Lanzhou lily (
var.
) is an exclusive sweet lily variety indigenous to China, which is susceptible to bulbous rot caused by fungal infection during storage. This experiment tests the pathogenicity of ...the pure culture isolated from the diseased tissue was confirmed in accordance with Koch's postulates, and the pathomycetes were identified based on their morphological and molecular characteristics. Furthermore, the biological characteristics of the pathogens were investigated, followed by an evaluation of the antifungal effects of three plant essential oils against them. The results showed that two strains of fungi were isolated from Lanzhou lily rot, which were identified as
Schl. and
(Bain. Et sart.). In addition, the pathogenicity of these two strains of fungi was demonstrated that only
induced rot with similar symptoms during the post-harvest storage period. The biological characteristics of
indicated the potato maltose agar and lily dextrose agar were identified as the most suitable media. Sucrose was determined to be the optimal carbon source, while ammonium nitrate was found to be the best nitrogen source for the growth of
. Mycelial growth and sporulation of
occurred at an optimum pH value of 6. Total darkness facilitated mycelial growth and conidial germination. The ideal temperature for growth was found to be 28°C, while relative humidity did not significantly impact mycelial growth; however, a relative humidity of 55% was most favorable for spore production. Among the three essential oils tested, cinnamon essential oil displayed superior antifungal efficacy against
, whereas angelica essential oil and tea tree essential oil also exhibited moderate inhibitory effects against this pathogen. This research provides valuable theoretical insights for disease control during the storage and transportation of Lanzhou lily.
In this study, we report a highly sensitive electrochemical immunosensor for carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) detection based on the electrodeposited platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) confined in the ...ultrasmall nanochannels of vertically ordered mesoporous silica film (VMSF). VMSF bearing amine groups (NH
2
-VMSF) can be prepared on the indium tin oxide electrode surface via a one-step co-condensation route using an electrochemically assisted self-assembly method, which renders a strong electrostatic effect for PtCl
6
2-
and leads to the spatial confinement of Pt NPs inside the silica nanochannels after electrodeposition. The external surface of NH
2
-VMSF is functionalized with CEA antibodies using glutaraldehyde as a coupling agent, resulting in an electrochemical immunosensing interface with good specificity for CEA detection. Under optimal experimental conditions, high affinity between the CEA antibody and CEA produces a steric hindrance effect for the accessibility of the electrochemical probe (Fe(CN)
6
3-
) in the bulk solution to the underlying indium tin oxide surface, eventually resulting in the attenuated electrochemical signal and enabling the detection of the CEA with a wide linear range of 0.01 pg/mL∼10 ng/mL and a pretty low limit of detection of 0.30 fg/mL. Owing to the signal amplification ability of Pt NPs and the anti-biofouling property of NH
2
-VMSF, the as-prepared electrochemical immunosensor based on the Pt NPs@NH
2
-VMSF displays an accurate analysis of the CEA in human serum samples, holding significant promise for health monitoring and clinical diagnosis.
In this study, we explored the adaptive mechanism of two varieties of
exposed to enhanced Ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation. The radiation had different effects on the biomass, photosynthetic ...performance, oxidative damage, antioxidant defense system, and levels of bioactive compounds of Mingui 1 (C1) and Mingui 2 (C2). C2 outperformed C1 under enhanced UV-B radiation, compared to natural light. Using the Illumina RNA-seq, we obtained 6,326 and 2,583 DEGs in C1 and C2, respectively. Under enhanced UV-B radiation, the mRNA levels of genes involved in photosynthesis, antennae protein synthesis, carbon fixation, chlorophyll synthesis, and carotenoid synthesis were decreased in C1 but stable in C2, involving few DEGs. TFs were widely involved in the response of C1 to enhanced UV-B radiation; almost all
and
coding genes were downregulated whereas almost all genes encoded
,
,
,
, and
were upregulated. These results indicate that enhanced UV-B radiation was not conducive to the synthesis of flavonoids, while disease resistance was enhanced. Regarding the ROS scavenging system, upregulated DEGs were mainly found in the AsA-GSH cycle and PrxR/Trx pathways. Remarkably, DEGs that those encoding biosynthetic key enzymes, including ferulic acid (
,
,
, and
) and flavonoid (
,
,
, and
), most upregulation in C2, leading to increased accumulation of ferulic acid and flavonoids and adversely affecting C1. Genes encoding key enzymes involved in the synthesis of lactone components (
,
) were mostly up-regulated in C1, increasing the content of lactone components. Our results reveal the DEGs present between C1 and C2 under enhanced UV-B radiation and are consistent with the observed differences in physiological and biochemical indexes. C1 was more sensitive to enhanced UV-B radiation, and C2 was more tolerant to it under moderate enhanced UV-B radiation stress. In addition, the large amount of
transcriptome data generated here will serve as a source for finding effective ways to mitigate UV-B enhancement, and also contribute to the well-established lack of genetic information for non-model plant species.
Abstract
Magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) with magnesium oxide (MgO) tunnel barrier is the core element of spin transfer torque-based magnetic random access memory. For the application in the space ...environment, the total ionizing dose radiation effects on MTJs need to be evaluated. In this work, the MTJs were exposed to X-ray radiation with different doses of up to 10 Mrad(Si). Measurements of current induced magnetization switching (CIMS) behavior of these MTJs were performed before and after radiation. The results show negligible changes in the tunneling magnetoresistance and current switching properties after 8 Mrad(Si) X-ray radiation. However, with a total dose of 9 Mrad(Si), a significant reduction in junction resistance of a fairly large number of MTJs was observed, which showed characteristics of MTJ breakdown. Moreover, in this study, all experimental MTJs became functionally disabled due to MgO breakdown under 10 Mrad(Si) X-ray radiation. The CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB interface microstructure was observed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Interfacial structural results indicate that the MgO degradation and breakdown behavior caused by X-ray ionizing radiation can give rise to radiation-induced oxygen vacancies across the tunnel barrier oxide layer.
Recent advances in self-supervised learning (SSL) have made remarkable progress, especially for contrastive methods that target pulling two augmented views of one image together and pushing the views ...of all other images away. In this setting, negative pairs play a key role in avoiding collapsed representation. Recent studies, such as those on bootstrap your own latent (BYOL) and SimSiam, have surprisingly achieved a comparable performance even without contrasting negative samples. However, a basic theoretical issue for SSL arises: how can different SSL methods avoid collapsed representation, and is there a common design principle? In this study, we look deep into current non-contrastive SSL methods and analyze the key factors that avoid collapses. To achieve this goal, we present a new indicator of uniformity metric and study the local dynamics of the indicator to diagnose collapses in different scenarios. Moreover, we present some principles for choosing a good predictor, such that we can explicitly control the optimization process. Our theoretical analysis result is validated on some widely used benchmarks spanning different-scale datasets. We also compare recent SSL methods and analyze their commonalities in avoiding collapses and some ideas for future algorithm designs.
Background:
The aim of our study was to develop a nomogram model to predict overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) in patients with gastric signet ring cell carcinoma (GSRC).
...Methods:
GSRC patients from 2004 to 2015 were collected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database and randomly assigned to the training and validation sets. Multivariate Cox regression analyses screened for OS and CSS independent risk factors and nomograms were constructed.
Results:
A total of 7,149 eligible GSRC patients were identified, including 4,766 in the training set and 2,383 in the validation set. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that gender, marital status, race, AJCC stage, TNM stage, surgery and chemotherapy were independent risk factors for both OS and CSS. Based on the results of the multivariate Cox regression analysis, prognostic nomograms were constructed for OS and CSS. In the training set, the C-index was 0.754 (95% CI = 0.746-0.762) for the OS nomogram and 0.762 (95% CI: 0.753-0.771) for the CSS nomogram. In the internal validation, the C-index for the OS nomogram was 0.758 (95% CI: 0.746-0.770), while the C-index for the CSS nomogram was 0.762 (95% CI: 0.749-0.775). Compared with TNM stage and SEER stage, the nomogram had better predictive ability. In addition, the calibration curves also showed good consistency between the predicted and actual 3-year and 5-year OS and CSS.
Conclusion:
The nomogram can effectively predict OS and CSS in patients with GSRC, which may help clinicians to personalize prognostic assessments and clinical decisions.
•The discrete choice model is utilized to capture the stochastic of passengers' cancellation behavior.•The Gaussian mixture model is employed to identify work patterns of drivers.•A cooperative deep ...deterministic policy gradient algorithm is developed to optimize the dispatching decision-making process.•A price incentive strategy is proposed to reduce the occurrence of cancellations.•Experiments show that the algorithm and price incentive strategy can improve the order response rate and passenger travel experience.
Since the emergence of ride-sourcing, the dispatching problem has been a hot research issue in the travel market. Previous studies designed various refined algorithms to improve the dispatching efficiency. However, the heterogeneity of passenger cancellation behavior and driver's work patterns is ignored in the modeling of these studies, which may result in the algorithms failing to entirely capture the randomness in the real world, thereby affecting dispatching efficiency. To fill this research gap, this paper employs a discrete choice model and Gaussian mixture model to model passenger cancellation behavior and extract driver working patterns, respectively. Furthermore, a cooperative deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm is proposed for dispatching. The algorithm constructs decision networks separately for drivers with different working patterns to learn the optimal dispatching decision and designs a centralized neural network to coordinate the dispatching of all vehicles to maximize the global benefit. A price incentive strategy is proposed to improve passenger loyalty by providing incentive prices. Moreover, based on the constructed discrete choice model, a simulation environment is designed to describe the cancellation behavior in the real world and support the training of the algorithm. Experimental results based on real data in Beijing show that the cooperative DDPG algorithm can improve the order response rate by 2% to 6% and platform revenue by 3% to 9% in multiple travel periods while providing a better travel experience to passengers. Additionally, the price incentive strategy also effectively reduces passenger cancellation.
The integrated ride-sourcing mode, developed by third-party integrators, is a feasible solution to market fragmentation because it integrates travel demand and vehicle supply. However, intense ...competition between platforms reduces the efficiency of the dispatching process. To tackle this issue, a two-stage dispatching framework is proposed, utilizing a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) to model the dispatching problem as a mixed cooperative-competitive reinforcement learning task. Within this framework, the Multi-Graph Hierarchical Multi-Head Attention-Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MGHMHA-DDPG) algorithm is proposed to determine the generalized values of driver-passenger pairs. A combinatorial optimization model is then formulated to identify the dispatching scheme that maximizes these values. Furthermore, the MGHMHA-DDPG algorithm incorporates a multi-graph convolutional module, a hierarchical multi-head attention module, and a gated recurrent module to model the global supply-demand distribution, the cooperation potential of vehicles, and the hidden features of the temporal dimension, respectively. Experiments using Beijing-based data demonstrate that the MGHMHA-DDPG algorithm outperforms benchmark methods in terms of market revenues and order response rates. This indicates that the MGHMHA-DDPG algorithm effectively mitigates dispatching conflicts between platforms and enhances overall market efficiency.
Reassignment strategies are of great significance to improve the dispatching efficiency of the ride-sourcing market by reassigning drivers and passengers. However, due to the focus on the feasibility ...of the reassignment strategy in the short period, previous studies ignore possible reassignment opportunities in the future and inevitably make short-sighted reassignment decisions. To fully exploit the effect of the reassignment strategy, this study proposes a two-stage reassignment framework, which integrates a reinforcement learning algorithm and the bilateral matching reassignment model. The Markov decision process is adopted to dynamically model the reassignment problem. In the framework, the reinforcement learning algorithm is utilized to first learn the randomness and dynamics of travel patterns from historical data and select vehicles participating in the reassignment process. Then, the bilateral matching reassignment model formulates the matching relationship after reassignment for passengers (drivers). Furthermore, for the cases where reassignment may increase individual matching distance, a personalized bilateral matching reassignment model is developed to avoid that. Experiments based on real data in Beijing found that learning passenger travel patterns and adjusting vehicle reassignment moments can greatly improve the passenger experience and reduce driving costs. The results also suggest that the efficiency of the reassignment strategy is influenced by the supply and demand conditions of the ride-sourcing system. This justifies that the framework can be applied to optimize the dispatching process, reduce carbon emissions, and build an eco-friendly travel system.
Background
It remains controversial whether mesh should be fixed during laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair. A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) was conducted ...to compare fixation and nonfixation in laparoscopic groin hernia repair.
Methods
A registration was listed with PROSPERO (International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews; registration no. CRD42022350469). Databases including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched to identify RCTs comparing fixation with nonfixation in laparoscopic groin hernia repair. The primary outcomes were postoperative pain at 24 hours and recurrence. Secondary outcomes were mean operative time, urinary retention, and postoperative pain at 6 months.
Results
A total of 18 trials, including 2617 patients with 2878 hernias, were included in this meta-analysis. In contrast to the fixation group, the nonfixation group was associated with lower postoperative pain scores at 24 hours and 6 months, a shorter mean operative time, and a lower incidence of urinary retention. There were no significant differences between the 2 types of procedures in terms of the rate of recurrence for patients with an inguinal hernia orifice smaller than 4 cm in size.
Conclusions
The nonfixation technique is an effective method to reduce urinary retention, mean operative time, and postoperative pain at 24 hours and at 6 months; however, the rate of recurrence was comparable to that of the fixation method.
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