Efficient and Stable Unsupervised Feature Selection Based on Novel Structured Graph and Data Discrepancy Learning.

Unsupervised feature selection is an important tool in data mining, machine learning, and pattern recognition. Although data labels are often missing, the number of data classes can be known and exploited in many scenarios. Therefore, a structured graph, whose number of connected components is identical to the number of data classes, has been proposed and is frequently applied in unsupervised feature selection. However, methods based on the structured graph learning face two problems. First, their structured graphs are not always guaranteed to maintain the same number of connected components as the data classes with existing optimization algorithms. Second, they usually lack strategies for choosing moderate hyperparameters. To solve these problems, an efficient and stable unsupervised feature selection method based on a novel structured graph and data discrepancy learning (ESUFS) is proposed. Specifically, the novel structured graph, consisting of a pairwise data similarity matrix and an indicator matrix, can be efficiently learned by solving a discrete optimization problem. Data discrepancy learning focuses on features that maximize the difference among data and helps in selecting discriminative features. Extensive experiments conducted on various datasets show that ESUFS outperforms state-of-the-art methods not only in accuracy (ACC) but also in stability and speed.

STMixer: A One-Stage Sparse Action Detector.

Traditional video action detectors typically adopt the two-stage pipeline, where a person detector is first employed to generate actor boxes and then 3D RoIAlign is used to extract actor-specific features for classification. This detection paradigm requires multi-stage training and inference, and the feature sampling is constrained inside the box, failing to effectively leverage richer context information outside. Recently, a few query-based action detectors have been proposed to predict action instances in an end-to-end manner. However, they still lack adaptability in feature sampling and decoding, thus suffering from the issues of inferior performance or slower convergence. In this paper, we propose two core designs for a more flexible one-stage sparse action detector. First, we present a query-based adaptive feature sampling module, which endows the detector with the flexibility of mining a group of discriminative features from the entire spatio-temporal domain. Second, we devise a decoupled feature mixing module, which dynamically attends to and mixes video features along the spatial and temporal dimensions respectively for better feature decoding. Based on these designs, we instantiate two detection pipelines, that is, STMixer-K for keyframe action detection and STMixer-T for action tubelet detection. Without bells and whistles, our STMixer detectors obtain state-of-the-art results on five challenging spatio-temporal action detection benchmarks for keyframe action detection or action tube detection.

Oral Delivery of Astaxanthin via Carboxymethyl Chitosan-Modified Nanoparticles for Ulcerative Colitis Treatment.

The oral delivery strategy of natural anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory agents has attracted great attention to improve the effectiveness of ulcerative colitis (UC) treatment. Herein, we developed a novel orally deliverable nanoparticle, carboxymethyl chitosan (CMC)-modified astaxanthin (AXT)-loaded nanoparticles (CMC-AXT-NPs), for UC treatment. The CMC-AXT-NPs were evaluated by appearance, morphology, particle size, ζ-potential, and encapsulation efficiency (EE). The results showed that CMC-AXT-NPs were nearly spherical in shape with a particle size of 34.5 nm and ζ-potential of -30.8 mV, and the EE of CMC-AXT-NPs was as high as 95.03%. The CMC-AXT-NPs exhibited preferable storage stability over time and well-controlled drug-release properties in simulated intestinal fluid. Additionally, in vitro studies revealed that CMC-AXT-NPs remarkably inhibited cytotoxicity induced by LPS and demonstrated superior antioxidant and anti-inflammatory abilities in Raw264.7 cells. Furthermore, CMC-AXT-NPs effectively alleviated clinical symptoms of colitis induced by dextran sulfate sodium salt (DSS), including maintaining body weight, inhibiting colon shortening, and reducing fecal bleeding. Importantly, CMC-AXT-NPs suppressed the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1ß and ameliorated DSS-induced oxidative damage. Our results demonstrated the potential of CMC-modified nanoparticles as an oral delivery system and suggested these novel AXT nanoparticles could be a promising strategy for UC treatment.

A multifunctional dual cation doping strategy to stabilize high-voltage medium-nickel low-cobalt lithium layered oxide cathode.

High-voltage medium-nickel low-cobalt lithium layered oxide cathode materials are intriguing for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) applications because of their relatively low cost and high capacity. Unfortunately, high charging voltage induces bulk layered structure decline and interface environment deterioration, low cobalt content reduces lithium diffusion kinetics, severely limiting the performance liberation of this kind of cathode. Here, a multifunctional Al/Zr dual cation doping strategy is employed to enhance the electrochemical performance of LiNi0.6Co0.05Mn0.35O2 (NCM) cathode at a high charging cut-off voltage of 4.5 V. On the one hand, Al/Zr co-doping weakens the Li+/Ni2+ mixing through magnetic interactions due to the inexistence of unpaired electrons for Al3+ and Zr4+, thereby increasing the lithium diffusion rate and suppressing the harmful coexistence of H1 and H2 phases. On the other hand, they enhance the lattice oxygen framework stability due to strong Al-O and Zr-O bonds, inhibiting the undesired H2 to H3 phase transition and interface lattice oxygen loss, thereby enhancing the stability of the bulk structure and cathode-electrolyte interface. As a result, Al/Zr co-doped NCM (NCMAZ) shows a 94.2 % capacity retention rate after 100 cycles, while that of NCM is only 79.4 %. NCMAZ also exhibits better rate performance than NCM, with output capacities of 92 mAh/g and 59 mAh/g at a high current density of 5C, respectively. The modification strategy will make the high-voltage medium-nickel low-cobalt cathode closer to practical applications.

Alteration in gut microbiota is associated with immune imbalance in Graves' disease.

Background: Graves' disease (GD), characterized by immune aberration, is associated with gut dysbiosis. Despite the growing interest, substantial evidence detailing the precise impact of gut microbiota on GD's autoimmune processes remains exceedingly rare. Objective: This study was designed to investigate the influence of gut microbiota on immune dysregulation in GD. Methods: It encompassed 52 GD patients and 45 healthy controls (HCs), employing flow cytometry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to examine lymphocyte and cytokine profiles, alongside lipopolysaccharide (LPS) levels. Gut microbiota profiles and metabolic features were assessed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing and targeted metabolomics. Results: Our observations revealed a disturbed B-cell distribution and elevated LPS and pro-inflammatory cytokines in GD patients compared to HCs. Significant differences in gut microbiota composition and a marked deficit in short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria, including ASV263(Bacteroides), ASV1451(Dialister), and ASV503(Coprococcus), were observed in GD patients. These specific bacteria and SCFAs showed correlations with thyroid autoantibodies, B-cell subsets, and cytokine levels. In vitro studies further showed that LPS notably caused B-cell subsets imbalance, reducing conventional memory B cells while increasing naïve B cells. Additionally, acetate combined with propionate and butyrate showcased immunoregulatory functions, diminishing cytokine production in LPS-stimulated cells. Conclusion: Overall, our results highlight the role of gut dysbiosis in contributing to immune dysregulation in GD by affecting lymphocyte status and cytokine production.

Altered ocular surface microbiota in obesity: a case-control study.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the composition of ocular surface microbiota in patients with obesity. Methods: This case-control study, spanning from November 2020 to March 2021 at Henan Provincial People's Hospital, involved 35 patients with obesity and an equivalent number of age and gender-matched healthy controls. By employing 16S rRNA sequencing, this study analyzed the differences in ocular surface microbiota between the two groups. The functional prediction analysis of the ocular surface microbiota was conducted using PICRUSt2. Results: The alpha diversity showed no notable differences in the richness or evenness of the ocular surface microbiota when comparing patients with obesity to healthy controls (Shannon index, P=0.1003). However, beta diversity highlighted significant variances in the microbiota composition of these two groups (ANOSIM, P=0.005). LEfSe analysis revealed that the relative abundances of Delftia, Cutibacterium, Aquabacterium, Acidovorax, Caulobacteraceae unclassified, Comamonas and Porphyromonas in patients with obesity were significantly increased (P<0.05). Predictive analysis using PICRUSt2 highlighted a significant enhancement in certain metabolic pathways in patients with obesity, notably xenobiotics metabolism via cytochrome P450 (CYP450), lipid metabolism, and the oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptor signaling pathway (P<0.05). Conclusions: Patients with obesity exhibit a distinct ocular surface core microbiome. The observed variations in this microbiome may correlate with increased activity in CYP450, changes in lipid metabolism, and alterations in NOD-like receptor signaling pathways.

Sparse Action Tube Detection.

Action tube detection is a challenging task as it requires not only to locate action instances in each frame, but also link them in time. Existing action tube detection methods often employ multi-stage pipelines with complex designs and time-consuming linking procedure. In this paper, we present a simple end-to-end action tube detection method, termed as Sparse Tube Detector (STDet). Unlike those dense action detectors, our core idea is to use a set of learnable tube queries and directly decode them into action tubes (i.e., a set of tracked boxes with action label) from video content. This sparse detection paradigm shares several advantages. First, the large number of hand-crafted anchor candidates in dense action detectors is greatly reduced to a small number of learnable tubes, which results in a more efficient detection framework. Second, our learnable tube queries directly attend the whole video content, which endows our method with the capacity of capturing long-range information for action detection. Finally, our action detector is an end-to-end tube detection without requiring the linking procedure, which directly and explicitly predicts the action boundary instead of depending on the linking strategy. Extensive experiments shows that our STDet outperforms the previous state-of-the-art methods on two challenging untrimmed video action detection datasets of UCF101-24 and MultiSports. We hope our method will be an simple end-to-end tube detection baseline and can inspire new ideas in this direction.

Identification of non-canonical antagonistic bacteria via interspecies contact-dependent killing.

BACKGROUND: Canonical biocontrol bacteria were considered to inhibit pathogenic bacteria mainly by secreting antibiotic metabolites or enzymes. Recent studies revealed that some biocontrol bacteria can inhibit pathogenic bacteria through contact-dependent killing (CDK) mediated by contact-dependent secretion systems. The CDK was independent of antibiotic metabolites and often ignored in normal biocontrol activity assay. RESULTS: In this study, we aimed to use a pathogen enrichment strategy to isolate non-canonical bacteria with CDK ability. Rhizosphere soil samples from Chinese cabbage showing soft rot symptom were collected and Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum (Pcc), the pathogen of cabbage soft rot, were added into these samples to enrich bacteria which attached on Pcc cells. By co-culture with Pcc, four bacteria strains (named as PcE1, PcE8, PcE12 and PcE13) showing antibacterial activity were isolated from Chinese cabbage rhizosphere. These four bacteria strains showed CDK abilities to different pathogenic bacteria of horticultural plants. Among them, PcE1 was identified as Chryseobacterium cucumeris. Genome sequencing showed that PcE1 genome encoded a type VI secretion system (T6SS) gene cluster. By heterologous expression, four predicted T6SS effectors of PcE1 showed antibacterial activity to Escherichia coli. CONCLUSION: Overall, this study isolated four bacteria strains with CDK activity to various horticultural plant pathogens, and revealed possible involvement of T6SS of Chryseobacterium cucumeris in antibacterial activity. These results provide valuable insight for potential application of CDK activity in biocontrol bacteria. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

The Impact of Early Psychological Intervention Under Hospital-led HIV/AIDS Case Management on Patients' Well-being.

Objective: To explore the influence of early psychological intervention on AIDS patients receiving hospital-led case management. Methods: Between December 2022 and May 2023, 100 cases of AIDS patients were gathered at the Fifth Hospital of Shijiazhuang. They were randomly assigned to either a psychological intervention group or a conventional intervention group. Each group consists of 50 individuals affected by AIDS. The conventional intervention group received care through traditional care models. In contrast, the psychological intervention group received immediate psychological support upon being screened positive for HIV antibodies, in addition to the conventional intervention group. The intervention period for both groups lasted 3 months, during which medication adherence, adverse emotional conditions, self-management skills, and quality of life were compared. Results: During the intervention period, the psychological intervention group exhibited higher medication adherence than the conventional intervention group. Post-intervention, the levels of anxiety as assessed by the SAS and the degree of depression as evaluated by the SDS of the conventional intervention group were higher than those of the psychological intervention group. Additionally, the psychological intervention group demonstrated higher scores in 7 dimensions the total score on the self-management ability scale, and a higher score in the WHOQOL-HIV-BREF compared to the conventional intervention group. Conclusion: In the context of hospital-led case management for AIDS, early psychological intervention in patients has been shown to enhance medication adherence, reduce negative emotions, improve self-management skills, and enhance overall quality of life.

Reversible Temperature Sensing using Blue-Winged Grasshopper Coloracris azureus Wings.

Thermochromic materials have been widely investigated due to their relevance in technological applications, including anti-counterfeiting materials, fashion accessories, displays, and temperature sensors. While many organisms exhibit color changes, few studies have explored the potential of the responsive natural materials for temperature sensing, especially given the often limited and irreversible nature of these changes in live specimens. Here, it is shown that the hindwings of the blue-winged grasshopper Coloracris azureus can act as a reversible, power-free bio-thermometer, transitioning from blue to purple/red in a 30-100°C temperature range. Using microspectrophotometry, light microscopy and Raman microscopy, it is found that the blue color of the wings originates from pigmentary coloration, based on a complex of astaxanthin and proteins. The thermochromic shift from blue to red, induced by a temperature increase, is attributed to a denaturation of this carotenoprotein complex, upon which astaxanthin is released. This process is reversible upon a subsequent temperature decrease. The color changes are both swift and consistent upon temperature change, making the grasshopper's wings suitable as direct visual sensors on thermally dynamic, curved surfaces. The potential possibilities of sustainable, power-free temperature sensors or microthermometers based on biomaterials are demonstrated.

Study on the preparation of ascorbic acid reduced ultrafine copper powders in the presence of different protectants and the properties of copper powders based on methionine protection.

High-purity, monodisperse, and low-oxygen submicron copper powder particles with particle sizes in the range of 100-600 nm were synthesized under alkaline conditions using ascorbic acid (C6H8O6) as a reductant and copper chloride (CuCl2·2H2O) as a copper source. The redox potential of the Cu-Cl-H2O system was obtained by calculations and plotted on pH-E diagrams, and a one-step secondary reduction process (Cu(ii) → CuCl(i) → Cu2O(i) → Cu(0)) was proposed to slow down the reaction rate. The commonalities and differences in the nucleation and growth process of copper powders under methionine (Met), hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), and sodium citrate dihydrate (SSC) as protectants and without the addition of protectants are compared, and the reaction mechanism is discussed. Among them, methionine (Met) showed excellent properties and the Cu2O(i) → Cu(0) process was further observed by in situ XRD. The synthesized copper powder particles have higher particle size controllability, dispersibility, antioxidant properties, and stability, and can be decomposed at lower temperatures (<280 °C). The resistivity can reach 21.4 µΩ cm when sintered at a temperature of 325 °C for 30 min. This green and simple synthesis process facilitates industrialization and storage, and the performance meets the requirements of electronic pastes.

Exploring the mechanism of LncRNA CASC15 affecting hepatocellular carcinoma through miRNA.

This study aimed to determine the potential mechanisms through which long noncoding (Lnc) RNA cancer susceptibility candidate 15 (CASC15) affects hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We retrieved HCC RNA-seq and clinical information from the UCSC Xena database. The differential expression (DE) of CASC15 was detected. Overall survival was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier (K-M) curves. Molecular function and signaling pathways affected by CASC15 were determined using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis. Associations between CASC15 and the HCC microenvironment were investigated using immuno-infiltration assays. A differential CASC15-miRNA-mRNA network and HCC-specific CASC15-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA network were constructed. The overexpression of CASC15 in HCC tissues was associated with histological grade, clinical stage, pathological T stage, poor survival, more complex immune cell components, and 12 immune checkpoints. We identified 27 DE miRNAs and 270 DE mRNAs in the differential CASC15-miRNA-mRNA network, and 10 key genes that were enriched in 12 cancer-related signaling pathways. Extraction of the HCC-specific CASC15-miRNA-mRNA network revealed that IGF1R, MET, and KRAS were associated with HCC progression and occurrence. Our bioinformatic findings confirmed that CASC15 is a promising prognostic biomarker for HCC, and elevated levels in HCC are associated with the tumor microenvironment. We also constructed a disease-specific CASC15-miRNA-mRNA regulatory ceRNA network that provides a new perspective for the precise indexing of patients with elevated levels of CASC15.

Single-Cell Characterization of the Tumor Ecosystem in Liver Cancer.

Tumor heterogeneity along with the complex landscape of the tumor microenvironment create critical challenges for effective liver cancer interventions. Characterizing the tumor ecosystem at the single-cell level may provide insight into the collective behaviors of tumor cells and their interplays with stromal and immune cells. Here we introduce the experimental protocol and computational methods for the single-cell study of liver cancer, which may be essential for a mechanistic understanding of the tumor ecosystem in liver cancer and further pave the way for developing novel therapeutics.

Urban environment influences on stress, autonomic reactivity and circadian rhythm: protocol for an ambulatory study of mental health and sleep.

Introduction: Converging evidence suggests that urban living is associated with an increased likelihood of developing mental health and sleep problems. Although these aspects have been investigated in separate streams of research, stress, autonomic reactivity and circadian misalignment can be hypothesized to play a prominent role in the causal pathways underlining the complex relationship between the urban environment and these two health dimensions. This study aims at quantifying the momentary impact of environmental stressors on increased autonomic reactivity and circadian rhythm, and thereby on mood and anxiety symptoms and sleep quality in the context of everyday urban living. Method: The present article reports the protocol for a feasibility study that aims at assessing the daily environmental and mobility exposures of 40 participants from the urban area of Jerusalem over 7 days. Every participant will carry a set of wearable sensors while being tracked through space and time with GPS receivers. Skin conductance and heart rate variability will be tracked to monitor participants' stress responses and autonomic reactivity, whereas electroencephalographic signal will be used for sleep quality tracking. Light exposure, actigraphy and skin temperature will be used for ambulatory circadian monitoring. Geographically explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA) will be used to assess participants' perception of the environment, mood and anxiety symptoms, sleep quality and vitality. For each outcome variable (sleep quality and mental health), hierarchical mixed models including random effects at the individual level will be used. In a separate analysis, to control for potential unobserved individual-level confounders, a fixed effect at the individual level will be specified for case-crossover analyses (comparing each participant to oneself). Conclusion: Recent developments in wearable sensing methods, as employed in our study or with even more advanced methods reviewed in the Discussion, make it possible to gather information on the functioning of neuro-endocrine and circadian systems in a real-world context as a way to investigate the complex interactions between environmental exposures, behavior and health. Our work aims to provide evidence on the health effects of urban stressors and circadian disruptors to inspire potential interventions, municipal policies and urban planning schemes aimed at addressing those factors.

Design and optimization of ε-poly-l-lysine with specific functions for diverse applications.

ε-Poly-l-lysine (ε-PL) is a natural homo-poly(amino acid) which can be produced by microorganisms. With the advantages in broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, biodegradability, and biocompatibility, ε-PL has been widely used as a preservative in the food industry. Different molecular architectures endow ε-PL and ε-PL-based materials with versatile applications. However, the microbial synthesis of ε-PL is currently limited by low efficiencies in genetic engineering and molecular architecture modification. This review presents recent advances in ε-PL production and molecular architecture modification of microbial ε-PL, with a focus on the current challenges and solutions for the improvement of the productivity and diversity of ε-PL. In addition, we highlight recent examples where ε-PL has been applied to expand the versability of edible films and nanoparticles in various applications. Commercial production and the challenges and future research directions in ε-PL biosynthesis are also discussed. Currently, although the main use of ε-PL is as a food preservative, ε-PL and ε-PL-based polymers have shown excellent application potential in biomedical fields. With the development of synthetic biology, the design and synthesis of ε-PL with a customized molecular architecture are possible in the near future. ε-PL-based polymers with specific functions will be a new trend in biopolymer manufacturing.

Influence of local governments on the greening of the manufacturing sector: A perspective on environmental governance objectives.

The green development of manufacturing industries is significantly impacted by local governments. In this study, we focus on assessing the environmental governance effectiveness by examining the tasks assigned by the central government to each province under the Comprehensive Work Program for Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction. By utilizing panel data from 30 provinces and cities in China from 2011 to 2020, we employ the super-efficient SBM model to evaluate China's manufacturing industry's green total factor productivity. Through various models, including the double-fixed effect and the mediation effect, we investigate the influence of environmental governance targets on the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry. Our findings reveal a U-shaped relationship between the environmental governance target and the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry. When the pressure of environmental governance targets is below a certain critical value, the green total factor productivity decreases as the target pressure increases. However, once the target pressure surpasses this critical value, the green total factor productivity experiences a positive correlation with the target pressure. Further analysis demonstrates that this U-shaped relationship is observed in regions with low and medium marketization, while regions with high marketization remain unaffected. Moreover, the impact of environmental governance target pressure on green total factor productivity in manufacturing is facilitated by the promotion of green innovation. Furthermore, the relationship between environmental governance target pressure and green total factor productivity in manufacturing is moderated by local government fiscal expenditures. In regions where fiscal expenditures are higher, the influence of environmental governance target pressure on green total factor productivity in manufacturing is more pronounced.

Long-term survival of stage Ib lung adenocarcinoma with postoperative brain oligometastasis: a case report and literature review.

Lung adenocarcinoma remains one of the most frequent and deadly tumour entities. Early-stage lung adenocarcinoma is extremely difficult to detect and is also easy to recur or metastasize after treatment. Since the new adenocarcinoma classification was presented in 2011, several studies have shown that patients with solid and/or micropapillary (S/MP) predominant patterns showed a worse prognosis. Here we report the case of a 54-year-old woman who was diagnosed with stage Ib lung adenocarcinoma with S/MP components and developed an isolated brain oligometastasis after resection and adjuvant therapy. A craniocerebral operation was performed, combined with radiotherapy and targeted therapy, and the patient eventually achieved a good quality of life. Our work reviews the clinical features of lung cancer complicated with S/MP components, the relationship between MP and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation, as well as treatment strategies for such a patient with postoperative brain oligometastasis of lung adenocarcinoma complicated with EGFR Exon19del mutation.

Serum level of YWHAG as a diagnostic marker of cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease patients.

BACKGROUND: Identifying reliable biomarkers for early detection and prediction of cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) is crucial for optimal patient care. This study set out to investigate the potential of YWHAG as a diagnostic biomarker for cognitive impairment in PD. METHODS: We enrolled a total of 331 PD patients and selected 241 patients that met the criteria for cognitive impairment analysis. The patients were classified into three groups: PD-NC: PD patients with normal cognition, PD-MCI: PD patients with mild cognitive impairment, and PD-D: PD patients with dementia. ELISA was employed to assess YWHAG expression, as well as the neurofilament light chain (NfL). Additionally, cognitive impairment was evaluated using MoCA scores. Correlation analysis and receiver operating curve analysis (ROC) were performed to clarify the relationship between YWHAG expression and cognitive impairment. RESULTS: Our findings revealed a significant upregulation of YWHAG expression in both the PD-MCI and PD-D groups compared to the PD-NC group. This observation aligned with the elevated expression of NfL in the PD-MCI and PD-D groups. YWHAG and NfL expression levels displayed negative correlations with MoCA scores and positive associations with age. Furthermore, ROC curve analysis demonstrated the diagnostic efficacy of YWHAG expression in distinguishing individuals with PD-NC, PD-MCI, and PD-D. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that YWHAG could serve as a promising biomarker for cognitive impairment in PD. The upregulation of YWHAG expression in PD-MCI and PD-D groups, its association with cognitive impairment, and its correlations with MoCA scores and NfL levels support its potential clinical utility.