Graphene reinforced metal matrix composites (MMCs) have received extensive research interests as promising structural materials in developing lightweight structures. The mechanical performance of ...such composites, however, is considerably hindered by weak van der Waal (vdW) interaction between graphene and metal matrix. The present work shows that this challenging issue can be effectively alleviated by the use of chemically functionalized graphene fillers with mechanically induced wrinkles. Our extensive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on graphene reinforced copper (Cu) composite manifest that the presence of shear-induced wrinkles and chemical modification of graphene using functional groups can significantly increase its surface roughness, enhance the vdW interaction and consequently lead to higher interfacial shear strength (IFSS) between graphene and Cu matrix. Compared with its counterpart functionalized with hydrogen, graphene functionalized with alkyl (methyl, ethyl, propyl, and butyl) offers better interfacial interactions with Cu matrix because these functional groups are longer than hydrogen functional group and can be embedded deeper into the matrix.
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Electrochemical water splitting requires efficient, low‐cost water oxidation catalysts to accelerate the sluggish kinetics of the water oxidation reaction. A rapid photocorrosion method is now used ...to synthesize the homogeneous amorphous nanocages of Cu‐Ni‐Fe hydr(oxy)oxide as a highly efficient electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The as‐fabricated product exhibits a low overpotential of 224 mV on a glassy carbon electrode at 10 mA cm−2 (even lower down to 181 mV when supported on Ni foam) with a Tafel slope of 44 mV dec−1 for OER in an alkaline solution. The obtained catalyst shows an extraordinarily large mass activity of 1464.5 A g−1 at overpotential of 300 mV, which is the highest mass activity for OER. This synthetic strategy may open a brand new pathway to prepare copper‐based ternary amorphous nanocages for greatly enhanced oxygen evolution.
A rapid photocorrosion method is used to synthesize the homogeneous amorphous nanocages of Cu‐Ni‐Fe hydr(oxy)oxide as a remarkably efficient electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER).
Accurate flight delay prediction is fundamental to establish the more efficient airline business. Recent studies have been focused on applying machine learning methods to predict the flight delay. ...Most of the previous prediction methods are conducted in a single route or airport. This paper explores a broader scope of factors which may potentially influence the flight delay, and compares several machine learning-based models in designed generalized flight delay prediction tasks. To build a dataset for the proposed scheme, automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) messages are received, pre-processed, and integrated with other information such as weather condition, flight schedule, and airport information. The designed prediction tasks contain different classification tasks and a regression task. Experimental results show that long short-term memory (LSTM) is capable of handling the obtained aviation sequence data, but overfitting problem occurs in our limited dataset. Compared with the previous schemes, the proposed random forest-based model can obtain higher prediction accuracy (90.2% for the binary classification) and can overcome the overfitting problem.
Graphene has been widely used as new generation reinforcing nanofiller to achieve significantly improved mechanical properties in composites. However, its reinforcing effect has been considerably ...affected by the poor interfacial strength between graphene and the matrix. By using molecular dynamics simulations, the present work explores an effective route to improve the interfacial shear strength (ISS) of graphene sheets through the introduction of mechanically induced wrinkles that are formed by applying shear/compressive strains to graphene. The slide-out tests of a wrinkled graphene sliding over the graphene substrate show that the strain-induced wrinkles in graphene slider gives rise to larger surface roughness which leads to stronger interfacial interactions between graphene layers and consequently, significant improvement in ISS. Compared with compression induced wrinkles, shear induced wrinkles are found to be much more effective in enhancing ISS. Our results indicate that applying mechanical pre-strain, in particular, shear strain to graphene is a very useful strategy to improve its reinforcing effect in composites.
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•Wrinkles are designed by applying shear/compressive strain to graphene sheet.•The characteristics of wrinkles including amplitude/half-wavelength, roughness and ratio of interaction area are analyzed.•Shear/compressive strain-induced wrinkles effectively improve the interfacial shear strength between graphene sheets.•Shear-induced wrinkle is more effective in enhancing the interfacial shear strength than the compression-induced one.
It is critical for a power system to estimate its operation state based on meter measurements in the field and the configuration of power grid networks. Recent studies show that the adversary can ...bypass the existing bad data detection schemes, posing dangerous threats to the operation of power grid systems. Nevertheless, two critical issues remain open: 1) how can an adversary choose the meters to compromise to cause the most significant deviation of the system state estimation, and 2) how can a system operator defend against such attacks? To address these issues, we first study the problem of finding the optimal attack strategy--i.e., a data-injection attacking strategy that selects a set of meters to manipulate so as to cause the maximum damage. We formalize the problem and develop efficient algorithms to identify the optimal meter set. We implement and test our attack strategy on various IEEE standard bus systems, and demonstrate its superiority over a baseline strategy of random selections. To defend against false data-injection attacks, we propose a protection-based defense and a detection-based defense, respectively. For the protection-based defense, we identify and protect critical sensors and make the system more resilient to attacks. For the detection-based defense, we develop the spatial-based and temporal-based detection schemes to accurately identify data-injection attacks.
Abstract
Context
Glucocorticoids have potent effects on the central nervous system. However, while patients with Cushing syndrome frequently report impairments in cognitive function, studies ...investigating cognitive function in patients with autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) in adrenal incidentalomas (AIs) are scarce.
Objective
The aim of the present study was to evaluate neurocognitive function in patients with ACS.
Methods
We prospectively recruited 63 patients with AI, 36 patients with nonfunctional adrenal adenoma (NFA) (46.5 ± 10.5 years), and 27 patients with ACS (48.6 ± 9.1 years); these patients underwent a battery of validated neuropsychological tests. ACS was diagnosed when serum cortisol levels after a 1-mg dexamethasone suppression test (cortisol1 mg DST) ≥ 50 nmol/L.
Results
Patients with ACS had higher frequency of subjective memory complaints (40.7% vs 13.9%, P < 0.05) and higher proportion of mild cognitive impairment (22.2% vs 2.8%, P < 0.05) than patients with NFA. Furthermore, patients with ACS had worse performance on working memory and the visuospatial/constructional domain than patients with NFA (all P < 0.05). Serum cortisol1 mg DST was negatively correlated with working memory and visuospatial/constructional domains (r = −0.307 and −0.306, respectively, all P < 0.05). Performance on working memory and visuospatial/constructional domains gradually deteriorated with increases in serum cortisol1 mg DST (all P values for trend < 0.05). Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that serum cortisol1 mg DST was a significant risk factor for impairment of working memory and visuospatial/constructional domains (B = −0.006 and −0.043, respectively, all P < 0.05).
Conclusion
This study is the first to report that ACS is accompanied by impaired cognitive function. Consequently, cognitive function assessment should be incorporated into the clinical evaluation of patients with ACS.
Clinical trial registration number
NCT05357456.
Background
Inconsistent eradication rates for Helicobacter pylori have been reported worldwide with dual therapy, perhaps owing to the difference in dose administration and treatment duration. This ...retrospective study aimed to determine whether high‐dose dual therapy (HDDT) with different regimens leads to different eradication rates. The study compares the efficacy and safety of HDDT 10‐day vs 14‐day and investigates the factors that might affect the eradication rates.
Materials and Methods
Two comparable treatment groups were based on propensity score matching (PSM). Patients were divided into two groups based on the therapy they underwent: 10‐day HDDT and 14‐day HDDT (20 mg esomeprazole and 750 mg amoxicillin, administered four times daily). The eradication rates, adverse events (AEs), patient compliance, CYP2C19 gene polymorphisms, and antibiotic resistance rates of the two groups were compared.
Results
The intention to treat (ITT) analysis showed that the eradication rates for 10‐day and 14‐day groups were 78.4% (95% CI 69.6%–87.2%) and 89.7% (95% CI 83.3%–96.2%; p = .039), respectively, while the per‐protocol (PP) eradication rates were 80.0% (95% CI 71.3%–88.7%) and 92.9% (95% CI 87.4%–98.5%; p = .014), respectively. The corresponding drug‐related AEs were 6.8% (6/88) and 5.7% (5/88; p = .755). No significant differences were observed between the compliance rates of the two groups. The CYP2C19 gene polymorphism had no effect on the eradication rates of the two groups.
Conclusion
The results showed that the 14‐day HDDT affords a higher H. pylori eradication rate than the 10‐day HDDT.
Background
Obesity may impact surgical outcomes of gastrectomy. Whether visceral fat area (VFA) is a better obesity parameter than body mass index (BMI) is still controversial. The aim of this study ...is to compare the accuracy and effectiveness of VFA and BMI in predicting the short-term surgical outcomes of gastrectomy.
Methods
Patients who were diagnosed with gastric cancer were measured for BMI and VFA preoperatively and then divided into a VFA-H (VFA-high) group and VFA-L (VFA-low) group, at the cutoff point of 100 cm
2
, and a BMI-H (BMI-high) group and BMI-L (BMI-low) group, at the cutoff point of 25 kg/m
2
. The short-term surgical outcomes were compared between the different groups.
Results
In total, 276 patients were enrolled in this study; 55 (19.9%) patients were classified into the BMI-H group, and 122 (44.2%) patients were classified into the VFA-H group. There was a significant correlation between BMI and VFA (
r
= 0.652,
p
< 0.001). Compared with the VFA-L group, the VFA-H group had a higher incidence of postoperative complications (31.1% vs. 13.0%;
p
< 0.001), longer operation duration (270.0 (235.0–305.0) vs. 255.0 (223.8–295.0),
p
= 0.046), and more blood loss (100.0 (100.0–150.0) vs. 80.0 (80.0–100.0),
p
< 0.001), while the BMI-H group had more blood loss than the BMI-L group (100.0 (100.0–120.0) vs. 100.0(80.0–100.0),
p
= 0.006). Logistic regression showed that VFA was an independent risk factor for postoperative complications (odds ratio 2.813, 95% CI 1.523–5.194;
p
= 0.001).
Conclusion
For gastric cancer patients, VFA is superior to BMI in accurately and effectively illuminating the impact of obesity on short-term surgical outcomes.
Trial Registration
Clinicaltrials.gov
: NCT02800005.
Summary
ETHYLENE INSENSITIVE 3 (EIN3) is a key regulator of ethylene signaling, and EIN3‐BINDING F‐BOX1 (EBF1) and EBF2 are responsible for EIN3 degradation. Previous reports have shown that the ebf1 ...ebf2 double homozygous mutant cannot be identified. In this study, the genetic analysis revealed that the ebf1 ebf2 female gametophyte is defective. The pollination experiment showed that ebf1 ebf2 ovules failed to attract pollen tubes. In female gametophyte/ovule, the synergid cell is responsible for pollen tube attraction. Observation of the pEIN3::EIN3‐GFP transgenic lines showed that EIN3 signal was over‐accumulated at the micropylar end of ebf1 ebf2 female gametophyte. The overexpression of stabilized EIN3 in synergid cell led to the defect of pollen tube guidance. These results suggested that the over‐accumulated EIN3 in ebf1 ebf2 synergid cell blocks its pollen tube attraction which leads to the failure of ebf1 ebf2 homozygous plant. We identified that EIN3 directly activated the expression of a sugar transporter, SENESCENCE‐ASSOCIATED GENE29 (SAG29/SWEET15). Overexpression of SAG29 in synergid cells blocked pollen tube attraction, suggesting that SAG29 might play a role in ethylene signaling to repel pollen tube entry. Taken together, our study reveals that strict control of ethylene signaling is critical for the synergid cell function during plant reproduction.
Significance Statement
Our study reveals the mechanism of ethylene signaling in synergid functioning for pollen tube attraction and facilitates the understanding of ethylene signaling in plant reproduction.
AIM:To evaluate the prognostic value of high-mobility group box 1(HMGB1) expression in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma(IHCC) and the possible underlying mechanism.METHODS:Tissue microarray was ...constructed from 65 IHCC patients.Immunohistochemistry was performed to validate expression of HMGB1 and Vascular endothelial growth factor C(VEGF-C).Realtime PCR and Western blot analyses were used to study transcript and protein levels.The interaction between HMGB1 and VEGF-C was evaluated by si RNA,real-time PCR,and enzyme-linked immuno assays.The correlation between HMGB1 expression and other clinicopathologic parameters was analyzed byχ2 test,and the univariate as well as multivariate analyses were accomplished by Kaplan-Meier method and Coxregression model,respectively.RESULTS:Overall,overexpression of HMGB1 was found in 38/65(58.8%)IHCCs,whereas VEGF-C overexpression was present in 30/65(46.2%)cases.Overexpression of HMGB1 was significantly correlated with lymphatic microvessel density(P=0.031,r=0.268)and VEGF-C expression(P=0.041,r=0.254).With univariate analysis,both HMGB1(P=0.001)and VEGF-C(P=0.004)were identified to be significantly associated with overall survival rate.Multivariateanalysis indicated that HMGB1 could be served as an unfavorable independent prognostic factor in IHCCs(P=0.005).si RNA knockdown of HMGB1 inhibited transforming growth factor-β-induced epithelialmesenchymal transition(EMT)by elevating E-Cadherin expression and reducing expression of N-Cadherin,Vimentin and Snail in RBE cells.Further in vitro study revealed that HMGB1 silencing significantly decreased the level of VEGF-C,whereas the recombinant HMGB1increased the VEGF-C level in RBE cells(both P<0.05),which suggested that HMGB1 could promote lymphatic microvessel density,and subsequently lymphatic invasion,via promoting VEGF-C expression.CONCLUSION:Our results define an important role of HMGB1 in the progression of cholangiocarcinoma,and HMGB1 may serve as a prognostic marker for IHCC patients.
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