Spatially resolved land and grid model of carbon neutrality in China.

China has committed to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2060 to combat global climate change, which will require unprecedented deployment of negative emissions technologies, renewable energies (RE), and complementary infrastructure. At terawatt-scale deployment, land use limitations interact with operational and economic features of power systems. To address this, we developed a spatially resolved resource assessment and power systems planning optimization that models a full year of power system operations, sub-provincial RE siting criteria, and transmission connections. Our modeling results show that wind and solar must be expanded to 2,000 to 3,900 GW each, with one plausible pathway leading to 300 GW/yr combined annual additions in 2046 to 2060, a three-fold increase from today. Over 80% of solar and 55% of wind is constructed within 100 km of major load centers when accounting for current policies regarding land use. Large-scale low-carbon systems must balance key trade-offs in land use, RE resource quality, grid integration, and costs. Under more restrictive RE siting policies, at least 740 GW of distributed solar would become economically feasible in regions with high demand, where utility-scale deployment is limited by competition with agricultural land. Effective planning and policy formulation are necessary to achieve China's climate goals.

Real-time imaging of ipsilateral parathyroid glands by retrograde injection of methylene blue into the superior thyroid artery: a new intraoperative parathyroid protection method.

BACKGROUND: Postoperative hypoparathyroidism caused by parathyroid injury is a problem faced by thyroid surgeons. The current technologies for parathyroid imaging all have some defects. METHODS: Patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) who underwent unilateral thyroidectomy plus ipsilateral central lymph node dissection were recruited. We dissected the main trunk of the superior thyroid artery entering the thyroid gland and placed the venous indwelling tube into the artery. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated. RESULTS: A total of 132 patients enrolled in this single-arm clinical trial, 105 of them completed retrograde catheterization via the superior artery. The sensitivity was 69.23 and 83.33% respectively. The specificity was 72.91 and 64.89%. The accuracy was 72.91 and 64.89%. The PPV was 85.71 and 81.08%. The NPV was 22.58 and 45.45%. There were no patients with allergic reactions to the methylene blue, or methylene blue toxicity. CONCLUSIONS: Retrograde injection of methylene blue via the superior thyroid artery is an effective and safe method to visualize parathyroid glands. This method can accurately locate the target organ by ultraselecting the blood vessel and injecting the contrast agent while avoiding background contamination and reducing the amount of contrast agent. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical trial registration numbers and date of registration: ChiCTR2300077263、02/11/2023.

Chromosome-level genome assembly of sea scallop Placopecten magellanicus provides insights into the genetic characteristics and adaptive evolution of large scallops.

Placopecten magellanicus (Gmelin, 1791), a deep-sea Atlantic scallop, holds significant commercial value as a benthic marine bivalve along the northwest Atlantic coast. Recognizing its economic importance, the need to reconstruct its genome assembly becomes apparent, fostering insights into natural resources and generic breeding potential. This study reports a high-quality chromosome-level genome of P. magellanicus, achieved through the integration of Illumina short read sequencing, PacBio HiFi sequencing, and Hi-C sequencing techniques. The resulting assembly spans 1778 Mb with a scaffold N50 of 86.71 Mb. An intriguing observation arises - the genome size of P. magellanicus surpasses that of its Pectinidae family peers by 1.80 to 2.46 times. Within this genome, 28,111 protein-coding genes were identified. Comparative genomic analysis involving five scallop species unveils the critical determinant of this expanded genome: the proliferation of repetitive sequences recently inserted, contributing to its enlarged size. The landscape of whole genome collinearity sheds light on the relationships among scallop species, enhancing our broader understanding of their genomic framework. This genome provides genomic resources for future molecular biology research on scallops and serves as a guide for the exploration of longevity-related genes in scallops.

Evaluating the data quality of continuous emissions monitoring systems in China.

Starting in 2013, China's key polluting firms have been required to install continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) and to publish the data for real-time oversight and public scrutiny. However, the CEMS data has rarely been used in local environmental law enforcement because its quality is still of great concern. A lack of criteria to evaluate data quality is one of the causes. In this paper, we design a comprehensive analytical framework for evaluating the quality of CEMS data, which includes completeness, accuracy, and authenticity. To demonstrate the applicability of the framework, we build a CEMS dataset for key polluting firms in Henan province from 2017 to 2019 by scraping the CEMS data from a public platform. We then conduct a comprehensive evaluation using our proposed framework. Some data quality issues are identified. About one-third of the firms did not meet official guidelines for data completeness. When comparing the CEMS data with onsite measurement results, we observe statistically significant inconsistencies in about one-fifth of the firms. In addition, we find evidence that some firms might manipulate CEMS data by strategically turning down the CEMS when a pollutant's concentration is expected to exceed the limit. Our framework can be expanded by incorporating more evaluation methods and data. We suggest that government agencies should implement a comprehensive framework to enhance the quality of CEMS data, thereby facilitating its application in law enforcement.

Geometric control of vector vortex light beams via a linear coupling system.

We demonstrate a novel theoretical platform to realize geometric control of vector vortex states in an optical coupling system. These complex states are characterized by spatially varying polarizations and coupled with vortex phase profiles. It can be mapped uniquely as a point on a higher-order Poincaré sphere. The geometric theory clearly reveals how a tailored phase mismatch profile, together with a suitable coupling, supports state conversion between these higher-order complex light fields, in analogous to the processes appearing in two-level quantum system as well as three-wave mixing process in nonlinear optics. Specifically, in the phase matching condition, it is shown that these complex states carried by an envelope field exhibit periodic oscillations in the course of state evolution; whereas in the phase mismatching condition the oscillations become detuned, leading to noncyclic state evolution. Intriguingly, when using an adiabatic technique for the phase mismatch, robust state conversion between two arbitrary vector vortex light fields can be realized. Our demonstrations provide a fully control over the vector vortex states on the sphere, and we suggest that it would benefit various potential applications both in the classical and the quantum optics.

Functions and clinical significance of KLRG1 in the development of lung adenocarcinoma and immunotherapy.

BACKGROUND: As a marker of differentiation, Killer cell lectin like receptor G1 (KLRG1) plays an inhibitory role in human NK cells and T cells. However, its clinical role remains inexplicit. This work intended to investigate the predictive ability of KLRG1 on the efficacy of immune-checkpoint inhibitor in the treatment of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), as well as contribute to the possible molecular mechanisms of KLRG1 on LUAD development. METHODS: Using data from the Gene Expression Omnibus, the Cancer Genome Atlas and the Genotype-Tissue Expression, we compared the expression of KLRG1 and its related genes Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK), C-C motif chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2), Scm polycomb group protein like 4 (SCML4) in LUAD and normal lung tissues. We also established stable LUAD cell lines with KLRG1 gene knockdown and investigated the effect of KLRG1 knockdown on tumor cell proliferation. We further studied the prognostic value of the four factors in terms of overall survival (OS) in LUAD. Using data from the Gene Expression Omnibus, we further investigated the expression of KLRG1 in the patients with different responses after immunotherapy. RESULTS: The expression of KLRG1, BTK, CCR2 and SCML4 was significantly downregulated in LUAD tissues compared to normal controls. Knockdown of KLRG1 promoted the proliferation of A549 and H1299 tumor cells. And low expression of these four factors was associated with unfavorable overall survival in patients with LUAD. Furthermore, low expression of KLRG1 also correlated with poor responses to immunotherapy in LUAD patients. CONCLUSION: Based on these findings, we inferred that KLRG1 had significant correlation with immunotherapy response. Meanwhile, KLRG1, BTK, CCR2 and SCML4 might serve as valuable prognostic biomarkers in LUAD.

Health Benefits and Costs of Clean Heating Renovation: An Integrated Assessment in a Major Chinese City.

China has been promoting one of the world's largest campaigns for clean heating renovation since 2017. Here, we present an integrated cost-benefit analysis in a major prefecture-level city by combining a large-scale household energy survey and PM2.5 exposure measurement, high-resolution chemical transport simulation, and health impact assessment. We find that the completed renovation decreases the share of solid fuels in the heating energy mix from 96 to 6% and achieves a concomitant reduction of cooking solid-fuel use by 70%. The completed renovation decreases the ambient PM2.5 concentration in Linfen by 0.5-5 µg m-3 (2.4 µg m-3 on average) and decreases the integrated PM2.5 exposure by 4.2 (3.5-5.0) µg m-3. The renovation is estimated to avoid 162 (125-225) and 328 (254-457) premature deaths annually based on two health impact assessment methods. The ratios of monetized health benefits to cost are 1.51 (0.73-2.59) and 3.06 (1.49-5.23) based on the above two methods. The benefit-to-cost ratio is projected to remain high if the renovation is further expanded. More polluted and less wealthy households enjoy larger health benefits but also experience a higher expense increase, suggesting that a more carefully designed subsidy policy is needed to protect low-income households.

The MicroRNA-382-5p/MXD1 Axis Relates to Breast Cancer Progression and Promotes Cell Malignant Phenotypes.

BACKGROUND: MicroRNA (miRNA)-382-5p functions as an oncogenic miRNA in breast cancer. MXD1 was demonstrated to be one of its direct targets. However, the involvement of miRNA-382-5p/MXD1 axis in breast cancer remains unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression pattern, clinical significance, and potential functions of miRNA-382-5p/MXD1 axis in breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Quantitative polymerase chain reaction was performed to detect the expression levels of miRNA-382-5p and MXD1 messenger RNA (mRNA) in 96 pairs of breast cancer and matched noncancerous breast tissue samples from the same patients. Relationships between miRNA-382 expression, MXD1 expression, and combined miRNA-382-5p and MXD1 expression, and various clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer were statistically evaluated, and their roles in breast cancer cell proliferation and invasion were also examined. RESULTS: Compared with noncancerous breast tissues, miRNA-382-5p expression was upregulated but MXD1 mRNA expression was downregulated in breast cancer tissues (both P < 0.01). High miRNA-382 expression, MXD1 expression, and combined miRNA-382-5p and low MXD1 expression were significantly associated with advanced tumor stage and the presence of lymph node metastasis (all P < 0.05). Overexpression of miRNA-382-5p dramatically reduced MXD1 mRNA and protein expression levels in breast cancer cells. miRNA-382-5p upregulation markedly enhanced breast cancer cell proliferation and invasion, while its downregulation inhibited these malignant phenotypes of breast cancer cells in vitro. Notably, overexpressed MXD1 reversed the effects of upregulated miRNA-382-5p on cell proliferation and invasion in vitro. CONCLUSIONS: The dysregulation of miRNA-382-5p-MXD1 axis may be involved in the development and aggressive progression of breast cancer. miRNA-382-5p may target MXD1, leading to cell invasion and proliferation in breast cancer cells in vitro, implying its potentials as a therapeutic target for this type of cancer.

Semidiscrete Quantum Droplets and Vortices.

We consider a binary bosonic condensate with weak mean-field (MF) residual repulsion, loaded in an array of nearly one-dimensional traps coupled by transverse hopping. With the MF force balanced by the effectively one-dimensional attraction, induced in each trap by the Lee-Hung-Yang correction (produced by quantum fluctuations around the MF state), stable on-site- and intersite-centered semidiscrete quantum droplets (QDs) emerge in the array, as fundamental ones and self-trapped vortices, with winding numbers, at least, up to five, in both tightly bound and quasicontinuum forms. The application of a relatively strong trapping potential leads to squeezing transitions, which increase the number of sites in fundamental QDs and eventually replace vortex modes by fundamental or dipole ones. The results provide the first realization of stable semidiscrete vortex QDs, including ones with multiple vorticity.

Ag/MnO2 Nanorod as Electrode Material for High-Performance Electrochemical Supercapacitors.

A one-dimensional hierarchical Ag nanoparticle (AgNP)/MnO2 nanorod (MND) nanocomposite was synthesized by combining a simple solvothermal method and a facile reduction approach in situ. Owing to its high electrical conductivity, the resulting AgNP/MND nanocomposite displayed a high specific capacitance of 314 F g-1 at a current density of 2 A g-1, which was much higher than that of pure MNDs (178 F g-1). Resistances of the electrolyte (Rs) and charge transportation (Rct) of the nanocomposite were much lower than that of pure MNDs. Moreover, the nanocomposite exhibited outstanding long-term cycling ability (9% loss of initial capacity after 1000 cycles). These results indicated that the nanocomposite could serve as a promising and useful electrode material for future energy-storage applications.

Distinct influence of model electron shuttles on anaerobic mononitrophenols reduction in aquatic environments by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1.

The environmental fate and risks of mononitrophenols (mono-NPs), the simplest nitrophenols (NPs) often found in aquatic environments, are profoundly influenced by anaerobic bioreduction and co-existing electron shuttles (ESs), but little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Here, we elucidate the pathways of anaerobic mono-NPs bioreduction by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 and assess the effect of model ESs on these processes. We found that all three mono-NPs isomers could be readily reduced to their corresponding aminophenols by S. oneidensis MR-1 under anaerobic conditions. CymA, a core component of the Mtr respiratory pathway, performs a dynamic role in these bioreduction, which is highly dependent on the bioreduction kinetics. The exogenous addition of quinones was found to accelerate the mono-NPs bioreduction through interactions with key outer-membrane proteins (e.g., OmcA and MtrC), and all these processes matched well to linear free energy relationships (LFERs). Surprisingly, adding riboflavin did not influence the bioreduction of all three mono-NPs isomers, which may be due to the contribution of OmcA and MtrC to these bioreduction processes and their downregulated expression. This study enhances our understanding of the environmental fate of mono-NPs and their bioconversion processes, providing valuable insights for the bioremediation of nitrophenol-contaminated sites.

VT-3DCapsNet: Visual tempos 3D-Capsule network for video-based facial expression recognition.

Facial expression recognition(FER) is a hot topic in computer vision, especially as deep learning based methods are gaining traction in this field. However, traditional convolutional neural networks (CNN) ignore the relative position relationship of key facial features (mouth, eyebrows, eyes, etc.) due to changes of facial expressions in real-world environments such as rotation, displacement or partial occlusion. In addition, most of the works in the literature do not take visual tempos into account when recognizing facial expressions that possess higher similarities. To address these issues, we propose a visual tempos 3D-CapsNet framework(VT-3DCapsNet). First, we propose 3D-CapsNet model for emotion recognition, in which we introduced improved 3D-ResNet architecture that integrated with AU-perceived attention module to enhance the ability of feature representation of capsule network, through expressing deeper hierarchical spatiotemporal features and extracting latent information (position, size, orientation) in key facial areas. Furthermore, we propose the temporal pyramid network(TPN)-based expression recognition module(TPN-ERM), which can learn high-level facial motion features from video frames to model differences in visual tempos, further improving the recognition accuracy of 3D-CapsNet. Extensive experiments are conducted on extended Kohn-Kanada (CK+) database and Acted Facial Expression in Wild (AFEW) database. The results demonstrate competitive performance of our approach compared with other state-of-the-art methods.

Single-cell omics and machine learning integration to develop a polyamine metabolism-based risk score model in breast cancer patients.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer remains the leading malignant neoplasm among women globally, posing significant challenges in terms of treatment and prognostic evaluation. The metabolic pathway of polyamines is crucial in breast cancer progression, with a strong association to the increased capabilities of tumor cells for proliferation, invasion, and metastasis. METHODS: We used a multi-omics approach combining bulk RNA sequencing and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to study polyamine metabolism. Data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, Gene Expression Omnibus, and Genotype-Tissue Expression identified 286 differentially expressed genes linked to polyamine pathways in breast cancer. These genes were analyzed using univariate COX and machine learning algorithms to develop a prognostic scoring algorithm. Single-cell RNA sequencing validated the model by examining gene expression heterogeneity at the cellular level. RESULTS: Our single-cell analyses revealed distinct subpopulations with different expressions of genes related to polyamine metabolism, highlighting the heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment. The SuperPC model (a constructed risk score) demonstrated high accuracy when predicting patient outcomes. The immune profiling and functional enrichment analyses revealed that the genes identified play a crucial role in cell cycle control and immune modulation. Single-cell validation confirmed that polyamine metabolism genes were present in specific cell clusters. This highlights their potential as therapeutic targets. CONCLUSIONS: This study integrates single cell omics with machine-learning to develop a robust scoring model for breast cancer based on polyamine metabolic pathways. Our findings offer new insights into tumor heterogeneity, and a novel framework to personalize prognosis. Single-cell technologies are being used in this context to enhance our understanding of the complex molecular terrain of breast cancer and support more effective clinical management.

CD206 modulates the role of M2 macrophages in the origin of metastatic tumors.

Tumor metastasis is a key factor affecting the life of patients with malignant tumors. For the past hundred years, scientists have focused on how to kill cancer cells and inhibit their metastasis in vivo, but few breakthroughs have been made. Here we hypothesized a novel mode for cancer metastasis. We show that the phagocytosis of apoptotic tumor cells by macrophages leads to their polarization into the M2 phenotype, and that the expression of stem cell related as well as drug resistance related genes was induced. Therefore, it appears that M2 macrophages have "defected" and have been transformed into the initial "metastatic cancer cells", and thus are the source, at least in part, of the distal tissue tumor metastasis. This assumption is supported by the presence of fused cells with characteristics of both macrophage and tumor cell observed in the peripheral blood and ascites of patients with ovarian cancer. By eliminating the expression of CD206 in M2 macrophages using siRNA, we show that the growth and metastasis of tumors was suppressed using both in vitro cell line and with experimental in vivo mouse models. In summary, we show that M2 macrophages in the blood circulation underwent a "change of loyalty" to become "cancer cells" that transformed into distal tissue metastasis, which could be suppressed by the knockdown of CD206 expression.

MIRN: A multi-interest retrieval network with sequence-to-interest EM routing.

Vector-based retrieval have been widely adopted to process online users' diverse interests for recommendations. However, most of them utilize a single vector to represent user multiple interests (UMI), inevitably impairing the accuracy and diversity of item retrieval. In addition, existing work often does not take into account the scale and speed of the model, and high-dimensional user representation vectors need high computation cost, leading to inefficient item retrieval. In this paper, we propose a novel lightweight multi-interest retrieval network (MIRN) by incorporating sequence-to-interest Expectation Maximization (EM) routing to deal with users' multiple interests. By leveraging representation ability of the Capsule network, we design a multi-interest representation learning module that clusters multiple Capsule vectors from the user's behavior sequence to represent each of their interests respectively. In addition, we introduce a composite capsule clustering strategy for the Capsule network framework to reduce the scale of the network model. Furthermore, a Capsule-aware module incorporating an attention mechanism has been developed to guide model training by adaptively learning multiple Capsule vectors of user representations. The experimental results demonstrate MIRN outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches for item retrieval and gains significant improvements in terms of metric evaluations.

Lightweight dense video captioning with cross-modal attention and knowledge-enhanced unbiased scene graph.

Dense video captioning (DVC) aims at generating description for each scene in a video. Despite attractive progress for this task, previous works usually only concentrate on exploiting visual features while neglecting audio information in the video, resulting in inaccurate scene event location. In this article, we propose a novel DVC model named CMCR, which is mainly composed of a cross-modal processing (CM) module and a commonsense reasoning (CR) module. CM utilizes a cross-modal attention mechanism to encode data in different modalities. An event refactoring algorithm is proposed to deal with inaccurate event localization caused by overlapping events. Besides, a shared encoder is utilized to reduce model redundancy. CR optimizes the logic of generated captions with both heterogeneous prior knowledge and entities' association reasoning achieved by building a knowledge-enhanced unbiased scene graph. Extensive experiments are conducted on ActivityNet Captions dataset, the results demonstrate that our model achieves better performance than state-of-the-art methods. To better understand the performance achieved by CMCR, we also apply ablation experiments to analyze the contributions of different modules.

Ongoing CO2 monitoring verify CO2 emissions and sinks in China during 2018-2021.

Accurate estimating CO2 emissions and sinks is crucial in achieving carbon neutrality in China. However, CO2 emissions from bottom-up inventories are uncertain at regional scales and lack independent verification from atmospheric perspectives. Here we integrated 39 high-precision CO2 stations in China to top-down invert emission-sink variations at 45 km × 45 km and achieved a full range of inventories verification. The results show that China's CO2 emissions are 15% higher than those of five bottom-up inventories, to an annual total of 3.40 Pg C a-1 for 2018-2021. After deducting human and livestock respiration, the annual CO2 emissions were 3.13 Pg C a-1 (11.48 Pg CO2 a-1). The annual increase in emissions slowed from 3.7% in 2019 to 1.1% in 2020 and resumed growth to 4.0% in 2021, consistent with observed CO2 growth rates in China. China's land CO2 sink, deducting farmland sinks and lateral fluxes, was 0.57 Pg C a-1 (2.09 Pg CO2 a-1) for 2018-2021 (higher than most global inverse models), accounting for ∼16.9% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The land sink in China decreased by -19.3% in 2019 due to a weak El Niño event and increased by 3.2% in 2020 and 13.7% in 2021. It is worth noting that inverse CO2 emissions and sinks in western China still face large uncertainty due to limited CO2 monitoring. Overall, our top-down estimates demonstrate spatiotemporal variations in CO2 emissions and sinks from atmospheric perspectives and highlight challenges for different provinces in achieving 2060 carbon neutrality with verified estimates.

Controlling toxic and harmful gas in blasting with an inhibitor.

In engineering blasting, while efficiently breaking rocks with explosives, a large amount of toxic and harmful gases are generated, which not only pollutes the production environment but also easily leads to explosion smoke poisoning accidents. It must be highly valued by engineering technicians and management personnel. To effectively control the production of harmful gases during explosive blasting, an environmentally friendly and efficient harmful gas inhibitor has been developed, and its mechanism of action has been analyzed and revealed. Through model and on-site experiments, the appropriate addition ratio and charging structure scheme were determined, and good control effects were achieved. The research results indicate that the environment in which explosives are used has a significant impact on the composition of harmful gases produced during blasting. CO, NO, and NO2 are mainly produced in natural air environments, while NH3, CO, and NO are mainly produced in underground blasting environments. As the proportion of inhibitors added increases (2%, 4%, 6%), the decrease in the concentration of harmful gases during blasting first increases and then decreases. Compared with the control experiment, the total reduction rate of harmful gas concentration is 39.23%, 68.20%, and 59.69%, respectively, and the best control effect is achieved when 4% is added. When using the developed inhibitor adding device for the full hole addition scheme, the control effect of harmful gas concentration in blasting is the best, and the decrease in harmful gas concentration reaches 62.79%~84.73% at a distance of 30m~120m. The use of harmful gas inhibitors for blasting combined with other control measures can significantly improve the blasting operation environment, enhance the safety level of production operations, and have good promotion and application value.

Spin-orbit Rabi oscillations in optically synthesized magnetic fields.

Rabi oscillation has been proven to be one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics, triggering substantial investigations in different disciplines and various important applications both in the classical and quantum regimes. So far, two independent classes of wave states in the Rabi oscillations have been revealed as spin waves and orbital waves, while a Rabi wave state simultaneously merging the spin and orbital angular momentum has remained elusive. Here we report on the experimental and theoretical observation and control of spin-orbit-coupled Rabi oscillations in the higher-order regime of light. We constitute a pseudo spin-1/2 formalism and optically synthesize a magnetization vector through light-crystal interaction. We observe simultaneous oscillations of these ingredients in weak and strong coupling regimes, which are effectively controlled by a beam-dependent synthetic magnetic field. We introduce an electrically tunable platform, allowing fine control of transition between different oscillatory modes, resulting in an emission of orbital-angular-momentum beams with tunable topological structures. Our results constitute a general framework to explore spin-orbit couplings in the higher-order regime, offering routes to manipulating the spin and orbital angular momentum in three and four dimensions. The close analogy with the Pauli equation in quantum mechanics, nonlinear optics, etc., implies that the demonstrated concept can be readily generalized to different disciplines.