ZC4H2 encodes a C4H2 type zinc-finger nuclear factor, the mutation of which has been associated with disorders with various clinical phenotypes in human, including developmental delay, intellectual ...disability and dystonia. ZC4H2 has been suggested to regulate spinal cord patterning in zebrafish as a co-factor for RNF220, an ubiquitin E3 ligase involved in Gli signaling. Here we showed that ZC4H2 and RNF220 knockout animals phenocopy each other in spinal patterning in both mouse and zebrafish, with mispatterned progenitor and neuronal domains in the ventral spinal cord. We showed evidence that ZC4H2 is required for the stability of RNF220 and also proper Gli ubiquitination and signaling in vivo. Our data provides new insights into the possible etiology of the neurodevelopmental impairments observed in ZC4H2-associated syndromes.
Deep learning systems are extensively utilized in applications such as machine vision, autonomous driving, and audio recognition. However, there are concerns about their reliability and ...trustworthiness within both academic and industrial circles, leading to reservations about deploying them in safety-critical scenarios. A major hurdle in the widespread adoption of deep learning is the presence of inevitable adversarial attacks. These attacks aim to deceive deep learning models into producing inaccurate classifications by introducing imperceptible perturbations to the input data. Our research is motivated by a fundamental yet potent realization: adversarial examples bear a striking resemblance in content and meaning to regular examples. Hence, leveraging semantic or content-based image retrieval techniques proves effective in searching for similar images. By comparing the classification outcomes of similar images with those of the original images, we can ascertain whether they are adversarial examples. Nevertheless, in real-world scenarios, various constraints such as lighting, posture, and background can result in inconsistencies in the distribution of the retrieval pool and query data. Consequently, this study proposes an algorithm for detecting adversarial samples based on a similar image retrieval approach, actively searching for analogous images in domains that are semantically linked but possess different retrieval pools and query samples. Our experiments demonstrate that, compared to alternative adversarial sample detection approaches, this study ensures minimal overhead and maintains high detection efficiency while being independent of the target model.
In this work,hydroxyl-functionalized boron nitride nanosheet(OH-BNNS)was prepared and was blended with poly(L-lactide)(PLLA)to yield PLLA/OH-BNNS nanocomposites with excellent dispersion of OH-BNNS ...via the interaction of carbonyl in PLLA and hydroxyl in OH-BNNS.The effects of OH-BNNS on the crystallization and melting behaviors,isothermal crystallization kinetics,macroscopic crystal morphology and crystal structure of PLLA were studied by means of various techniques.It is found that OH-BNNS can effectively accelerate crystallization of PLLA and enhance the nucleation density,leading to a smaller spherulite size,increased crystallinity,more obvious crystallization peak upon cooling but weakened cold crystallization behavior upon heating.Low OH-BNNS loading can increase the relative content ofα-crystal,but the relative content of less perfectα′-crystal is increased at high OH-BNNS loading due to the strong interaction between PLLA and OH-BNNS.
Ferrous ions (Fe
) are environmentally friendly materials but show extremely inefficient persulfate activation. Polymeric graphitic carbon nitride (g-C
N
) has recently shown potential to activate ...persulfates, but the process requires intense light irradiation. To overcome these drawbacks, we designed an innovative heterogeneous iron catalyst by doping Fe into g-C
N
(Fe-g-C
N
) and used it to activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) for degradation of pollutant phenol. The catalysts synthesized were fully characterized with various techniques, such as X-ray diffraction, Mössbauer spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Fe was found to be coordinated with the framework of g-C
N
. Approximately 100% degradation of phenol was achieved with Fe-g-C
N
after 20 min of reaction, whereas less than 5% degradation of phenol was achieved with Fe
. Fe-g-C
N
-PMS had a wide effective pH range, and its reactivity was nearly independent of natural illumination. In contrast to the previously proposed radical mechanisms, quenching experiments revealed that nonradical oxidation contributed to the observed degradation. The OO bond in the activated PMS likely underwent heterolysis, producing high-valence iron species (Fe
O) as the primary active species. These findings have important implications for the development of a selective heterogeneous nonradical-oxidation process.
A bottom-up and wet-chemical method employing
l
-cysteine as a precursor has been proven to be an effective strategy for producing fluorescent porous CQDs for the first time, which exhibit stable and ...strong photoluminescence, and reach a quantum yield of 18.1%. Under optimum conditions, a good linear semilogarithmic correlation between the quenching efficiency (
F
0
/
F
) and the concentration of chromium ions, even at 10
−8
mol L
−1
, was achieved, and the limit of detection was 1.491 × 10
−9
mol L
−1
. The quenching of the porous CQDs' fluorescence intensity by Cr
6+
may result from the inner filter effect. The application of these porous CQDs as probes for the detection of chromium ions is good, and they can be readily, rapidly and efficiently employed in the natural environment.
A bottom-up and wet-chemical method employing
l
-cysteine as a precursor has been proven to be an effective strategy for producing fluorescent porous CQDs.
Obesity continues to be a global public health challenge.
Litchi chinensis
seed is rich in bioactive ingredients with pharmacological effects, such as hypoglycemic activity and anti-oxidation. This ...study aimed to assess the potential anti-obesity effects of
L. chinensis
seed and the changes of gut microbiota and mycobiota compositions in obese zebrafish induced by a high-fat diet. The anti-obesity effects were supplemented and validated in high-fat diet-induced obese mice. In this study, various chemical components of
L. chinensis
seed water and ethanol extracts were detected using UHPLC-QE-MS, and both extracts showed strong
in vitro
antioxidant activities. Network pharmacology analysis showed the potential of the extracts to improve obesity.
Litchi chinensis
seed powder, water and ethanol extracts decreased the weight of obese zebrafish, improved lipid accumulation and lipid metabolism, regulated appetite, and inhibited cell apoptosis and inflammation of the liver and intestine. They showed similar effects in obese mice, and also reduced the weight of fat tissues, regulated insulin resistance and glucose metabolism, and improved the intestinal barrier. Additionally,
L. chinensis
seed modulated the compositions of gut microbiota and mycobiota in zebrafish, with the regulation of the proportion of bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids or affect intestine health, including
Cetobacterium
,
Trichococcus
,
Aeromonas
,
Staphylococcus
, and Micrococcaceae, and the proportion of fungi that produce mycotoxins or have special metabolic capacities, including
Penicillium
,
Candida
,
Rhodotorula
, and
Trichoderma
. Spearman's correlation analysis revealed the potential link between zebrafish obesity parameters, gut bacteria and fungi. Overall, these findings indicated that
L. chinensis
seed effectively improved obesity.
Litchi chinensis
seeds improve obesity in high-fat diet-induced obese zebrafish and mice.
Litchi chinensis
seeds regulate the intestinal microbiota and mycobiota in zebrafish.
The growth of new image technologies has created a need for techniques that can be used for copyright protection of digital images and video. One approach for copyright protection is to introduce an ...invisible signal, known as a digital watermark, into an image or video sequence. With the development of MPEG-4, frame-based approach has been migrating to object-based approach. Therefore, object-based watermarking schemes are needed. In this article, we propose a novel blind object watermarking scheme for images and video using shape adaptive-discrete wavelet transform (SA-DWT). To make the watermark robust and perceptual invisible, we embed it in the weighting mean of the wavelet blocks using the quantisation visual model based on the human visual system. Watermark detection is accomplished without the original, unwatermarked object by using statistical detection technique. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme is perceptual invisible and robust against many attacks such as lossy image/video compression (e.g. JPEG, JPEG2000 and MPEG-4), scaling, adding noise, filtering, D/A and A/D conversion, etc.
PDF
