The cytokine interferon-α (IFNα) belongs to the group of type I interferons already used in cancer therapy. This drug possesses radio- and chemo-sensitizing, and shows anti-angiogenic properties. ...Cancer stem cells (CSC) are a unique population of tumor cells that initiate secondary tumors, and are responsible for metastasis formation. Patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have an especially poor prognosis, with 5-year survival rates of only ~1% and median survival of 4–6 months. PDAC is characterized by the presence of CSC. In this work we demonstrate for the first time that IFNα up-regulates the expression of the CSC markers CD24, CD44 and CD133 in in vitro and in vivo models of PDAC. We showed the IFNα effects on the migration and invasion of PDAC cells, which is associated with the level of the CSC marker expression. In vivo, this drug inhibits tumor growth but promotes metastasis formation in the early stage of tumor growth. We propose that IFNα may enhance the enrichment of CSC in PDAC tumors. Additionally we also suggest that in combination therapy of solid tumors with IFNα, this drug should be given to patients prior to chemotherapy to achieve the CSC activation.
•IFNα up-regulates the expression of CSC markers in PDAC in vitro and in vivo.•IFNα affects migration and invasion of PDAC cells depending on the CSC marker level.•In vivo, IFNα inhibits tumor growth but promotes metastasis formation.•IFNα may enhance the enrichment of the PDAC CSC.
Currently, there is an urgent need to remediate heavy metals (HMs) and high alkalinity in the washing solution of fly ash (FA). This study investigated the remediation with simulated exhaust gases of ...two CO2 partial pressure and revealed the removal efficiency of target pollutants, mainly including Pb ions. The results verify that under the preferred conditions of 25 °C and 15 mL/min flow rate, bubbling two kinds of simulated flue gases could efficiently remove 97.9–99.2% of Pb ions. Moreover, the initial 40 min removal of Pb ions fits in a way with a pseudo-first-order equation. Based on the thermodynamic parameters, we infer that the removal of Pb ions was a spontaneous, exothermic, and entropy-decreasing process. Furthermore, residual HMs and terminal pH after remediation of the FA washing solution basically met the regulatory threshold values of the integrated wastewater discharge standard in China (GB 8978−1996). Additionally, the particles obtained from the washing solution of FA were identified as CaCO3, which was mainly composed of vaterite and calcite crystalline. This study provides a fundamental guide for remediating multiple pollutants in the washing solution of FA and simultaneously sequestrating carbon emissions from power plants and industries.
Ion migration presents a formidable obstacle to the stability and performance of perovskite solar cells (PSCs), hindering their progress toward commercial feasibility. Herein, the degradation ...mechanism of PSCs caused by iodide ion migration, which leads to abnormal changes in photoluminescence transients at the buried interface of perovskite films, is investigated. In light of this problem, a novel strategy is proposed to mitigate ion migration by introducing poly(2‐vinylnaphthalene) into polybis(4‐phenyl)(2,4,6‐trimethylphenyl)amine as the hole transport layer with improved ion‐blocking capability. Consequently, this layer effectively reduces defect concentration, suppresses ion migration, and modulates energy level alignment, leading to an impressive efficiency exceeding 23% for doctor‐bladed FAPbI 3 PSCs. Moreover, the corresponding unencapsulated devices demonstrate remarkable durability, maintaining over 80% of their initial value after undergoing rigorous stress tests in accordance with the International Electrotechnical Commission 61215 standard for temperature, humidity, and illumination. These tests include 1000 h of thermal cycling and a long‐term operational test lasting 600 h under maximum power point tracking.
Heterogenous catalysts with confined nanoporous catalytic sites are shown to have high activity and size selectivity. A solution-processable nanoporous organic polymer (1-BPy-Pd) catalyst displays ...high catalytic performance (TON > 200K) in the heterogeneous Suzuki–Miyaura coupling (SMC) reaction and can be used for the preparation of the intermediates in the synthesis of pharmaceutical agents. In comparison to the homogeneous catalyst analogue (2,2′-BPy)PdCl2, the heterogenous system offers size-dependent catalytic activity when bulkier substrates are used. Furthermore, the catalyst can be used to create catalytic impellers that simplify its use and recovery. We found that this system also works for applications in heterogenous Heck and nitroarenes reduction reactions. The metal-binding nanoporous polymer reported here represents a versatile platform for size-selective heterogeneous and recyclable catalysts.
DNA apurinic/apyrimidinic site (AP site) has received much attention due to its importance in disease evolution and development of selective genetic drugs. Fluorescence technique has been widely ...employed in identifying the AP sequence environment using fluorophores as the AP site-targeting probes. However, the sequence effect on the AP site binding of a ligand should be fully understood for illustrating the binding behavior. Triplex-forming oligonucleotide (TFO) can bind with its partner ds-DNA via specific hydrogen bonding interactions different from the canonical Watson-Crick pattern to form a triplex DNA structure. Due to its wide bioactivity, triplex has been recently investigated using small molecules as the structure identifiers and tuners. In this work, we spectroscopically characterized a novel fluorescent benzeindolium probe of BIFS and found that BIFS can selectively target the AP site and its fluorescence is significantly enhanced only when the TFO strand binds to the AP site-containing duplex DNA. The TFO binding restricts the non-radiative twist relaxation process of the excited state BIFS and results in the emissive BIFS. Because BIFS alone in aqueous solution is non-fluorescent, this selective lighting-up emission is advantageous for developing a practical sensor to target the triplex AP site with a weak fluorescence background. This selective recognition of the AP site by the lighting-up fluorescent probe would find wide applications including fluorescently evaluating the triplex-based small molecular binders.
We study two-dimensional (4; 4) superconformal eld theories of central charge c = 6, corresponding to nonlinear sigma models on K3 surfaces, using the superconformal bootstrap. This is made possible ...through a surprising relation between the BPS N = 4 superconformal blocks with c = 6 and bosonic Virasoro conformal blocks with c = 28, and an exact result on the moduli dependence of a certain integrated BPS 4-point function. Nontrivial bounds on the non-BPS spectrum in the K3 CFT are obtained as functions of the CFT moduli, that interpolate between the free orbifold points and singular CFT points. We observe directly from the CFT perspective the signature of a continuous spectrum above a gap at the singular moduli, and fi nd numerically an upper bound on this gap that is saturated by the A1 N = 4 cigar CFT. We also derive an analytic upper bound on the fi rst nonzero eigenvalue of the scalar Laplacian on K3 in the large volume regime, that depends on the K3 moduli data. As two byproducts, we find an exact equivalence between a class of BPS N = 2 superconformal blocks and Virasoro conformal blocks in two dimensions, and an upper bound on the four-point functions of operators of sufficiently low scaling dimension in three and four dimensional CFTs.
Over the past decade, increasing research efforts have been concentrated on emotion recognition from physiological signals due to their capability on emotion information representation. Existing ...works mainly focus on exploring the relationship between stimulus and subjects, while ignoring the effects of latent correlations among different subjects, which are important for personalized emotion recognition. To tackle this issue, we aim to conduct emotion recognition using multi-modal physiological signals through an edge-weighted hyper-graph neural network, in which complex relationship among subjects is formulated using hypergraph for each modality respectively. In our model, the differences in significance of influence which various samples leave on the classification can be better represented. The major contribution of this network lies in its concern that the associate strengths between various samples are different, which have different impact on the training result. The hyperedge between the vertices with closer correlation should be assigned a larger weight. Reversely, the looser relation, the minor weight. To evaluate the proposed method, experiments have been conducted on the DEAP dataset and ASCERTAIN dataset. Experimental results and comparison with state-of-the-art methods show that the proposed method can achieve better performance.
We mined novel uremic toxin (UT) metabolomics/gene databases, and analyzed the expression changes of UT receptors and UT synthases in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). We ...made the following observations: 1) UTs represent only 1/80
of human serum small-molecule metabolome; 2) Some UTs are increased in CKD and CVD; 3) UTs either induce or suppress the expression of inflammatory molecules; 4) The expression of UT genes is significantly modulated in CKD patients, and coronary artery disease (CAD) patients; 5) The expression of UT genes is upregulated by caspase-1 and TNF-alpha pathways but is inhibited in regulatory T cells. These results demonstrate that UTs are selectively increased, and serve as danger signal-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) and homeostasis-associated molecular patterns (HAMPs) that modulate inflammation. These results also show that some UT genes are upregulated in CKD and CAD via caspase-1/inflammatory cytokine pathways, rather than by purely passive accumulation.
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•A novel-designed current measurement system contained 171 probes was designed.•The evolution of electric characteristics under various conditions was analyzed.•The current density ...distribution along the airflow direction was presented.•Some suggestions for relieving corona suppression were proposed.
The high emission of SO3 or sulfuric acid aerosol became a new environmental issue and has attracted international concerns. The sulfuric acid aerosol could be removed through droplet charging and transportation in the electric field. However, the charged droplets also have a converse effect on the electrostatic field. In this study, a novel-designed current measurement system contained 171 probes was designed to automatically scan and record the current density distribution along the airflow direction. Results show that the average current density was reduced by 31.3 % when SO3 concentration was increased from 0 to 53.6 mg/m3, and the current density of the first electrode was only accounted for 11.3 % of the original current. A higher corona onset voltage was required to ionize the flue gas because of a reverse electric field formed by the charged droplets. The current density was also decreased with the flue gas velocity under the SO3 presence condition. When the flue gas velocity reached 4 m/s, the corona suppression was severe and the inflection point was no longer obvious. The region that the relative current density below 0.6 was comprised 70 %. The current density could be enhanced by increasing the spike length and decreasing the spike spacing. The larger the corona current of the discharge electrode, the less the effect of the particle space-charge. Meanwhile, some suggestions for relieving corona suppression by enhancing the corona discharge at the inlet and promoting the droplet growth were proposed.
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