In recent years, linguistic steganography based on text auto-generation technology has been greatly developed, which is considered to be a very promising but also a very challenging research topic. ...Previous works mainly focus on optimizing the language model and conditional probability coding methods, aiming at generating steganographic sentences with better quality. In this paper, we first report some of our latest experimental findings, which seem to indicate that the quality of the generated steganographic text cannot fully guarantee its steganographic security, and even has a prominent perceptual-imperceptibility and statistical-imperceptibility conflict effect (Psic Effect). To further improve the imperceptibility and security of generated steganographic texts, in this paper, we propose a new linguistic steganography based on Variational Auto-Encoder (VAE), which can be called VAE-Stega. We use the encoder in VAE-Stega to learn the overall statistical distribution characteristics of a large number of normal texts, and then use the decoder in VAE-Stega to generate steganographic sentences which conform to both of the statistical language model as well as the overall statistical distribution of normal sentences, so as to guarantee both the perceptual-imperceptibility and statistical-imperceptibility of the generated steganographic texts at the same time. We design several experiments to test the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed model can greatly improve the imperceptibility of the generated steganographic sentences and thus achieves the state of the art performance.
Visualizing the location and dynamics of RNAs in live cells is key to understanding their function. Here, we identify two endonuclease-deficient, single-component programmable RNA-guided and ...RNA-targeting Cas13 RNases (dCas13s) that allow robust real-time imaging and tracking of RNAs in live cells, even when using single 20- to 27-nt-long guide RNAs. Compared to the aptamer-based MS2-MCP strategy, an optimized dCas13 system is user friendly, does not require genetic manipulation, and achieves comparable RNA-labeling efficiency. We demonstrate that the dCas13 system is capable of labeling NEAT1, SatIII, MUC4, and GCN4 RNAs and allows the study of paraspeckle-associated NEAT1 dynamics. Applying orthogonal dCas13 proteins or combining dCas13 and MS2-MCP allows dual-color imaging of RNAs in single cells. Further combination of dCas13 and dCas9 systems allows simultaneous visualization of genomic DNA and RNA transcripts in living cells.
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•Identification of CRISPR-dPspCas13b and -dPguCas13b for RNA imaging•Robust tracking of NEAT1 with dPspCas13b and single gRNAs in living cells•Tracking of NEAT1 reveals “kiss-and-run” and “fusion” models of paraspeckle dynamics•Simultaneous RNA-RNA/DNA labeling by orthogonal dCas13s or combined with dCas9
Yang et al. show that the dCas13 system is capable of labeling RNAs. Applying orthogonal dCas13s or combining with dCas9 allows simultaneous visualization of RNA-RNA and DNA-RNA in living cells. The dCas13 system is user friendly in real-time RNA imaging without requiring genetic manipulation.
There is increasing evidence that patients with retinal detachment (RD) have aberrant brain activity. However, neuroimaging investigations remain focused on static changes in brain activity among RD ...patients. There is limited knowledge regarding the characteristics of dynamic brain activity in RD patients.
This study evaluated changes in dynamic brain activity among RD patients, using a dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (dALFF), k-means clustering method and support vector machine (SVM) classification approach.
We investigated inter-group disparities of dALFF indices under three different time window sizes using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data from 23 RD patients and 24 demographically matched healthy controls (HCs). The k-means clustering method was performed to analyze specific dALFF states and related temporal properties. Additionally, we selected altered dALFF values under three distinct conditions as classification features for distinguishing RD patients from HCs using an SVM classifier.
RD patients exhibited dynamic changes in local intrinsic indicators of brain activity. Compared with HCs, RD patients displayed increased dALFF in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus, left putamen (Putamen_L), left superior occipital gyrus (Occipital_Sup_L), left middle occipital gyrus (Occipital_Mid_L), right calcarine (Calcarine_R), right middle temporal gyrus (Temporal_Mid_R), and right inferior frontal gyrus (Frontal_Inf_Tri_R). Additionally, RD patients showed significantly decreased dALFF values in the right superior parietal gyrus (Parietal_Sup_R) and right paracentral lobule (Paracentral_Lobule_R) two-tailed, voxel-level
< 0.05, Gaussian random field (GRF) correction, cluster-level
< 0.05. For dALFF, we derived 3 or 4 states of ALFF that occurred repeatedly. There were differences in state distribution and state properties between RD and HC groups. The number of transitions between the dALFF states was higher in the RD group than in the HC group. Based on dALFF values in various brain regions, the overall accuracies of SVM classification were 97.87, 100, and 93.62% under three different time windows; area under the curve values were 0.99, 1.00, and 0.95, respectively. No correlation was found between hamilton anxiety (HAMA) scores and regional dALFF.
Our findings offer important insights concerning the neuropathology that underlies RD and provide robust evidence that dALFF, a local indicator of brain activity, may be useful for clinical diagnosis.
Prelithiated free-standing membranes as anodes for lithium-ion batteries can demonstrate significantly improved initial coulombic efficiencies and capacity utilization.
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•A strategy to ...rationally prelithiate GO matrix of free-standing anodes by inorganic lithium salts is developed.•The pre-inserted lithium-containing groups can increase the electronic conductivity and suppresses further Li consumption upon cycling.•The initial coulombic efficiencies and cycling performance of prelithiated free-standing anode were significantly enhanced.
The influence of carbon matrix in freestanding electrodes for flexible lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) cannot be neglected because of the strong intercalation ability of Li+ which could result in low initial columbic efficiencies (ICEs). Based on electrostatic potential, inorganic lithium salts and graphene oxide (GO) with opposite zeta potential in ethanol is utilized as chemical prelithiation reagent, which enables a successful prelithiation of GO-based SnTiS3 anodes. By molecular dynamic calculation and experimental evaluation, the prelithiated GO matrix with enlarged layer distance enables an improved ion conductivity and suppresses Li consumption. Consequently, prelithiated free-standing membranes as anodes for LIBs can demonstrate significantly improved ICEs and capacity utilization compared with their counterparts without prelithiation. This strategy can shed new light on prelithiated free-standing electrodes with high performance for flexible wearable energy storage devices.
Cervical cancer (CC) is one of the commonest malignant cancers among women with high morbidity and mortality. Despite encouraging advances had been found in diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, ...effective therapeutic strategy and further exploration of the mechanism underlying in CC is still needed. We searched The Cancer Genome Atlas database and found that long noncoding RNA LINC02535 was highly expressed in CC. LINC02535 has not been studied in CC, and its molecular regulation mechanism remains unknown. Based on starBase database, LINC02535 could potentially bind poly (rC) binding protein 2 (PCBP2). In the present study, we discovered a significant increase of the LINC02535 and PCBP2 expression in CC tissues and cells as compared with the adjacent normal tissues and normal cervical epithelial cells. LINC02535 and PCBP2 can bind with each other and were colocated in cytoplasm. LINC02535 and PCBP2 promoted cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and suppressed apoptosis in CC. LINC02535 and PCBP2 facilitated the repair of DNA damage to promote CC progression. LINC02535 cooperated with PCBP2 to enhance the stability of RRM1 messenger RNA (mRNA). RRM1 promoted the repair of DNA damage and epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) process in CC cells. LINC02535 regulated tumorigenesis in vivo. In conclusion, LINC02535 cooperated with PCBP2, regulated stability of RRM1 mRNA to promote cell proliferation and EMT process in CC cells by facilitating the repair of DNA damage, providing a potential biomarker for CC.
1.
LINC02535 and poly (rC) binding protein 2 (PCBP2) are upregulated, and LINC02535 binds with PCBP2 in CC.
2.
LINC02535 and PCBP2 promote cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and inhibit apoptosis in CC.
3.
LINC02535 cooperates with PCBP2 to enhance the stability of RRM1 messenger RNA.
We report direct observation of an unexpected anisotropic swelling of Si nanowires during lithiation against either a solid electrolyte with a lithium counter-electrode or a liquid electrolyte with a ...LiCoO2 counter-electrode. Such anisotropic expansion is attributed to the interfacial processes of accommodating large volumetric strains at the lithiation reaction front that depend sensitively on the crystallographic orientation. This anisotropic swelling results in lithiated Si nanowires with a remarkable dumbbell-shaped cross section, which develops due to plastic flow and an ensuing necking instability that is induced by the tensile hoop stress buildup in the lithiated shell. The plasticity-driven morphological instabilities often lead to fracture in lithiated nanowires, now captured in video. These results provide important insight into the battery degradation mechanisms.
Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) are a heterogeneous group of tumors with complicated treatment options that depend on pathological grading, clinical staging, and presence of symptoms related ...to hormonal secretion. With regard to diagnosis, remarkable advances have been made: Chromogranin A is recommended as a general marker for pNETs. But other new biomarker modalities, like circulating tumor cells, multiple transcript analysis, microRNA profile, and cytokines, should be clarified in future investigations before clinical application. Therefore, the currently available serum biomarkers are insufficient for diagnosis, but reasonably acceptable in evaluating the prognosis of and response to treatments during follow-up of pNETs. Surgical resection is still the only curative therapeutic option for localized pNETs. However, a debulking operation has also been proven to be effective for controlling the disease. As for drug therapy, steroids and somatostatin analogues are the first-line therapy for those with positive expression of somatostatin receptor, while everolimus and sunitinib represent important progress for the treatment of patients with advanced pNETs. Great progress has been achieved in the combination of systematic therapy with local control treatments. The optimal timing of local control intervention, planning of sequential therapies, and implementation of multidisciplinary care remain pending.
Visible-infrared person re-identification (VI-ReID) is an emerging and challenging cross-modality image matching problem because of the explosive surveillance data in night-time surveillance ...applications. To handle the large modality gap, various generative adversarial network models have been developed to eliminate the cross-modality variations based on a cross-modal image generation framework. However, the lack of point-wise cross-modality ground-truths makes it extremely challenging to learn such a cross-modal image generator. To address these problems, we learn the correspondence between single-channel infrared images and three-channel visible images by generating intermediate grayscale images as auxiliary information to colorize the single-modality infrared images. We propose a grayscale enhancement colorization network (GECNet) to bridge the modality gap by retaining the structure of the colored image which contains rich information. To simulate the infrared-to-visible transformation, the point-wise transformed grayscale images greatly enhance the colorization process. Our experiments conducted on two visible-infrared cross-modality person re-identification datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over the state-of-the-arts.
Summary
Poor graft function (PGF) is a severe complication of allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo‐HSCT). Murine studies have demonstrated that effective haematopoiesis depends ...on the specific bone marrow (BM) microenvironment. Increasing evidence shows that BM macrophages (MФs), which constitute an important component of BM immune microenvironment, are indispensable for the regulation of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the BM. However, little is known about the number and function of BM MФs or whether they directly interact with HSCs in PGF patients. In the current prospective case‐control study, PGF patients showed a significant increase in classically activated inflammatory MФs (M1; 2·18 ± 0·11% vs. 0·82 ± 0·06%, P < 0·0001), a striking reduction in alternatively activated anti‐inflammatory MФs (M2; 3·02 ± 0·31% vs. 21·89 ± 0·90%, P < 0·0001), resulting in a markedly increased M1/M2 ratio (0·82 ± 0·06 vs. 0·06 ± 0·002; P < 0·0001) in the BM compared with good graft function patients. Meanwhile, standard monocyte subsets were altered in PGF patients. Dysfunctional BM MФs, which were characterized by reduced proliferation, migration and phagocytosis, were evident in PGF patients. Furthermore, BM MФs from PGF patients with high tumour necrosis factor‐α and interleukin 12 levels and low transforming growth factor‐β levels, led to impaired BM CD34+ cell function. In summary, our data indicate that an unbalanced BM M1/M2 ratio and dysfunctional MФs may contribute to the occurrence of PGF following allo‐HSCT.
Yellow tea, a rare type tea from China, has a rich breadth of functional ingredients and benefits the gastrointestinal tract. However, it is not clear whether the yellow tea extract can alleviate ...constipation. Therefore, we used loperamide-induced constipation in mice to evaluate the effects of yellow tea extract. Fifty Kunming mice were randomly divided into five groups: normal, model, low-dose yellow tea extract, low-dose yellow tea extract prevention group, and high-dose yellow tea extract prevention group. Mice were administered yellow tea extract for 5 weeks followed by loperamide-induced constipation for the final 2 weeks. The results showed that yellow tea extract alleviated constipation symptoms by improving the fecal water content, defecation weight, and gastrointestinal transit rate. Yellow tea extract intervention also protected colon tissue, regulated serum neurotransmitters, and decreased the vasoactive intestinal peptide level. Furthermore, qRT-PCR indicated that yellow tea extract regulated genes associated with the constipation state, raised
5-HT3
and
5-HT4
and reduced
AQP3
and
AQP4
mRNA expression. Moreover, we found that yellow tea extract changed the gut microbiota composition. Community diversity and richness were increased and principal co-ordinate analysis demonstrated that the yellow tea extract prophylaxis groups differed from the model group. Difference analysis indicated that yellow tea extract increased
Roseburia
,
Lachnospiraceae_UCG-006
, and
Bifidobacterium
and decreased
norank_f_Clostridiales_vadinBB60_group
,
unclassified_o_Bacteroidales
, and
Bacteroides
, which are correlated with constipation. Based on these results, we believe that regular yellow tea consumption can effectively alleviate constipation.
We evaluated the effects of yellow tea extract on relieving constipation induced by loperamide and evaluated the changes of gut microbiota based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing.
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