This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled multicasting system, where a UAV is dispatched to disseminate a common file to a set of ground terminals (GTs). We aim to design the UAV ...trajectory to minimize its mission completion time, while ensuring that each GT successfully recovers the file with a desired high probability. The formulated problem is nonconvex and difficult to be solved in its original form. Therefore, we first derive an effective lower bound for the success file recovery probability of each GT. The problem is then reformulated in a more tractable form, where the UAV trajectory only needs to be designed to ensure the minimum connection time constraint with each GT, during which their distance is below a certain threshold. We show that without loss of optimality, the UAV trajectory consists of connected line segments only, which can be obtained by determining the optimal set of waypoints as well as the UAV speed along the path connecting the waypoints. We propose efficient schemes for the waypoint design based on a novel concept of virtual base station placement and by applying convex optimization. Furthermore, for fixed waypoints, the optimal UAV speed is efficiently obtained by solving a linear programming problem. Numerical results show that the proposed UAV-enabled multicasting with optimized trajectory design achieves significant performance gains over other benchmark schemes.
This article aims to investigate whether differences in ESG ratings have an impact on corporate green innovation behavior. A high-order fixed effects model was established using panel data from ...Chinese companies from 2009 to 2022 to empirically test the impact of ESG rating divergence in the Chinese market on corporate green innovation behavior.The study demonstrates that ESG rating disparity raises the quantity but lowers the quality of businesses' green innovation efforts because of the short board effect. After a series of robustness tests, the results are still valid.The mechanism investigation reveals that both an external pressure channel and an internal strategy adjustment channel are responsible for the impact of ESG rating disparity on green innovation efforts. The asymmetry of corporate green innovation activities is exacerbated by managers' self-interest, whereas the asymmetry of green innovation is mitigated by the caliber of government. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the divergence of a business's ESG rating between large-scale, non-heavy polluting, and places with strong environmental regulations can effectively slow down the asymmetric behavior of enterprise innovation activities. Additional investigation reveals that the phenomenon of ESG rating divergence spreads across industries and geographical areas. The short board effect of ESG rating divergence can be effectively mitigated by improving the quality of enterprise information disclosure and speeding up the digital transformation of businesses. The research conclusion provides marginal contributions on how to improve China's ESG rating system and how enterprises can identify ESG rating differences and make scientific decisions.
The piezo-electro-chemical effect, a phenomenon of vibration exciting chemical reaction, is hopeful for application in vibration-catalysis. In this work, BaTiO3 nanofibers were synthesized through an ...electrospinning method combined with a conventional sol-gel process. The piezo-electro-chemical effect of BaTiO3 nanofibers is realized through utilizing the product of piezoelectric effect and electro-chemical redox effect. BaTiO3 nanofibers behave a high vibration-catalytic decomposition efficiency of 97.5% for Rhodamine B dye within 60 min vibration. The piezo-electro-chemical intermediate product OH was observed in the vibration-catalytic process. The piezo-electro-chemical effect of BaTiO3 nanofibers is potential in utilizing vibration energy for dye wastewater treatment.
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•The piezo-electro-chemical effect of BaTiO3 nanofibers is realized.•The vibration-catalytic decomposition efficiency of Rhodamine B is up to 97.5%.•The intermediate product OH was observed in the vibration-catalytic process.
The commensal fungus Candida albicans often causes life-threatening infections in patients who are immunocompromised with high mortality. A prominent but poorly understood risk factor for the C. ...albicans commensal‒pathogen transition is the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Here, we report that β-lactam antibiotics cause bacteria to release significant quantities of peptidoglycan fragments that potently induce the invasive hyphal growth of C. albicans. We identify several active peptidoglycan subunits, including tracheal cytotoxin, a molecule produced by many Gram-negative bacteria, and fragments purified from the cell wall of Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus. Feeding mice with β-lactam antibiotics causes a peptidoglycan storm that transforms the gut from a niche usually restraining C. albicans in the commensal state to promoting invasive growth, leading to systemic dissemination. Our findings reveal a mechanism underlying a significant risk factor for C. albicans infection, which could inform clinicians regarding future antibiotic selection to minimize this deadly disease incidence.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a problematic greenhouse gas, although its conversion to alternative fuels represents a promising approach to limit its long-term effects. Here, pyroelectric nanostructured ...materials are shown to utilize temperature-variations and to reduce CO2 for methanol. Layered perovskite bismuth tungstate nanoplates harvest heat energy from temperature-variation, driving pyroelectric catalytic CO2 reduction for methanol at temperatures between 15 °C and 70 °C. The methanol yield can be as high as 55.0 μmol⋅g−1 after experiencing 20 cycles of temperature-variation. This efficient, cost-effective, and environmental-friendly pyroelectric catalytic CO2 reduction route provides an avenue towards utilizing natural diurnal temperature-variation for future methanol economy.CO2 is a problematic greenhouse gas, although its conversion to alternative fuels represents a promising approach to limit its long-term effects. Here, the authors demonstrate that CO2 can be reduced to methanol through pyroelectric catalysis under temperature variation near room temperature.
In this paper, we study the achievable throughput of batched temporal network coding in multi-hop erasure channels, where network coding is applied only within small coding blocks and each ...communication hop is modeled as a Gilbert-Elliott (GE) packet erasure channel. The GE channel is a 2-state Markov model that is commonly used for channels with memory. While channel memory does not affect the end-to-end capacity of multi-hop erasure channels, we show that it degrades the end-to-end throughput, when batched network coding with finite batch size is applied, due to the higher variance in erasures within one coding block. On the other hand, if the initial channel state information is available, the channel variance can be significantly reduced. We show that this fact can be utilized for improving the efficiency of the recoding operations at the intermediate nodes, and hence improve the end-to-end throughput of batched network coding schemes. Specifically, we propose adaptive recoding operations, where the network coded packets are adaptively generated based on the number of received packets and the initial channel state for each coding block. The simulation results show that the proposed adaptive recoding scheme significantly enhances the end-to-end throughput of batched network coding over multi-hop GE channels.
Serine proteases (SPs) and their homologs (SPHs) are among the best-characterized gene families. They are involved in several physiological processes, including digestion, embryonic development and ...immunity. In the current study, a total of 177 SPs-related genes were characterized in the genome of Ostrinia furnacalis. The activation site of SPs/SPHs and enzyme specificity of SPs were identified, and the findings showed that most of the SPs analyzed possessed trypsin substrate specificity. Several SPs/SPHs with similar simple gene structures had tandem repeat-like distributions on the scaffold, indicated that gene expansion has occurred in this large family. Furthermore, we constructed 30 RNA sequencing libraries including four with developmental stage and four middle larval stage tissues to study the transcript levels of these genes. Differentially upregulated and downregulated genes were obtained via data analysis. More than one-quarter of the genes were specifically identified as highly expressed in the midgut in compared to the other three tissues evaluated. In the current study, the domain structure, gene location and phylogenetic relationship of genes in O. furnacalis were explored. Orthologous comparisons of SPs/SPHs between model insects and O. furnacalis indicated their possible functions. This information provides a basis for understanding the functional roles of this large family.
Abstract
Objective
The aim of this review is to identify and summarize factors that are associated with public attitudes towards people with various disabilities systematically.
Methods
An electronic ...search of three databases was performed (Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane) covering the period from 1950 to present. A comprehensive search strategy was developed and the lists of citations were screened for potential eligible studies. Only quantitative studies using valid measurements were included, and the methodological quality of included studies was appraised based on three criteria (sample, measurement, analysis) by two independent reviewers.
Results
The initial electronic search yielded 995 articles after duplicates removed, and 27 studies met the eligibility criteria were included in the study
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Three categories of the factors were found to be associated with the public attitudes, which are related to the attitude provider, disabled people, and society respectively. Specifically, the more people know about disabilities, the more likely they were to have positive attitude; and the frequency and quality of the contact with the disabled are also proved to be influential to the attitudes. Meanwhile, the type of disability is also closely correlated to the public’s attitude towards the disabilities.
Conclusion
People’s knowledge of the disability and their contact with individuals with disabilities are the main influential factors in public attitudes towards persons with disabilities.
Breast cancer (BC) with low human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression is attracting much attention due to the breakthrough progress of novel anti-HER2 antibody-drug conjugates. HER2 ...expression is examined in patients with HER2-low BC and their distant metastases in this study, so as to further clarify the dynamic characteristics of HER2 low status in the process of disease progression.
Patients diagnosed with HER2 low breast cancer (defined as IHC1+ or IHC2+/ISH-) between 2012 and 2021 were included in this study. We evaluated HER2 expression of primary sites and metastatic sites, compared the impact of different clinicopathological parameters on HER2 status of metastases and compared the overall survival and disease-free survival of patients with different HER2 status in metastases.
Ninety-eight patients were included. All HER2 IHC scores were confirmed and the consistent rate with the original pathological report was 81.1%. 27.6% of the patients showed different HER2 status in metastases. The HER2 discordance rate differed among different metastatic sites (p = 0.040). The higher the T stage of the primary BC, the higher the rate of HER2 discordance was observed (p = 0.042). For the specimen type of metastasis, HER2 discordant rate was higher in surgical specimen than biopsy (p = 0.050). No difference of HER2 discordance rate was found between HER2-1+ and HER2-2+ patients. But comparing HER2 IHC score, HER2-2+ patients were less likely to have consistent metastatic HER2 levels than HER2-1+ patients (p = 0.006). No difference in survival outcomes was observed between patients with different HER2 status in metastases.
There is a possibility of HER2 expression alteration in the metastases of HER2-low breast cancer. And the rate of altered HER2 low expression was different among different metastatic sites, different T stages of primary BC and specimen type of metastasis. No prognostic significance was observed.
Abstract Transposable elements (TEs) contribute to gene expression regulation by acting as cis-regulatory elements that attract transcription factors and epigenetic regulators. This research aims to ...explore the functional and clinical implications of transposable element-related molecular events in hepatocellular carcinoma, focusing on the mechanism through which liver-specific accessible TEs (liver-TEs) regulate adjacent gene expression. Our findings reveal that the expression of HNF4A is inversely regulated by proximate liver-TEs, which facilitates liver cancer cell proliferation. Mechanistically, liver-TEs are predominantly occupied by the histone demethylase, KDM1A. KDM1A negatively influences the methylation of histone H3 Lys4 (H3K4) of liver-TEs, resulting in the epigenetic silencing of HNF4A expression. The suppression of HNF4A mediated by KDM1A promotes liver cancer cell proliferation. In conclusion, this study uncovers a liver-TE/KDM1A/HNF4A regulatory axis that promotes liver cancer growth and highlights KDM1A as a promising therapeutic target. Our findings provide insight into the transposable element-related molecular mechanisms underlying liver cancer progression.
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