Antagonistic effect of Bacillus and Pseudomonas combinations against Fusarium oxysporum and their effect on disease resistance and growth promotion in watermelon.

AIMS: We aimed to develop an effective bacterial combination that can combat Fusarium oxysporum infection in watermelon using in vitro and pot experiments. METHODS AND RESULTS: In total, 53 strains of Bacillus and 4 strains of Pseudomonas were screened. Pseudomonas strains P3 and P4 and Bacillus strains XY-2-3, XY-13, and GJ-1-15 exhibited good antagonistic effects against F. oxysporum. P3 and P4 were identified as Pseudomonas chlororaphis and Pseudomonas fluorescens, respectively. XY-2-3 and GJ-1-15 were identified as B. velezensis, and XY-13 was identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. The three Bacillus strains were antifungal, promoted the growth of watermelon seedlings and had genes to synthesize antagonistic metabolites such as bacilysin, surfactin, yndj, fengycin, iturin, and bacillomycin D. Combinations of Bacillus and Pseudomonas strains, namely, XY-2-3 + P4, GJ-1-15 + P4, XY-13 + P3, and XY-13 + P4, exhibited a good compatibility. These four combinations exhibited antagonistic effects against 11 pathogenic fungi, including various strains of F. oxysporum, Fusarium solani, and Rhizoctonia. Inoculation of these bacterial combinations significantly reduced the incidence of Fusarium wilt in watermelon, promoted plant growth, and improved soil nutrient availability. XY-13 + P4 was the most effective combination against Fusarium wilt in watermelon with the inhibition rate of 78.17%. The number of leaves; aboveground fresh and dry weights; chlorophyll, soil total nitrogen, and soil available phosphorus content increased by 26.8%, 72.12%, 60.47%, 16.97%, 20.16%, and 16.50%, respectively, after XY-13 + P4 inoculation compared with the uninoculated control. Moreover, total root length, root surface area, and root volume of watermelon seedlings were the highest after XY-13 + P3 inoculation, exhibiting increases by 265.83%, 316.79%, and 390.99%, respectively, compared with the uninoculated control. CONCLUSIONS: XY-13 + P4 was the best bacterial combination for controlling Fusarium wilt in watermelon, promoting the growth of watermelon seedlings, and improving soil nutrient availability.

High-fidelity source mask optimization for suppressing line-end shortening.

Source mask optimization (SMO) is a widely used computational lithography technique for compensating lithographic distortion. However, line-end shortening is still a key factor that cannot be easily corrected and affects the image fidelity of lithography at advanced nodes. This paper proposes a source mask optimization method that suppresses line-end shortening and improves lithography fidelity. An adaptive hybrid weight method is employed to increase the weights of the line end during the optimization, which adaptively updates the weights in each iteration according to the edge placement error (EPE). A cost function containing a penalty term based on the normalized image log slope (NILS) is established to ensure the fidelity of the overall feature when paying more attention to the line-end region. The scope of this penalty term is regulated by widening and extending the split contour to further reduce the line-end shortening. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively suppress the line-end shortening and improve the lithography fidelity compared with the traditional SMO method.

Modification Method of High-Efficiency Organic Bentonite for Drilling Fluids: A Review.

The requirements for drilling bentonites are tightening due to ever-increasing demands for petroleum resources, coupled with cost and reaction technology constraints. In addition to raising the risk of drilling, bentonite's poor performance also raises the possibility of safety incidents and significant financial losses. Organically modified bentonites effectively reduce the consumption of drilling fluids, conserve resources, and lessen environmental effects. This paper aims to provide an overview of the several organic modification methods of bentonite for drilling fluids. It also evaluates the characteristics and application impacts of bentonite. We primarily describe the three popular modification methods represented by intercalation, coupling, and grafting. Also, this review provides the effect of molecular simulation on the investigation of structure in microconfined conditions. Through microlearning, organically modified bentonite with exceptional performance is to be further developed.

Progress in the Research on Branched Polymers with Emphasis on the Chinese Petrochemical Industry.

Polymer flooding, one of the main methods for improving crude oil recovery using chemical flooding technology in China, is widely used for actual oil displacement. Partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) is a commonly used linear polymer in polymer flooding, but it exhibits poor temperature and salt resistance due to its molecular structure. Therefore, branched polymers have been studied. This article provides a review of the specific synthetic methods and current practical applications in the petrochemical field of dendritic polymers and hyperbranched macromolecules. The advantages and disadvantages of each synthetic method for branched polymers are also elaborated. Finally, the application prospects of branched polymers are discussed. The feasibility of branched polymers in large quantities should be further verified through additional field tests, which should address concerns such as synthesis costs and reaction efficiency.

Physicochemical properties and cell proliferation and adhesive bioactivity of collagen-hyaluronate composite gradient membrane.

Membrane materials were widely used in guided tissue regeneration (GTR) to prevent fibroblast invasion and form a confined area for preferentially growing of osteoblast. A novel collagen-hyaluronate composite gradient membrane was prepared by Tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) skin collagen and sodium hyaluronate for potential GTR applications and their bioactivities were investigated by cellular viability. SEM results indicated the membrane showed a dense outer and a porous inner surface for effectively guiding the growth of bone tissue. Physicochemical and biosafety experiments showed the tensile strength of membrane was 466.57 ± 44.31 KPa and contact angle was 74.11°, and the membrane showed perfect biocompatibility and cytocompatibility as well, which met the requirements of GTR material. Cell morphology revealed that the membrane could facilitate the adherence and proliferation of fibroblast and osteoblast. The results of qRT-PCR and ELISA demonstrated that the membrane could effectively activate TGF-ß/Smad pathway in fibroblast, and promote the expressions of TGF-ß1, FN1 and VEGF. Remarkably, RUNX2 was stimulated in BMP2 pathway by the membrane to regulate osteoblast differentiation. In summary, the collagen-hyaluronate composite gradient membrane not only fulfills the prerequisites for use as a GTR material but also demonstrates substantial potential for practical applications in the field.

Implicit function characterization of the curvilinear mask to realize parametric optical proximity correction with a neighborhood parallel tabu search.

The curvilinear mask structures provide significant benefits in improving lithographic resolution. Curvilinear masks, as opposed to rectilinear masks, have a wider range of structure types that can be used precisely to correct the contour of diffraction at sharp technological nodes. However, the curvilinear structure also makes the inverse design of mask in optical proximity correction (OPC) flow difficult. The current OPC of curvilinear masks uses pixel-based inverse optimization, which is extremely computationally intensive and takes up a lot of design data storage space. This paper proposes an implicit function to represent a large number of curve types with a small number of parameters to reduce computational complexity and the R&D cycle. Therefore, the ultra-high dimensional pixel-based OPC problem is transformed into a low-dimensional parameter search problem in the critical diffraction area of the mask pattern. The tabu search algorithm and neighborhood parallel computing strategy are then used to quickly search for optimal characterized parameters. The results of the simulation show that the parametric curvilinear OPC method achieves a higher image fidelity than that of rectilinear OPC. At the same time, it addresses the shortcomings of the traditional pixelated curvilinear mask OPC method, including high computational complexity, low manufacturability, and storage space occupancy.

Effective multi-objective inverse lithography technology at full-field and full-chip levels with a hybrid dynamic priority algorithm.

Inverse lithography technology (ILT), such as source mask optimization (SMO), is used to improve lithography performance. Usually, a single objective cost function is selected in ILT, and an optimal structure for one field point is achieved. The optimal structure is not the case for other images at full field points where the aberrations of the lithography system are different, even in high-quality lithography tools. The optimal structure that must match the high-performance images at the full field is urgently required for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). In contrast, multi-objective optimization algorithms (MOAs) limit the application of multi-objective ILT. Assigning target priority is incomplete in current MOAs, which results in the over-optimization of some targets and under-optimization of others. In this study, multi-objective ILT and a hybrid dynamic priority (HDP) algorithm were investigated and developed. High-performance images with high fidelity and high uniformity were obtained at multi-field and multi-clip areas across the die. A hybrid criterion was developed for the completion and reasonable prioritization of each target to ensure sufficient improvement. Compared to the current MOAs, the uniformity of images at full-field points was improved by up to 31.1% by the HDP algorithm in the case of multi-field wavefront error-aware SMO. The multi-clip source optimization (SO) problem showed the universality of the HDP algorithm to deal with different ILT problems. It acquired higher imaging uniformity than existing MOAs, which indicated that the HDP is more qualified for multi-objective ILT optimization than existing MOAs.

Proanthocyanidin Structure-Activity Relationship Analysis by Path Analysis Model.

To fully explore the influence mechanism of interactions between different monomer units of proanthocyanidins (PAs) on biological activity, a path analysis model of the PA structure-activity relationship was proposed. This model subdivides the total correlation between each monomer unit and activity into direct and indirect effects by taking into account not only each monomer unit but also the correlation with its related monomer units. In addition, this method can determine the action mode of each monomer unit affecting the activity by comparing the direct and total indirect effects. Finally, the advantage of this model is demonstrated through an influence mechanism analysis of Rhodiola crenulata PA monomer units on antioxidant and anti-diabetes activities.

A new iterative initialization of EM algorithm for Gaussian mixture models.

BACKGROUND: The expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is a common tool for estimating the parameters of Gaussian mixture models (GMM). However, it is highly sensitive to initial value and easily gets trapped in a local optimum. METHOD: To address these problems, a new iterative method of EM initialization (MRIPEM) is proposed in this paper. It incorporates the ideas of multiple restarts, iterations and clustering. In particular, the mean vector and covariance matrix of sample are calculated as the initial values of the iteration. Then, the optimal feature vector is selected from the candidate feature vectors by the maximum Mahalanobis distance as a new partition vector for clustering. The parameter values are renewed continuously according to the clustering results. RESULTS: To verify the applicability of the MRIPEM, we compared it with other two popular initialization methods on simulated and real datasets, respectively. The comparison results of the three stochastic algorithms indicate that MRIPEM algorithm is comparable in relatively high dimensions and high overlaps and significantly better in low dimensions and low overlaps.

[Study on the Regulation of Chidamide on CD8+T Cells in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the regulatory effect of chidamide on CD8+ T cells in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. METHODS: The expression levels of CXCL9 and CXCL3 mRNA in Jurkat cells, lymphocytes treated with chidamide and lymphocytes co-cultured with chidamide-treated Jurkat cells were detected by fluorescence quantitative PCR. The proportion of CD8+ T cells in lymphocytes treated with chidamide and lymphocytes co-cultured with chidamide-treated Jurkat cells was determined by flow cytometry. RESULTS: Chidamide upregulated CXCL9 mRNA expression in Jurkat cell line in a dose-dependent manner (r=0.950). The mRNA expression of CXCL9 in chidamide 5 µmol/L group was 164 times higher than that in control group. Chidamide upregulated CXCL9 mRNA expression in lymphocytes, but the up-regulated level was significantly lower than that in Jurkat cell line treated with the same concentration of chidamide. Co-culture with chidamide treated Jurkat cells upregulated the proportion of CD8+ T cells in lymphocytes. CONCLUSION: In T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, chidamide may increase the concentration of CXCL9 in the tumor microenvironment by up-regulating the expression of CXCL9 in tumor cells, leading to an increase in the number of CD8+ T cells.

[Effect of HDAC Inhibitor Chidamide on PD-L1 Expression in Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the role of chidamide in the regulatory mechanism of PD-1/PD-L1 immune escape signaling pathway in peripheral T-cell lymphoma. METHODS: Jurkat cell line was treated with different concentrations of chidamide. The changes of PD-L1 and JAK/STAT pathway gene mRNA expression and PD-L1 protein expression on cell surface were detected by fluorescence quantitative PCR and flow cytometry after treatment. RESULTS: Chidamide upregulated PD-L1 mRNA expression in Jurkat cell line in a dose-dependent manner (r=0.989). The mRNA expression of PD-L1 in 5.0 µmol/L group was 15.4 times higher than that in the control group. The proportion of PD-L1 positive cells in Jurkat cell line was less than 0.5%. Chidamide upregulated PD-L1 protein expression on Jurkat cell surface. Chidamide upregulated the mRNA expression of JAK2, STAT1 and STAT3 in Jurkat cell line. The level of up-regulation was obvious in high concentration group (5.0 µmol/L group). Meanwhile, the mRNA expression of SOCS1 and SOCS3, the negative regulatory genes upstream of the JAK/STA T pathway, were up-regulated. CONCLUSION: In peripheral T-cell lymphoma, chidamide may up-regulate the expression of cell surface PD-L1 and induce T-cell chemokines by upregulation of STAT1 expression, thus improving the reaction rate of PD-1 monoclonal antibody and T-cell toxicity.

Spatio-Temporal Neural Dynamics of Observing Non-Tool Manipulable Objects and Interactions.

Previous studies have reported that a series of sensory-motor-related cortical areas are affected when a healthy human is presented with images of tools. This phenomenon has been explained as familiar tools launching a memory-retrieval process to provide a basis for using the tools. Consequently, we postulated that this theory may also be applicable if images of tools were replaced with images of daily objects if they are graspable (i.e., manipulable). Therefore, we designed and ran experiments with human volunteers (participants) who were visually presented with images of three different daily objects and recorded their electroencephalography (EEG) synchronously. Additionally, images of these objects being grasped by human hands were presented to the participants. Dynamic functional connectivity between the visual cortex and all the other areas of the brain was estimated to find which of them were influenced by visual stimuli. Next, we compared our results with those of previous studies that investigated brain response when participants looked at tools and concluded that manipulable objects caused similar cerebral activity to tools. We also looked into mu rhythm and found that looking at a manipulable object did not elicit a similar activity to seeing the same object being grasped.

Evolution Behaviors and Reduction Mechanism of Curing Residual Stresses in GLARE Laminates under a Hot-Pressing Condition.

Nowadays, variable preparation, forming and processing methods of fiber metal laminates are constantly developing to meet the requirements of different application fields, hence the characteristics and evolution of residual stresses under different manufacturing conditions deserve more attention. In this work, the evolution behaviors of curing residual stresses in GLARE under a hot-pressing condition were studied, and the residual stress reduction mechanism was also explained. Results suggested the FE prediction models of the entire cure process, verified by the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors, were more precise than the traditional elastic model. Moreover, the stress evolution during the cure process mainly occurred in the cooling stage, in which the different coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of aluminum and GFRP played a major role. Meanwhile, curing shrinkage stress in the GFRP layer during the holding stage at curing temperature obviously influenced the final stress level. The residual stresses in GFRP layers differed by 9.6 MPa under a hot-pressing and autoclave condition, in which the convection heat transfer condition played a major role as it caused lower thermal stress in the holding stage and a smaller temperature gradient in the cooling stage. Considering this, a lower cooling rate could be a feasible way to obtain GLARE with lower residual stress under a hot-pressing condition.

Rheological properties, thermal stability and conformational changes of collagen from sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicas).

Sea cucumber collagen (SCC) properties affected the thermal processing of sea cucumber. SCC showed the shear-thinning and pseudo-plastic properties, and the viscosity and frequency of viscoelastic crossover were decreased gradually with the temperature from 15 to 30 °C. Differential scanning calorimetry of SCC confirmed that it was thermolabile with the increase of temperatures, acid or NaCl concentrations. As the temperature increasing, the triple helix of SCC disappeared with the decrease of the relative proportion of P2 structures by circular dichroism spectrometry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and shearing could accelerate the change. Intramolecular changes investigated by molecular dynamics simulation showed the average number of hydrogen bonds decreased from 47 (20 °C) to 42 (80 °C), indicating triple helix of SCC was triggered to uncoil within 250 ns. These results could provide a scientific basis for processing of sea cucumbers.

Typical structure, biocompatibility, and cell proliferation bioactivity of collagen from Tilapia and Pacific cod.

Aquatic collagens, as the alternative sources of mammalian collagen, have received increasing attention due to its low-cost, low-antigenicity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. Pepsin-soluble collagens were extracted from the skins of Oreochromis mossambicus (Om-PSC) and Gadus macrocephalus (Gm-PSC), and their structural properties and bioactivities were probed to reveal their potential applications in biomedical material for tissue engineering. The results of Fourier transforms-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), circular dichroism (CD), X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultraviolet (UV) and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) demonstrated that Om-PSC and Gm-PSC had similar and intact triple helical structures. The amino acid composition and peptide profiles revealed Om-PSC and Gm-PSC were identified as type I collagen with the typical repetitive sequence of (Gly-X-Y) n. However, the denaturation temperature (Td) was determined to be 29.7 â„ƒ of Om-PSC, much higher than that of Gm-PSC (17.3 â„ƒ). Toxicological experiments demonstrated Om-PSC and Gm-PSC both had good biocompatibility and cytocompatibility, which met the requirements of medical materials. Fluorescence imaging and cell cycle distribution revealed Om-PSC and Gm-PSC could promote the proliferation of fibroblast and osteoblast cells. Therefore, Om-PSC and Gm-PSC showed the advantages in medical materials.

Application of Design Structure Matrix to Simulate Surgical Procedures and Predict Surgery Duration.

BACKGROUND: The complexities of surgery require an efficient and explicit method to evaluate and standardize surgical procedures. A reliable surgical evaluation tool will be able to serve various purposes such as development of surgery training programs and improvement of surgical skills. OBJECTIVES: (a) To develop a modeling framework based on integration of dexterity analysis and design structure matrix (DSM), to be generally applicable to predict total duration of a surgical procedure, and (b) to validate the model by comparing its results with laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery protocol. METHOD: A modeling framework is developed through DSM, a tool used in engineering design, systems engineering and management, to hierarchically decompose and describe relationships among individual surgical activities. Individual decomposed activities are assumed to have uncertain parameters so that a rework probability is introduced. The simulation produces a distribution of the duration of the modeled procedure. A statistical approach is then taken to evaluate surgery duration through integrated numerical parameters. The modeling framework is applied for the first time to analyze a surgery; laparoscopic cholecystectomy, a common surgical procedure, is selected for the analysis. RESULTS: The present simulation model is validated by comparing its results of predicted surgery duration with the standard laparoscopic cholecystectomy protocols from the Atlas of Minimally Invasive Surgery with 2.5% error and that from the Atlas of Pediatric Laparoscopy and Thoracoscopy with 4% error. CONCLUSION: The present model, developed based on dexterity analysis and DSM, demonstrates a validated capability of predicting laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery duration. Future studies will explore its potential applications to other surgery procedures and in improving surgeons' performance and training novices.

Exposure latitude aware source and mask optimization for extreme ultraviolet lithography.

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is a new generation of integrated circuit manufacturing technology with great development prospects. EUV lithography has more significant demand for high exposure latitude (EL) due to greater requirements for the stability of the light source. Source and mask optimization (SMO) technology is widely used to compensate for imaging distortion. In this paper, we propose an EL-aware SMO (ELASMO) method that uses a low-resist threshold sensitivity (LRS) penalty function to improve the EL in EUV lithography. Compared to conventional SMO, the proposed ELASMO method can significantly enhance the aerial image contrast, improve the EL, and enlarge the process window while ensuring high imaging fidelity.

Vectorial pupil optimization to compensate for a polarization effect at full exposure field in lithography.

Recently, a single vectorial pupil optimization (VPO) was proposed to compensate for the polarization effect induced by thick mask and image optics at one field point in a lithography system, which does not work at full field points. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective VPO (MOVPO) method to obtain a universal vectorial pupil that can compensate for the polarization aberration at full field points. A novel multi-objective cost function, to the best of our knowledge, is built and includes uneven image pattern errors causing by polarization aberration (PA) at full field points in the MOVPO method. Comprehensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed MOVPO method can effectively improve the consistency of imaging and enlarge the overlapped process window at full field points.

High-speed ocular artifacts removal of multichannel EEG based on improved moment matching.

Objective. The excellent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is the premise of electroencephalogram (EEG) research and applications. This study aims to use innovative method to swiftly remove the ocular artifacts (OAs) from multichannel EEG to enhance the SNR.Approach.The moment matching method which is prevalently used to removing stripe noise from hyperspectral images is adapted and improved to deduct OAs from EEG. This modified approach regards sampling points of multichannel EEG as pixels in images. It utilizes the propagation characteristics of EEG to correct the potential shift caused by OAs.Main results. By using mathematical derivation and empirical corroboration, the results suggest that the improved moment matching (IMM) is capable of reducing OAs effectively and reserving the EEG waveform information on the greatest extent compared to existing methods, such as independent component analysis (ICA) and second-order blind identification. In the frontal region heavily affected by OAs, the SNR increased by 138.1% compared with ICA, the whole SNR increased by an average of 58.7%. Moreover, low latency superiority is provided for real-time and offline processing. IMM is effective for OAs removal and it is helpful to improve SNR of multichannel EEG.Significance. IMM affords option offering preponderance for enhancement of SNR of multichannel EEG.