Following the first experimental realization of graphene, other ultrathin materials with unprecedented electronic properties have been explored, with particular attention given to the heavy group-IV ...elements Si, Ge and Sn. Two-dimensional buckled Si-based silicene has been recently realized by molecular beam epitaxy growth, whereas Ge-based germanene was obtained by molecular beam epitaxy and mechanical exfoliation. However, the synthesis of Sn-based stanene has proved challenging so far. Here, we report the successful fabrication of 2D stanene by molecular beam epitaxy, confirmed by atomic and electronic characterization using scanning tunnelling microscopy and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, in combination with first-principles calculations. The synthesis of stanene and its derivatives will stimulate further experimental investigation of their theoretically predicted properties, such as a 2D topological insulating behaviour with a very large bandgap, and the capability to support enhanced thermoelectric performance, topological superconductivity and the near-room-temperature quantum anomalous Hall effect.
The construction of carbon-carbon bonds is a central tenet of modern synthetic chemistry. Metal-catalyzed C-H functionalization can serve as a particularly powerful tool for achieving carbon-carbon ...bond formation. This review summarizes the early adventures and recent advancements in catalytic transformation of unactivated C(sp
3
)-H bonds into C(sp
3
)-C(sp
3
) bonds. To date, three main strategies have emerged to enable this transformation, namely, metallocarbene-triggered C(sp
3
)-H alkylation, auxiliary-directed C(sp
3
)-H alkylation, and photo-induced C(sp
3
)-H alkylation. Compared with traditional cross-coupling reactions having both coupling partners activated with functional groups or base-promoted enolate chemistry, catalytic alkylation of unactivated C(sp
3
)-H bonds for C(sp
3
)-C(sp
3
) bond formation not only offers novel disconnections in retrosynthetic analysis, but also represents the future trend in green and atom-economic chemistry.
This review summarizes recent advancements in catalytic direct transformation of unactivated C(sp
3
)-H bonds into C(sp
3
)-C(sp
3
) bonds.
Research Summary
This paper studies the impact of platform‐owner entry threat on complementors in platform‐based markets. We examine how app developers on the Android mobile platform adjust ...innovation efforts (rate and direction) and value‐capture strategies in response to the threat of Google's entry into their markets. We find that after Google's entry threat increases, affected developers reduce innovation and raise the prices for the affected apps. However, their incentives to innovate are not completely suppressed; rather, they shift innovation to unaffected and new apps. Given that many apps already offer similar features, Google's entry threat may thus reduce wasteful development efforts. We discuss the implications of these results for platform owners, complementors, and policy makers.
Managerial Summary
We examine one prevalent source of conflict: platform owners' entry into complementary product spaces. We show that app developers on Google's Android system are strategic and nimble actors. They respond to the threat of Google's entry by adjusting both value‐creation and value‐capture strategies. We also show that platform owners could use direct entry to shape innovation directions and encourage variety of complements. Overall, on the one hand, Google's entry may have pushed complementors into other areas (which might be less lucrative) and strengthened its position in the mobile market. On the other hand, the entry may have reduced wasteful production efforts in the development of redundant applications. The overall welfare implication is thus ambiguous.
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We have introduced a new method of estimating the electron temperature and density of H ii regions by using single-dish observations. In this method, multiple hydrogen radio recombination lines of ...different bands are computed under the assumption of low optical depth. We use evolutionary hydrodynamical models of H ii regions to model hydrogen recombination line emission from a variety of H ii regions and assess the reliability of the method. According to the simulated results, the error of the estimated temperature is commonly <13%, and that of the estimated density is <25% for a <1% uncertainty of the observed line fluxes. A reasonable estimated value of electron density can be achieved if the uncertainty of the line fluxes is lower than 3%. In addition, the estimated values are more representative of the properties in the relatively high density region if the gas density gradient is present in the H ii region. Our method can be independent of the radio continuum observations. But the accuracy will be improved if a line-to-continuum ratio at millimeter wavelengths is added to the estimation. Our method provides a way to measure the temperature and density in ionized regions without interferometers.
An Escherichia coli-produced human papillomavirus (HPV) 16 and 18 bivalent vaccine (Cecolin) was prequalified by WHO in 2021. This study aimed to compare the immunogenicity of the E coli-produced HPV ...9-valent vaccine Cecolin 9 (against HPV 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, and 58) with Gardasil 9.
This was a randomised, single-blind trial conducted in China. Healthy non-pregnant women aged 18–26 years, who were not breastfeeding and with no HPV vaccination history, were enrolled in the Ganyu Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province, China). Women were stratified by age (18–22 years and 23–26 years) and randomly assigned (1:1) using a permutated block size of eight to receive three doses of Cecolin 9 or Gardasil 9 at day 0, day 45, and month 6. All participants, as well as study personnel without access to the vaccines, were masked. Neutralising antibodies were measured by a triple-colour pseudovirion-based neutralisation assay. The primary outcomes, seroconversion rates and geometric mean concentrations (GMCs) at month 7, were analysed in the per-protocol set for immunogenicity (PPS-I). Non-inferiority was identified for the lower limit of the 95% CI of the GMC ratio (Cecolin 9 vs Gardasil 9) at a margin of 0·5 and a seroconversion rate difference (Cecolin 9–Gardasil 9) at a margin of –5%. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04782895) and is completed.
From March 14 to 18, 2021, a total of 553 potential participants were screened, of which 244 received at least one dose of Cecolin 9 and 243 received at least one dose of Gardasil 9. The seroconversion rates for all HPV types in both groups were 100% in the PPS-I, with the values of the lower limits of 95% CIs for seroconversion rate differences ranging between –1·8% and –1·7%. The GMC ratios of five types were higher than 1·0, with the highest ratio, for HPV 58, at 1·65 (95% CI 1·38–1·97), and those of four types were lower than 1·0, with the lowest ratio, for HPV 11, at 0·79 (0·68–0·93). The incidence of adverse reactions in both groups was similar (43% 104/244 vs 47% 115/243).
Cecolin 9 induced non-inferior HPV type-specific immune responses compared with Gardasil 9 and is a potential candidate to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer by allowing for global accessibility to 9-valent HPV vaccinations, especially in low-income and middle-income countries.
National Natural Science Foundation, Fujian Provincial Natural Science Foundation, Xiamen Science and Technology Plan Project, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences of China, and Xiamen Innovax.
The accumulation of lipid peroxides is recognized as a determinant of the occurrence of ferroptosis. However, the sensors and amplifying process of lipid peroxidation linked to ferroptosis remain ...obscure. Here we identify PKCβII as a critical contributor of ferroptosis through independent genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 and kinase inhibitor library screening. Our results show that PKCβII senses the initial lipid peroxides and amplifies lipid peroxidation linked to ferroptosis through phosphorylation and activation of ACSL4. Lipidomics analysis shows that activated ACSL4 catalyses polyunsaturated fatty acid-containing lipid biosynthesis and promotes the accumulation of lipid peroxidation products, leading to ferroptosis. Attenuation of the PKCβII-ACSL4 pathway effectively blocks ferroptosis in vitro and impairs ferroptosis-associated cancer immunotherapy in vivo. Our results identify PKCβII as a sensor of lipid peroxidation, and the lipid peroxidation-PKCβII-ACSL4 positive-feedback axis may provide potential targets for ferroptosis-associated disease treatment.
For steganalysis, many studies showed that convolutional neural network (CNN) has better performances than the two-part structure of traditional machine learning methods. Existing CNN architectures ...use various tricks to improve the performance of steganalysis, such as fixed convolutional kernels, the absolute value layer, data augmentation and the domain knowledge. However, some designing of the network structure were not extensively studied so far, such as different convolutions (inception, xception, etc.) and variety ways of pooling(spatial pyramid pooling, etc.). In this paper, we focus on designing a new CNN network structure to improve detection accuracy of spatial-domain steganography. First, we use 3×3 kernels instead of the traditional 5 × 5 kernels and optimize convolution kernels in the preprocessing layer. The smaller convolution kernels are used to reduce the number of parameters and model the features in a small local region. Next, we use separable convolutions to utilize channel correlation of the residuals, compress the image content and increase the signal-to-noise ratio (between the stego signal and the image signal). Then, we use spatial pyramid pooling (SPP) to aggregate the local features and enhance the representation ability of features by multi-level pooling. Finally, data augmentation is adopted to further improve network performance. The experimental results show that the proposed CNN structure is significantly better than other five methods such as SRM, Ye-Net, Xu-Net, Yedroudj-Net and SRNet, when it is used to detect three spatial algorithms such as WOW, S-UNIWARD and HILL with a wide variety of datasets and payloads.
Abstract
Most triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients fail to respond to T cell-mediated immunotherapies. Unfortunately, the molecular determinants are still poorly understood. Breast cancer is ...the disease genetically linked to a deficiency in autophagy. Here, we show that autophagy defects in TNBC cells inhibit T cell-mediated tumour killing in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, we identify Tenascin-C as a candidate for autophagy deficiency-mediated immunosuppression, in which Tenascin-C is Lys63-ubiquitinated by Skp2, particularly at Lys942 and Lys1882, thus promoting its recognition by p62 and leading to its selective autophagic degradation. High Tenascin-C expression is associated with poor prognosis and inversely correlated with LC3B expression and CD8
+
T cells in TNBC patients. More importantly, inhibition of Tenascin-C in autophagy-impaired TNBC cells sensitizes T cell-mediated tumour killing and improves antitumour effects of single anti-PD1/PDL1 therapy. Our results provide a potential strategy for targeting TNBC with the combination of Tenascin-C blockade and immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is an important quantum communication branch, which realizes the secure information transmission directly without encryption and decryption processes. ...Recently, two table-top experiments have demonstrated the principle of QSDC. Here, we report the first long-distance QSDC experiment, including the security test, information encoding, fiber transmission and decoding. After the fiber transmission of 0.5 km, quantum state fidelities of the two polarization entan- gled Bell states are 91% and 88%, respectively, which are used for information coding. We theoretically analyze the performance of the QSDC system based on current optical communication technologies, showing that QSDC over fiber links of several tens potential of long-distance QSDC and supports its networks. kilometers could be expected. It demonstrates the future applications on quantum communication