Synergy of Interface Coupling and Sulfur Vacancies in Ni3S2/Fe2P for Water Splitting.

Integrated application of interface engineering and vacancy engineering is a promising and effective strategy for the design and fabrication of high-performance electrocatalysts. Herein, the heterointerface catalyst with rich sulfur vacancies, vs-Ni3S2/Fe2P, was successfully designed and constructed. The strong heterointerface coupling and rich sulfur vacancies in vs-Ni3S2/Fe2P significantly optimize the electronic structure of the catalyst and synergistically improve the inherent catalytic activity. Benefiting from the optimization of the electronic structure, vs-Ni3S2/Fe2P exhibits excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic performance in alkaline electrolytes. The overpotentials for hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions (HER and OER) are 99 and 169 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2, respectively. Particularly, it achieves an ultrahigh OER performance with an overpotential of 251 mV at 300 mA cm-2. Moreover, the catalyst also displays outstanding long-term durability. Density functional theory (DFT) computations reveal that the synergy of interface coupling and sulfur vacancies is crucial to optimizing the electronic structure. This study offers a hopeful pathway for the design and construction of durable and efficient electrocatalysts.

A rare mutant of OFD1 gene responsible for Joubert syndrome with significant phenotype variation.

Joubert syndrome (JBTS), a rare genetic disorder resulted from primary cilium defects or basal-body dysfunction, is characterized by agenesis of cerebellar vermis and abnormal brain stem. Both genotypes and phenotypes of JBTS are highly heterogeneous. The identification of pathogenic gene variation is essential for making a definite diagnosis on JBTS. Here, we found that hypoplasia of cerebellar vermis occurred in three male members in a Chinese family. Then, we performed whole exome sequencing to identify a novel missense mutation c.599T > C (p. L200P) in the OFD1 gene which is the candidate gene of X-linked JBTS (JBST10). The following analysis showed that the variant was absent in the 1000 Genomes, ExAC and the 200 female controls; the position 200 Leucine residue was highly conserved across species; the missense variant was predicted to be deleterious using PolyPhen-2, PROVEAN, SIFT and Mutation Taster. The OFD1 expression was heavily lower in the proband and an induced male fetus compared with a healthy male with a wild-type OFD1 gene. The in vitro expression analysis of transiently transfecting c.599T or c.599C plasmids into HEK-293T cells confirmed that the missense mutation caused OFD1 reduction at the protein level. And further the mutated OFD1 decreased the level of Gli1 protein, a read-out of Sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling essential for development of central neural system. A known pathogenic variant c.515T > C (p. L172P) showed the similar results. All of these observations suggested that the missense mutation causes the loss function of OFD1, resulting in SHH signaling impairs and brain development abnormality. In addition, the three patients have Dandy-Walker malformation, macrogyria and tetralogy of Fallot, respectively, the latter two of which are firstly found in JBTS10 patients. In conclusion, our findings expand the context of genotype and phenotype in the JBTS10 patients.

HPCDNet: Hybrid position coding and dual-frquency domain transform network for low-light image enhancement.

Low-light image enhancement (LLIE) improves lighting to obtain natural normal-light images from images captured under poor illumination. However, existing LLIE methods do not effectively utilize positional and frequency domain image information. To address this limitation, we proposed an end-to-end low-light image enhancement network called HPCDNet. HPCDNet uniquely integrates a hybrid positional coding technique into the self-attention mechanism by appending hybrid positional codes to the query and key, which better retains spatial positional information in the image. The hybrid positional coding can adaptively emphasize important local structures to improve modeling of spatial dependencies within low-light images. Meanwhile, frequency domain image information lost under low-light is recovered via discrete wavelet and cosine transforms. The resulting two frequency domain feature types are weighted and merged using a dual-attention module. More effective use of frequency domain information enhances the network's ability to recreate details, improving visual quality of enhanced low-light images. Experiments demonstrated that our approach can heighten visibility, contrast and color properties of low-light images while better preserving details and textures than previous techniques.

[Efficacy of compound xuanju capsule on type-III prostatitis-related sexual dysfunction].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the value of Compound Xuanju Capsule in the treatment of type-III prostatitis-related sexual dysfunction. METHODS: We randomly divided 90 type-III prostatitis patients with sexual dysfunction diagnosed by NIH clinical criteria into an experiment group and a control group to be treated with Compound Xuanju Capsule and antibiotics, respectively. We analyzed the therapeutic results based on the scores on chronic prostatitis symptom index (CPSI), prostatitis-related sexual function index (PSFI ) and self-rating anxiety scale (SAS), and compared them between the two groups and with the baseline data. RESULTS: The degree of prostatitis-related sexual dysfunction was not correlated with that of prostatitis symptoms. Prostatitis symptoms and sexual function were significantly improved in the experiment group than in the control (P < 0.05), and the SAS score was markedly lower in the former than in the latter (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Compound Xuanju Capsule can not only alleviate the symptoms of type-III prostatitis, but also improve its related sexual dysfunction and anxiety.

[Sequential preparation of microvlllous and basal membranes from human placenta].

OBJECTIVE: To improve the technology of isolating paired fractions of the maternal-facing membranes (MVM) and fetal-facing plasma membranes (BM) from a term placenta. METHODS: The component of buffer was improved based on Illsley method. The time of Mg2+ -aggregated basal membranes was extended. MVM were obtained from the supernatant of low speed centrifugation while BM were further purified on a sucrose step gradient. RESULTS: Yield for MVM and BM prepared by the method were (0.55 +/- 10.10) mg/g and (0.54 +/- 0.02) mg/g wet weight of placenta. They were enriched 16.87-fold and 11.19-fold as determined by the membrane marker enzymes, alkaline phosphatase (MVM) and adenylate cyclase (BM). CONCLUSION: The modified Illsley method can easily produce both MVM and BM of satisfied quantity from human placenta. It could be applied as a cell molecular model of maternal-fetal exchange interface.

An improved trilinear decomposition algorithm based on a Lagrange operator.

An improved trilinear decomposition algorithm based on a Lagrange operator (LO) is developed in this paper, which introduces a Lagrange operator and penalty terms in the loss function to improve the performance of the algorithm. Compared to the traditional parallel factor (PARAFAC) algorithm, the algorithm not only may converge much faster, but also overcome the sensibility to estimate the number of components. A set of simulated and measured excitation/emission fluorescence data were treated by both the proposed and traditional PARAFAC algorithm to compare their efficiencies. The analytical results obtained with real chemical system containing aspirin and its metabolic products show that the trilinear decomposition methodology is a promising tool to obtain spectral and composition information from mixtures without chemical separation.

Synthesis and antiviral activities of cyanoacrylate derivatives containing an alpha-aminophosphonate moiety.

Target compounds 8 were obtained by the reaction of alkyl 2-cyano-3,3-dimethylthioacrylate or cyarylamide (7a-7e) and alpha-aminobenzylphosphonate (5a-5e) under reflux condition using ethanol as solvent. Their structures were clearly verified by spectroscopic data (IR and 1H, 13C, and 31P NMR) and elemental analysis. These compounds were shown to be antivirally active in the bioassay. It was found that title compounds 8d and 8e had the same inactivation effect against tobacco mosaic virus (EC 50 = 55.5 and 55.3 microg/mL) as the commercial product ningnanmycin (EC 50 = 50.9 microg/mL). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the synthesis and antiviral activity of cyanoacrylate derivatives containing an alpha-aminophosphonate moiety.