Proton pump inhibitors, including omeprazole, rabeprazole, lansoprazole, and pantoprazole, achieved simultaneous enantioselective determination in the human plasma by chiral liquid ...chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. The four corresponding stable isotope‐labeled proton pump inhibitors were adopted as the internal standards. Each enantiomer and the internal standards were extracted with acetonitrile containing 0.1% ammonia, then separated with a Chiralpak IC column (5 µm, 4.6 mm × 150 mm) within 10 min. The mobile phase was composed of acetonitrile–ammonium acetate (10 mM) containing 0.2% acetic acid (50:50, v/v). To quantify all enantiomers, an API 4000 tandem mass spectrometer was used, and multiple reaction monitoring transitions were performed on m/z 360.1→242.1, 384.1→200.1, 370.1→252.1, and 346.1→198.1, respectively. No significant matrix effect was observed for all analytes. The calibration curve for all enantiomers were linear from 1.25 to 2500 ng/mL. The precisions for intra‐ and inter‐run were < 14.2%, and the accuracy fell in the interval of –5.3 to 8.1%. Stability of samples was confirmed under the storage and processing conditions. The developed method was also suitable for separation and determination of ilaprazole enantiomers. The validated method combining the equilibrium dialysis method was applied to the protein binding ratio studies of four pairs proton pump inhibitor enantiomers in human plasma.
A panoptic driving perception system is an essential part of autonomous driving. A high-precision and real-time perception system can assist the vehicle in making reasonable decisions while driving. ...We present a panoptic driving perception network (you only look once for panoptic (YOLOP)) to perform traffic object detection, drivable area segmentation, and lane detection simultaneously. It is composed of one encoder for feature extraction and three decoders to handle the specific tasks. Our model performs extremely well on the challenging BDD100K dataset, achieving state-of-the-art on all three tasks in terms of accuracy and speed. Besides, we verify the effectiveness of our multi-task learning model for joint training via ablative studies. To our best knowledge, this is the first work that can process these three visual perception tasks simultaneously in real-time on an embedded device Jetson TX2(23 FPS), and maintain excellent accuracy. To facilitate further research, the source codes and pre-trained models are released at
https://github.com/hustvl/YOLOP
.
Intercropping is one of the most vital practice to improve land utilization rate in China that has limited arable land resource. However, the traditional intercropping systems have many disadvantages ...including illogical field lay-out of crops, low economic value, and labor deficiency, which cannot balance the crop production and agricultural sustainability. In view of this, we developed a novel soybean strip intercropping model using maize as the partner, the regular maize-soybean strip intercropping mainly popularized in northern China and maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping principally extended in southwestern China. Compared to the traditional maize-soybean intercropping systems, the main innovation of field lay-out style in our present intercropping systems is that the distance of two adjacent maize rows are shrunk as a narrow strip, and a strip called wide strip between two adjacent narrow strips is expanded reserving for the growth of two or three rows of soybean plants. The distance between outer rows of maize and soybean strips are expanded enough for light use efficiency improvement and tractors working in the soybean strips. Importantly, optimal cultivar screening and increase of plant density achieved a high yield of both the two crops in the intercropping systems and increased land equivalent ratio as high as 2.2. Annually alternative rotation of the adjacent maize- and soybean-strips increased the grain yield of next seasonal maize, improved the absorption of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potasium of maize, while prevented the continuous cropping obstacles. Extra soybean production was obtained without affecting maize yield in our strip intercropping systems, which balanced the high crop production and agricultural sustainability.
Metabolite lactic acid has always been regarded as a metabolic by-product rather than a bioactive molecule. Recently, this view has changed since it was discovered that lactic acid can be used as a ...signal molecule and has novel signal transduction functions both intracellular and extracellular, which can regulate key functions in the immune system. In recent years, more and more evidence has shown that lactic acid is closely related to the metabolism and polarization of macrophages. During inflammation, lactic acid is a regulator of macrophage metabolism, and it can prevent excessive inflammatory responses; In malignant tumors, lactic acid produced by tumor tissues promotes the polarization of tumor-associated macrophages, which in turn promotes tumor progression. In this review, we examined the relationship between lactic acid and macrophage metabolism. We further discussed how lactic acid plays a role in maintaining the homeostasis of macrophages, as well as the biology of macrophage polarization and the M1/M2 imbalance in human diseases. Potential methods to target lactic acid in the treatment of inflammation and cancer will also be discussed so as to provide new strategies for the treatment of diseases.
Bacteria‐mediated tumor therapy (BMTT) has been known for decades; however, its clinical use is inhibited by its association with infections. To address this issue, a spiky, bacterium‐like ...metal–organic framework (MOF), which can replicate the functional responses of BMTT without its adverse side‐effects, is proposed. MOFs are synthesized in a solvothermal reaction of aluminum sulfate, ruthenium chloride hydrate, and 2‐aminoterephthalic acid; they have a spherical morphology or many nanospikes on their surfaces, depending on the reaction temperature. Both spherical and spiky MOFs can function as photothermal agents, converting absorbed optical energy into local heat. Owing to their higher surface area of interaction, spiky MOFs are more easily phagocytosed by macrophages than are spherical MOFs, strengthening their immune responses. Moreover, when injected intratumorally, spiky MOFs reside significantly longer than spherical ones, enabling their use in repeated photothermal treatments. The combination of in situ vaccination with intratumorally injected bacterium‐like MOFs under exposure to an near‐infrared laser and the immune checkpoint blockade of systemically administered αPD‐1 is evaluated in tumor‐bearing mice. The results indicate that the checkpoint blockade acts synergistically with in situ vaccination to provide diverse antitumor functions of BMTT, destroying a primary tumor and suppressing tumor recurrence and metastasis.
The combination of in situ vaccination by intratumorally injected bacterium‐like MOFs under NIR exposure and the checkpoint blockade of systemically administered αPD‐1 is used to enable the diverse antitumor functions of bacteria‐mediated tumor therapy. The results indicate that the checkpoint blockade acts synergistically with in situ vaccination to strengthen immune memory responses, yielding remarkable antitumor efficacy.
Iron is an essential metal ion in the human body and usually dysregulated in cancers. However, a comprehensive overview of the iron‐related genes and their clinical relevance in cancer is lacking. In ...this study, we utilized the expression profiling, proteomics, and epigenetics from the Cancer Genome Atlas database to systematically characterized the alterations of iron‐related genes. There were multiple iron‐related genes with dysregulation across 14 cancers and some of these ectopic changes may be associated with aberrant DNA methylation. Meanwhile, a variety of genes were significantly associated with patient survival, especially in kidney renal clear cell carcinoma. Then differentially expressed genes were validated in clinical samples. Finally, we found deferoxamine and erastin could inhibit proliferation in various tumor cells and influence the expression of several iron‐related genes. Overall, our study provides a comprehensive analysis of iron metabolism across cancers and highlights the potential treatment of iron targeted therapies for cancers.
We systematically analyzed dysregulation of iron metabolism genes using transcriptomics, epigenomics and proteomics data from the TCGA project. Our results showed that iron metabolism was dysregulated across different cancer types.
Methylmercury (MeHg) is a neurotoxin, mainly derived from microbial mercury methylation in natural aquatic environments, and poses threats to human health. Polar regions and paddy soils are potential ...hotspots of mercury methylation and represent environmental settings that are susceptible to natural and anthropogenic perturbations. The effects of changing environmental conditions on the methylating microorganisms and mercury speciation due to global climate change and farming practices aimed for sustainable agriculture were discussed for polar regions and paddy soils, respectively. To better understand and predict microbial mercury methylation in the changing environment, we synthesized current understanding of how to effectively identify active mercury methylators and assess the bioavailability of different mercury species for methylation. The application of biomarkers based on the hgcAB genes have demonstrated the occurrence of potential mercury methylators, such as sulfate-reducing bacteria, iron-reducing bacteria, methanogen and syntrophs, in a diverse variety of microbial habitats. Advanced techniques, such as enriched stable isotope tracers, whole-cell biosensor and diffusive gradient thin film (DGT) have shown great promises in quantitatively assessing mercury availability to microbial methylators. Improved understanding of the complex structure of microbial communities consisting mercury methylators and non-methylators, chemical speciation of inorganic mercury under geochemically relevant conditions, and the pathway of cellular mercury uptake will undoubtedly facilitate accurate assessment and prediction of in situ microbial mercury methylation.
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•Changing natural condition and human activity strongly affect mercury methylation.•Microorganisms possessing hgcAB genes are present in diverse habitats.•Mercury isotopes, whole-cell biosensor and DGT can assess mercury bioavailability.
The binary skutterudite CoSb
3
is a narrow bandgap semiconductor thermoelectric (TE) material with a relatively flat band structure and excellent electrical performance. However, thermal conductivity ...is very high because of the covalent bond between Co and Sb, resulting in a very low
ZT
value. Therefore, researchers have been trying to reduce its thermal conductivity by the different optimization methods. In addition, the synergistic optimization of the electrical and thermal transport parameters is also a key to improve the
ZT
value of CoSb
3
material because the electrical and thermal transport parameters of TE materials are closely related to each other by the band structure and scattering mechanism. This review summarizes the main research progress in recent years to reduce the thermal conductivity of CoSb
3
-based materials at atomic-molecular scale and nano-mesoscopic scale. We also provide a simple summary of achievements made in recent studies on the non-equilibrium preparation technologies of CoSb
3
-based materials and synergistic optimization of the electrical and thermal transport parameters. In addition, the research progress of CoSb
3
-based TE devices in recent years is also briefly discussed.
Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a type of crystalline porous polymers that possess ordered structures and eternal pores. Because of their unique structural characteristics and diverse ...functional groups, COFs have been used in various application fields, such as adsorption, catalysis, separation, ion conduction, and energy storage. Among COFs, the fluorine‐containing COFs (fCOFs) have been developed for special applications by virtue of special physical and chemical properties resulting from fluorine element, which is a nonmetallic halogen element and possesses strong electronegativity. In the organic chemistry field, introducing fluorine into chemicals enables those chemicals to exhibit many interesting properties, and fluorine chemistry increasingly plays an important role in the history of chemical development. The introduction of fluorine in COFs can enhance the crystallinity, porosity, and stability of COFs, making COFs having superior performances and some new applications. In this review, the synthesis and application of fCOFs are systematically summarized. The application involves photocatalytic production of hydrogen peroxide, photocatalytic water splitting, electrocatalytic CO2 reduction, adsorption for different substances (H2, pesticides, per‐/polyfluoroalkyl substances, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, bisphenols, and positively charged organic dye molecules), oil−water separation, energy storage (e.g., zinc‐ion batteries, lithium−sulfur batteries), and proton conduction. Perspectives of remaining challenges and possible directions for fCOFs are also discussed.
The fluorine‐containing covalent organic frameworks (fCOFs) have been developed for special applications by virtue of special physical and chemical properties resulting from fluorine element. The synthesis and application of fCOFs are systematically summarized in this review. Perspectives of remaining challenges and possible directions for fCOFs are also discussed.
In China, the abuse of chemical nitrogen （N） fertilizer results in decreasing N use efficiency （NUE）, wasting resources and causing serious environmental problems. Cereal-legume intercropping is ...widely used to enhance crop yield and improve resource use efficiency, especially in Southwest China. To optimize N utilization and increase grain yield, we conducted a two-year field experiment with single-factor randomized block designs of a maize-soybean intercropping system （IMS）. Three N rates, NN （no nitrogen application）, LN （lower N application： 270 kg N ha-1）, and CN （conventional N application： 330 kg N ha-1）, and three topdressing distances of LN （LND）, e.g., 15 cm （LND1）, 30 cm （LND2） and 45 cm （LND3） from maize rows were evaluated. At the beginning seed stage （R5）, the leghemoglobin content and nitrogenase activity of LND3 were 1.86 mg plant-1 and 0.14 mL h-1 plant-1, and those of LND1 and LND2 were increased by 31.4 and 24.5%, 6.4 and 32.9% compared with LND3, respectively. The ureide content and N accumulation of soybean organs in LND1 and LND2 were higher than those of LND3. The N uptake, NUE and N agronomy efficiency （NAE） of IMS under CN were 308.3 kg ha-1, 28.5%, and 5.7 kg grain kg-1 N, respectively; however, those of LN were significantly increased by 12.4, 72.5, and 51.6% compared with CN, respectively. The total yield in LND1 and LND2 was increased by 12.3 and 8.3% compared with CN, respectively. Those results suggested that LN with distances of 15-30 cm from the topdressing strip to the maize row was optimal in maize-soybean intercropping. Lower N input with an optimized fertilization location for IMS increased N fixation and N use efficiency without decreasing grain yield.
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