcription factors) most associated with the total anthocyanin and cyanidin 3-galactoside contents was constructed by weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA). In the WGCNA module, we unearthed a LOB domain-containing gene designated as
. The expression of
was sharply up-regulated by high temperature and negatively correlated with the total anthocyanin and cyanidin 3-galactoside contents. Overexpression of
in apple fruit and calli decreased the expression of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes, such as
,
,
,
,
, and
, along with anthocyanin accumulation. Our results suggested that
significantly influenced the high-temperature inhibition of anthocyanin accumulation in apples. The findings shed more light on the mechanism of anthocyanin inhibition during high-temperature stress in apples.
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As an environment-friendly alternative to traditional PbTe, many attempts have recently been made to improve thermoelectric SnTe. Effective strategies are mainly focused on valence band convergence, ...nanostructuring, interstitial defects, and alloying solubility. In particular, alloying SnTe with CdTe/GeTe triggers an inherent decline of valence band offset effectively owing to a high solubility of ∼20% of CdTe. However, to what level an additional element doping in low-solubility SnTe–CdTe alloys can play a role in enhancing the thermoelectric performance still remains a mystery. Here, a new strategy is shown that unexpected Bi doping, by alloying with only ∼3% CdTe, induces a significant enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT to be ∼240% (ZT up to ∼1.3) at 838 K, which is mainly determined by the dramatically reduced lattice thermal conductivity above 800 K deriving from the exotic Bi doping and Cu-interstitial defects. More interestingly, combining experimental and theoretical evidences, the Bi-doping-driven band convergence is also beneficial to the improvement of thermoelectric performance below 800 K. The present findings demonstrate the extraordinary role of Bi for advancing the thermoelectric performance in SnTe alloys.
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