Many developing countries still face difficulties initiating and sustaining economic development. Such difficulties have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in an increasing ...divergence between rich and poor countries. One crucial question is whether to follow the trajectories of present-day rich countries or seek out different, new trajectories. Although this is a fundamental question, scholars offering mainstream prescriptions have not sufficiently explored it. Drawing on extensive empirical studies of firms and industries, Innovation and Development Detours for Latecomers proposes an effective alternative to prevailing development thinking. It presents a rich menu of development pathways, including a new role for Schumpeterian states whereby they do not follow the paths of technological development already taken by advanced countries. Rather, they can skip certain stages and even create their own detours thereby leapfrogging advanced countries in both manufacturing and service sectors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The prospective application of luminescence to imaging devices is shown using a combination of color‐tunable and patternable mechanoluminescent materials. A white light source is demonstrated by ...using an alternative color tuning method, induced under high vibration conditions. As the implementation is fairly straightforward, it is expected that the present results will find a number of potential uses in current industrial applications.
A peptide-based ensemble for the detection of cyanide ions in 100% aqueous solutions was designed on the basis of the copper binding motif. 7-Nitro-2,1,3-benzoxadiazole-labeled tripeptide (NBD-SSH, ...NBD-SerSerHis) formed the ensemble with Cu2+, leading to a change in the color of the solution from yellow to orange and a complete decrease of fluorescence emission. The ensemble (NBD-SSH–Cu2+) sensitively and selectively detected a low concentration of cyanide ions in 100% aqueous solutions by a colorimetric change as well as a fluorescent change. The addition of cyanide ions instantly removed Cu2+ from the ensemble (NBD-SSH–Cu2+) in 100% aqueous solutions, resulting in a color change of the solution from orange to yellow and a “turn-on” fluorescent response. The detection limits for cyanide ions were lower than the maximum allowable level of cyanide ions in drinking water set by the World Health Organization. The peptide-based ensemble system is expected to be a potential and practical way for the detection of submicromolar concentrations of cyanide ions in 100% aqueous solutions.
Summary
Drought has a serious impact on agriculture worldwide. A plant's ability to adapt to rhizosphere drought stress requires reprogramming of root growth and development. Although physiological ...studies have documented the root adaption for tolerance to the drought stress, underlying molecular mechanisms is still incomplete, which is essential for crop engineering. Here, we identified OsNAC6‐mediated root structural adaptations, including increased root number and root diameter, which enhanced drought tolerance. Multiyear drought field tests demonstrated that the grain yield of OsNAC6 root‐specific overexpressing transgenic rice lines was less affected by drought stress than were nontransgenic controls. Genome‐wide analyses of loss‐ and gain‐of‐function mutants revealed that OsNAC6 up‐regulates the expression of direct target genes involved in membrane modification, nicotianamine (NA) biosynthesis, glutathione relocation, 3′‐phophoadenosine 5′‐phosphosulphate accumulation and glycosylation, which represent multiple drought tolerance pathways. Moreover, overexpression of NICOTIANAMINE SYNTHASE genes, direct targets of OsNAC6, promoted the accumulation of the metal chelator NA and, consequently, drought tolerance. Collectively, OsNAC6 orchestrates novel molecular drought tolerance mechanisms and has potential for the biotechnological development of high‐yielding crops under water‐limiting conditions.
The purpose was to review the translucency of human teeth and related dental materials that should be considered for the development of esthetic restorative materials. Translucency is the relative ...amount of light transmission or diffuse reflection from a substrate surface through a turbid medium. Translucency influences the masking ability, color blending effect, and the degree of light curing through these materials. Regarding the translucency indices, transmission coefficient, translucency parameter, and contrast ratio have been used, and correlations among these indices were confirmed. Translucency of human enamel and dentine increases in direct proportion to the wavelength of incident light in the visible light range. As for the translucency changes by aging, limited differences were reported in human dentine, while those for enamel proved to increase. There have been studies for the adjustment of translucency in dental esthetic restorative materials; the size and amount of filler and the kind of resin matrix were modified in resin composites, and the kind of ingredient and the degree of crystallization were modified in ceramics. Based on the translucency properties of human enamel and dentine, those of replacing restorative materials should be optimized for successful esthetic rehabilitation. Biomimetic simulation of the natural tooth microstructure might be a promising method.
Background:
It is still debated whether a degenerative horizontal tear of the medial meniscus should be treated with surgery.
Hypothesis:
The clinical outcomes of arthroscopic meniscectomy will be ...better than those of nonoperative treatment for a degenerative horizontal tear of the medial meniscus.
Study Design:
Randomized controlled trial; Level of evidence, 1.
Methods:
A total of 102 patients with knee pain and a degenerative horizontal tear of the posterior horn of the medial meniscus on magnetic resonance imaging were included in this study between January 2007 and July 2009. The study included 81 female and 21 male patients with an average age of 53.8 years (range, 43-62 years). Fifty patients underwent arthroscopic meniscectomy (meniscectomy group), and 52 patients underwent nonoperative treatment with strengthening exercises (nonoperative group). Functional outcomes were compared using a visual analog scale (VAS) for pain, Lysholm knee score, Tegner activity scale, and patient subjective knee pain and satisfaction. Radiological evaluations were performed using the Kellgren-Lawrence classification to evaluate osteoarthritic changes.
Results:
In terms of clinical outcomes, meniscectomy did not provide better functional improvement than nonoperative treatment. At the final follow-up, the average VAS scores were 1.8 (range, 1-5) in the meniscectomy group and 1.7 (range, 1-4) in the nonoperative group (P = .675). The average Lysholm knee scores at 2-year follow-up were 83.2 (range, 52-100) and 84.3 (range, 58-100) in the meniscectomy and nonoperative groups, respectively (P = .237). In addition, the average Tegner activity scale and subjective satisfaction scores were not significantly different between the 2 groups. Although most patients initially had intense knee pain with mechanical symptoms, both groups reported a relief in knee pain, improved knee function, and a high level of satisfaction with treatment (P < .05 for all values). Two patients in the meniscectomy group and 3 in the nonoperative group with Kellgren-Lawrence grade 1 progressed to grade 2 at the 2-year follow-up.
Conclusion:
There were no significant differences between arthroscopic meniscectomy and nonoperative management with strengthening exercises in terms of relief in knee pain, improved knee function, or increased satisfaction in patients after 2 years of follow-up.
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project recently uncovered four molecular subtypes of gastric cancer: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), microsatellite instability (MSI), genomically stable (GS), and ...chromosomal instability (CIN). However, their clinical significances are currently unknown. We aimed to investigate the relationship between subtypes and prognosis of patients with gastric cancer.
Gene expression data from a TCGA cohort (
= 262) were used to develop a subtype prediction model, and the association of each subtype with survival and benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy was tested in 2 other cohorts (
= 267 and 432). An integrated risk assessment model (TCGA risk score) was also developed.
EBV subtype was associated with the best prognosis, and GS subtype was associated with the worst prognosis. Patients with MSI and CIN subtypes had poorer overall survival than those with EBV subtype but better overall survival than those with GS subtype (
= 0.004 and 0.03 in two cohorts, respectively). In multivariate Cox regression analyses, TCGA risk score was an independent prognostic factor HR, 1.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.2-1.9;
= 0.001. Patients with the CIN subtype experienced the greatest benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy (HR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.16-0.94;
= 0.03) and those with the GS subtype had the least benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy (HR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.36-1.89;
= 0.65).
Our prediction model successfully stratified patients by survival and adjuvant chemotherapy outcomes. Further development of the prediction model is warranted.
Pests and diseases can cause severe damage to citrus fruits. Farmers used to rely on experienced experts to recognize them, which is a time consuming and costly process. With the popularity of image ...sensors and the development of computer vision technology, using convolutional neural network (CNN) models to identify pests and diseases has become a recent trend in the field of agriculture. However, many researchers refer to pre-trained models of ImageNet to execute different recognition tasks without considering their own dataset scale, resulting in a waste of computational resources. In this paper, a simple but effective CNN model was developed based on our image dataset. The proposed network was designed from the aspect of parameter efficiency. To achieve this goal, the complexity of cross-channel operation was increased and the frequency of feature reuse was adapted to network depth. Experiment results showed that Weakly DenseNet-16 got the highest classification accuracy with fewer parameters. Because this network is lightweight, it can be used in mobile devices.
Stretchability and sensitivity are essential properties of wearable electronics for effective motion monitoring. In general, increasing the sensitivity of strain sensors based on ionic conductors ...trades off elasticity, which results in low sensitivity of the strain sensors at large mechanical deformations. To address this, ion‐permeable conducting polymer electrodes with low contact resistance are utilized in ionic gel‐based strain sensors. Using a rectangular‐shaped ionic gel and ion‐permeable electrodes significantly increase the gauge factor of the strain sensor, similar to the theoretical value at a given strain. To further increase the sensitivity of the strain sensor, the ionic gel is patterned with zigzagged tracks that gap apart as the gel stretches, and the gaps close as the gel contracts, leading to a large variation in the relative resistance upon stretching. By combining the zigzagged ionic gel and the ion‐permeable electrodes, highly sensitive stretchable sensors are realized with a record‐high gauge factor of 173, compared to existing ionic conductor‐based stretchable strain sensors. The zigzag‐patterned ionic sensor can successfully monitor various motions when attached to the human body. These results are expected to afford promising strategies for developing highly sensitive, stretchable sensing systems for E‐skin sensors and soft robotics.
Operating mechanisms of an ionic conductor‐based strain sensor are investigated using nonvolatile ionic‐liquid‐based stretchable polymer electrolytes. The sensitivity of the strain sensor is significantly increased using ion‐permeable conducting‐polymer electrodes and a zigzag‐patterned polymer electrolyte. The resulting sensor could successfully monitor various human motions with different strains and rates attached to the elbow, knee, neck, and finger.
Although fibroblasts are dormant in normal tissue, they exhibit explosive activation during wound healing and perpetual activation in pathologic fibrosis and cancer stroma. The key regulatory network ...controlling these fibroblast dynamics is still unknown. Here, we report that Twist1, a key regulator of cancer-associated fibroblasts, directly upregulates Prrx1, which, in turn, increases the expression of Tenascin-C (TNC). TNC also increases Twist1 expression, consequently forming a Twist1-Prrx1-TNC positive feedback loop (PFL). Systems biology studies reveal that the Twist1-Prrx1-TNC PFL can function as a bistable ON/OFF switch and regulates fibroblast activation. This PFL can be irreversibly activated under pathologic conditions, leading to perpetual fibroblast activation. Sustained activation of the Twist1-Prrx1-TNC PFL reproduces fibrotic nodules similar to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in vivo and is implicated in fibrotic disease and cancer stroma. Considering that this PFL is specific to activated fibroblasts, Twist1-Prrx1-TNC PFL may be a fibroblast-specific therapeutic target to deprogram perpetually activated fibroblasts.
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