Versatile, modular, and customizable magnetic solid-droplet systems.

Magnetic miniature robotic systems have attracted broad research interest because of their precise maneuverability in confined spaces and adaptability to diverse environments, holding significant promise for applications in both industrial infrastructures and biomedical fields. However, the predominant construction methodology involves the preprogramming of magnetic components into the system's structure. While this approach allows for intricate shape transformations, it exhibits limited flexibility in terms of reconfiguration and presents challenges when adapting to diverse materials, combining, and decoupling multiple functionalities. Here, we propose a construction strategy that facilitates the on-demand assembly of magnetic components, integrating ferrofluid droplets with the system's structural body. This approach enables the creation of complex solid-droplet robotic systems across a spectrum of length scales, ranging from 0.8 mm to 1.5 cm. It offers a diverse selection of materials and structural configurations, akin to assembling components like building blocks, thus allowing for the seamless integration of various functionalities. Moreover, it incorporates decoupling mechanisms to enable selective control over multiple functions, leveraging the fluidity, fission/fusion, and magneto-responsiveness properties inherent in the ferrofluid. Various solid-droplet systems have validated the feasibility of this strategy. This study advances the complexity and functionality achievable in small-scale magnetic robots, augmenting their potential for future biomedical and other applications.

A Multi-Source Data Fusion Network for Wood Surface Broken Defect Segmentation.

Wood surface broken defects seriously damage the structure of wooden products, these defects have to be detected and eliminated. However, current defect detection methods based on machine vision have difficulty distinguishing the interference, similar to the broken defects, such as stains and mineral lines, and can result in frequent false detections. To address this issue, a multi-source data fusion network based on U-Net is proposed for wood broken defect detection, combining image and depth data, to suppress the interference and achieve complete segmentation of the defects. To efficiently extract various semantic information of defects, an improved ResNet34 is designed to, respectively, generate multi-level features of the image and depth data, in which the depthwise separable convolution (DSC) and dilated convolution (DC) are introduced to decrease the computational expense and feature redundancy. To take full advantages of two types of data, an adaptive interacting fusion module (AIF) is designed to adaptively integrate them, thereby generating accurate feature representation of the broken defects. The experiments demonstrate that the multi-source data fusion network can effectively improve the detection accuracy of wood broken defects and reduce the false detections of interference, such as stains and mineral lines.

Impact of corticosteroid use on outcomes of non-small-cell lung cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

WHAT IS KNOWN AND OBJECTIVE: Administration of corticosteroids to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI)-treated patients has raised concerns due to doubts about ICIs' efficacy under those conditions. Hence, we reviewed studies comparing overall and progression-free survival (OS and PFS) outcomes in patients with non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) treated with ICI and either with or without corticosteroids for any reason. METHODS: We searched the PubMed Central, Cochrane library, EMBASE and MEDLINE databases from inception until February 2021 for relevant publications. We used the Newcastle-Ottawa scale to assess the quality of the identified studies. We used the published data to carry out a meta-analysis with a random-effects model and report pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: We included data from 14 studies with 5461 participants in the meta-analysis. Most studies were retrospective in nature and of low quality, and most of them were conducted in the USA and in European countries. Nivolumab is the most common ICI used in the included studies followed by pembrolizumab. We found that patients using corticosteroids had reduced OSs (pooled HR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.51-2.18) and PFSs (pooled HR, 1.69; 95% CI, 1.41-2.04) than the patients not using corticosteroids. We identified significant heterogeneity and publication bias for both the outcomes. However, the sensitivity analysis revealed that the estimates were robust to the individual study effects. WHAT IS NEW AND CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that corticosteroids significantly reduce the OS and PFS of patients with NSCLC under ICI therapy. Hence, clinicians and oncologists should consider this information when prescribing corticosteroids for this target population.

Family socioeconomic status and emotional adaptation among rural-to-urban migrant adolescents in China: The moderating roles of adolescent's resilience and parental positive emotion.

Low family socioeconomic status (SES) is closely related to increased risk of emotional maladaptation among adolescents. Although previous studies have found that low family SES is a significant and common experience for most rural-to-urban migrant adolescents in China, little research has examined the association between family SES and emotional adaptation or identified the protective factors that may minimise emotional maladaptation among these adolescents. The present study examined the associations between family SES and three indices of emotional adaptation (emotion regulation, life satisfaction and depression) and the moderating effects of adolescents' resilience and parental positive emotion (PE) among 486 Chinese rural-to-urban migrant adolescents. The results suggest that family SES was significantly associated with migrant adolescents' emotional outcomes, to varying degrees. Moreover, both adolescents' resilience and PE moderated the associations between family SES and emotional outcomes, although the protective effects of the two moderators differed on the three emotional outcomes. These findings shed light into designing intervention and prevention programs to reduce emotional maladaptation among migrant adolescents.

Reevaluating the two-representation model of numerical magnitude processing.

One debate in mathematical cognition centers on the single-representation model versus the two-representation model. Using an improved number Stroop paradigm (i.e., systematically manipulating physical size distance), in the present study we tested the predictions of the two models for number magnitude processing. The results supported the single-representation model and, more importantly, explained how a design problem (failure to manipulate physical size distance) and an analytical problem (failure to consider the interaction between congruity and task-irrelevant numerical distance) might have contributed to the evidence used to support the two-representation model. This study, therefore, can help settle the debate between the single-representation and two-representation models.

Identification of a new HLA-A*0201-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitope from TC2N.

Identification of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes from tumor related antigens is a promising approach for malignant tumor immunotherapy. TC2N, a recently identified tumor associated antigen from human glioblastoma, is regarded as a promising target of tumor-specific immunotherapy. As one of the most widely used histocompatibility molecules in Chinese is HLA-A*0201, we were able to identify the TC2N peptides that are provided by this molecular type. A panel of antigenic peptides produced from TC2N were predicted by using a computer tool. The binding affinities of three peptides with the highest predicted score to the HLA-A*0201 molecule were evaluated after synthesis. In vitro and in vivo stimulation of the main T-cell response against the predicted peptides. The results demonstrated that TC2N (152-160) was able to release IFN-γ and lyse U251 cells in vitro as well as in vivo by eliciting peptide-specific CTLs. Our results indicated that peptide TC2N (152-160) (RLYGSVCDL) was a novel HLA-A2.1-restricted CTL epitope capable of inducing TC2N specific CTLs in vitro. As TC2N might qualify as a viable target for immunotherapeutic approaches for patients with GBM, we speculated that the newly identified epitope RLYGSVCDL would be of potential use in peptide-based, cancer-specific immunotherapy against GBM.

CIFG-Net: Cross-level information fusion and guidance network for Polyp Segmentation.

Colorectal cancer is a common malignant tumor of the digestive tract. Most colorectal cancer is caused by colorectal polyp lesions. Timely detection and removal of colorectal polyps can substantially reduce the incidence of colorectal cancer. Accurate polyp segmentation can provide important polyp information that can aid in the early diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer. However, polyps of the same type can vary in texture, color, and even size. Furthermore, some polyps are similar in colour to the surrounding healthy tissue, which makes the boundary between the polyp and the surrounding area unclear. In order to overcome the issues of inaccurate polyp localization and unclear boundary segmentation, we propose a polyp segmentation network based on cross-level information fusion and guidance. We use a Transformer encoder to extract a more robust feature representation. In addition, to refine the processing of feature information from encoders, we propose the edge feature processing module (EFPM) and the cross-level information processing module (CIPM). EFPM is used to focus on the boundary information in polyp features. After processing each feature, EFPM can obtain clear and accurate polyp boundary features, which can mitigate unclear boundary segmentation. CIPM is used to aggregate and process multi-scale features transmitted by various encoder layers and to solve the problem of inaccurate polyp location by using multi-level features to obtain the location information of polyps. In order to better use the processed features to optimise our segmentation effect, we also propose an information guidance module (IGM) to integrate the processed features of EFPM and CIPM to obtain accurate positioning and segmentation of polyps. Through experiments on five public polyp datasets using six metrics, it was demonstrated that the proposed network has better robustness and more accurate segmentation effect. Compared with other advanced algorithms, CIFG-Net has superior performance. Code available at: https://github.com/zspnb/CIFG-Net.

Business culture impairs facial trustworthiness judgments.

Previous research has found that business culture has a detrimental impact on interpersonal trust. To understand whether this impact extends to rapid, automatic, bottom-up judgments of facial trustworthiness, we conducted 4 experiments involving 244 participants from economic and non-economic backgrounds. We presented participants with both trustworthy and untrustworthy faces and asked them to make judgments on trustworthiness. The results show that individuals who are engaged in studying economics, work in an economics-related occupation, or are exposed to an imagined business culture evaluate trustworthy faces to be less trustworthy. The findings shed light on why and how business culture affects the formation of interpersonal trust.

Watching eyes effect: the impact of imagined eyes on prosocial behavior and satisfactions in the dictator game.

The concept of the watching eyes effect suggests that the presence of eye or eye-like cues can influence individual altruistic behavior. However, few studies have investigated the effects of imagined eyes on altruistic behaviors and the psychological measures of dictators and recipients in the dictator game. This study used a 2 (Presentation Mode: Imagined/Visual) 2 (Cue Type: Eye/Flower) between-subject design and measured the effects of recipients' psychological variables and the communication texts between the dictator and the recipient. The results showed that there was a significant interaction between Presentation Mode and Cue Type. In the imagined condition, the dictator exhibited more altruistic behavior than in the visual condition. However, there was no significant difference in altruistic behavior between the Imagined Eye and Imagined Flower conditions. In addition, the study found that the Cue Type had a significant main effect on the recipients' satisfaction with the allocation outcome. Notably, in the Visual Flower condition, the dictator used more egoistic norm words when communicating with the recipient than other conditions. This study provides novel evidence on the effect of imagined social cues on individual behavior in the dictator game, and to some extent validates the robustness of the watching eyes effect under manipulation of higher-level verbal cognitive processes. At the same time, the study is the first to explore the impacts on recipients' psychological variables and the communication texts. These efforts offer new insights into the psychological and cognitive mechanisms underlying the watching eyes effect.

A N/S co-doped free-standing carbon electrode derived from waste facial masks for anti-freezing flexible quasi-solid-state supercapacitors.

A cost-effective N/S co-doped carbon cloth has been synthesized by pyrolysis of waste facial masks as robust free-standing electrodes with high capacitance for assembling anti-freezing flexible quasi-solid-state supercapacitors with high energy and good adaptability at low temperatures of -20 °C.

RPS-Net: An effective retinal image projection segmentation network for retinal vessels and foveal avascular zone based on OCTA data.

BACKGROUND: Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is an advanced imaging technology that can present the three-dimensional (3D) structure of retinal vessels (RVs). Quantitative analysis of retinal vessel density and foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area is of great significance in clinical diagnosis, and the automatic semantic segmentation at the pixel level helps quantitative analysis. The existing segmentation methods cannot effectively use the volume data and projection map data of the OCTA image at the same time and lack the trade-off between global perception and local details, which lead to problems such as discontinuity of segmentation results and deviation of morphological estimation. PURPOSE: In order to better assist physicians in clinical diagnosis and treatment, the segmentation accuracy of RVs and FAZ needs to be further improved. In this work, we propose an effective retinal image projection segmentation network (RPS-Net) to achieve accurate RVs and FAZ segmentation. Experiments show that this network exhibits good performance and outperforms other existing methods. METHODS: Our method considers three aspects. First, we use two parallel projection paths to learn global perceptual features and local supplementary details. Second, we use the dual-way projection learning module to reduce the depth of the 3D data and learn image spatial features. Finally, we merged the two-dimensional features learned from the volume data with the two-dimensional projection data, and used a U-shaped network to further learn and generate the final result. RESULTS: We validated our model on the OCTA-500, which is a large multi-modal, multi-task retinal dataset. The experimental results showed that our method achieved state-of-the-art performance; the mean Dice coefficients for RVs are 89.89 ± 2.60 (%) and 91.40 ± 9.18 (%) on the two subsets, while the Dice coefficients for FAZ are 91.55 ± 2.05 (%) and 97.80 ± 2.75 (%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our method can make full use of the information of 3D data and 2D data to generate segmented images with higher continuity and accuracy. Code is available at https://github.com/hchuanZ/MFFN/tree/master.

Positive affect decreases the negative association between social mobility belief and physical health among Chinese rural-to-urban migrant adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: The belief in upward social mobility promotes the mental health and social adaptation of disadvantaged adolescents. However, efforts for upward mobility may facilitate psychosocial adaptation while undermining physical health for minority youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. Therefore, we aimed to examine how social mobility belief is associated with mental and physical health among Chinese rural-to-urban migrant adolescents and explore whether positive affect acts as a protective factor moderating these relationships. METHOD: A total of 158 rural-to-urban migrant adolescents aged 10-14 completed a self-report questionnaire and underwent medical examination. RESULTS: Social mobility belief and positive affect were positively related to mental health (general self-efficacy). Positive affect interacted with social mobility belief in predicting physical health (self-rated health and allostatic load). For migrant adolescents with low levels of positive affect, strong belief in social mobility was associated with poor self-rated health and high allostatic load. For migrant adolescents with high levels of positive affect, their physical health was better and not associated with social mobility belief. CONCLUSIONS: Social mobility belief showed a double-edged sword effect; it was positively associated with mental adaptation while negatively associated with physical health among Chinese rural-to-urban migrant adolescents. Positive affect acted as a protective factor for decreasing the negative association between social mobility belief and physical health.

Distinct representations of subtraction and multiplication in the neural systems for numerosity and language.

It has been proposed that recent cultural inventions such as symbolic arithmetic recycle evolutionary older neural mechanisms. A central assumption of this hypothesis is that the degree to which a preexisting mechanism is recycled depends on the degree of similarity between its initial function and the novel task. To test this assumption, we investigated whether the brain region involved in magnitude comparison in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), localized by a numerosity comparison task, is recruited to a greater degree by arithmetic problems that involve number comparison (single-digit subtractions) than by problems that involve retrieving number facts from memory (single-digit multiplications). Our results confirmed that subtractions are associated with greater activity in the IPS than multiplications, whereas multiplications elicit greater activity than subtractions in regions involved in verbal processing including the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) that were localized by a phonological processing task. Pattern analyses further indicated that the neural mechanisms more active for subtraction than multiplication in the IPS overlap with those involved in numerosity comparison and that the strength of this overlap predicts interindividual performance in the subtraction task. These findings provide novel evidence that elementary arithmetic relies on the cooption of evolutionary older neural circuits.

Time Course and Clinical Relevance of Neurological Deterioration After Endovascular Recanalization Therapy for Anterior Circulation Large Vessel Occlusion Stroke.

Neurological deterioration (ND) is a devastating complication for patients with ischemic stroke after endovascular recanalization therapy (EVT). We aimed to investigate the time course and clinical relevance of ND after EVT. Consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke who underwent EVT for large arterial occlusions of the anterior cerebral circulation were enrolled. The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores were assessed before EVT, at the end of EVT, at 24 h (d1), on day 3 (d3), on day 15 (d15), at discharge and anytime when ND was indicated. ND was defined as an increase of ≥ 4 points in the NIHSS score and was divided into acute ND (AD, within 24 h), subacute ND (SD, d1-d3), and delayed ND (DD, d3-d15 or discharge). Using multivariable logistic regression analysis, we explored predictors and outcomes of ND at different time periods. As a result, of 343 patients, 129 (37.6%) experienced ND, including 90 (26.2%) with AD, 27 (7.9%) with SD and 12 (3.5%) with DD. Multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that history of hypertension, cardioembolic stroke, lower Alberta Stroke Program Early Computed Tomography Score (ASPECTS), and poor collaterals were significantly associated with an increased risk of AD; history of hypertension, lower ASPECTS, poor collaterals, and unsuccessful recanalization, with SD; and high admission NIHSS score, with DD. In addition, patients who experienced AD (OR = 10.22, P < 0.001), SD (OR = 15.89, P = 0.004), or DD (OR = 8.31, P = 0.015) were more likely to have poor outcomes. ND was a strong predictor of poor stroke outcomes. Management of related risk factors at different ND time periods might improve the prognosis of EVT.

Discrimination Increases the Association Between Parental and Adolescent Allostatic Load in Chinese Rural-to-Urban Migrants.

PURPOSE: This study was designed to examine the extent to which parents' allostatic load (AL) and adolescents' perceived discrimination are interrelated in the prediction of adolescents' AL among rural-to-urban migrants in China, as well as the possible buffering role of social support. METHODS: Multi-informant data were collected in this study. A total of 158 rural-to-urban migrant adolescents (Meanage = 11.62 years) and one of each of their parents (Meanage = 39.84 years) were recruited from the suburbs of Beijing, China. Both adolescents' and parents' AL scores were based on 10 physiological indices. Migrant adolescents were asked to report their perceived discrimination and social support. RESULTS: Parents' AL was significantly positively related to adolescents' AL. The relationship between parents' and adolescents' AL was stronger among adolescents reporting higher perceived discrimination than among those reporting lower. Social support moderated the adverse effects of parents' AL and perceived discrimination on adolescents' AL. Specifically, among adolescents reporting higher social support, the relationships between parents' and adolescents' AL were not significant for those with either high or low perceived discrimination. However, among adolescents reporting lower social support, the positive association was significant for those with high perceived discrimination but not for those with low perceived discrimination. CONCLUSIONS: Parents' AL was a strong predictor of migrant adolescents' AL, and perceived discrimination acted as a catalyst to increase the association. The relationships of parental AL and perceived discrimination with AL were not significant for adolescents who received high social support.

A distributed neural system for top-down face processing.

Evidence suggests that the neural system associated with face processing is a distributed cortical network containing both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms. While bottom-up face processing has been the focus of many studies, the neural areas involved in the top-down face processing have not been extensively investigated due to difficulty in isolating top-down influences from the bottom-up response engendered by presentation of a face. In the present study, we used a novel experimental method to induce illusory face-detection. This method allowed for directly examining the neural systems involved in top-down face processing while minimizing the influence of bottom-up perceptual input. A distributed cortical network of top-down face processing was identified by analyzing the functional connectivity patterns of the right fusiform face area (FFA). This distributed cortical network model for face processing includes both "core" and "extended" face processing areas. It also includes left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), left premotor cortex, and left inferior parietal cortex. These findings suggest that top-down face processing contains not only regions for analyzing the visual appearance of faces, but also those involved in processing low spatial frequency (LSF) information, decision-making, and working memory.

Detecting faces in pure noise images: a functional MRI study on top-down perception.

To assess the nature of top-down perceptual processes without contamination from bottom-up input, this functional MRI study investigated face detection in pure noise images. Greater activation was revealed for face versus nonface responses in the fusiform face area, but not in the occipital face area. Across participants, positive correlations were found for the degree of greater face-detection activation between the fusiform face area and bilateral inferior frontal gyri, suggesting a top-down pathway generating perceptual expectations. In contrast, the medial frontal, parietal, supplementary motor, parahippocampal, and striatal areas produced negative correlations between degrees of greater face-detection activation and behavioral responses, suggesting a possible role for these areas in selecting and executing appropriate responses that are based on the top-down expectations.

The operand-order effect in single-digit multiplication: an ERP study of Chinese adults.

Unlike those used in the West, a typical Chinese multiplication table includes only smaller-operand-first entries (e.g., 3 x 7=21, but not 7 x 3=21). Due to this unique feature, multiplication for Chinese subjects has been found to show an operand-order effect. The present study aims to investigate the neural bases of the operand-order effect. Subjects were 20 Mainland Chinese subjects who learned as children the half multiplication table (i.e., smaller-operand-first entries only) and 20 Hong Kong and Macao Chinese subjects who learned as children the whole multiplication table (i.e., both smaller- and larger-operand-first entries) under the British and Portuguese educational systems, respectively. ERP data showed that, for those who learned the half table (Mainland Chinese), but not for those who learned the whole table (Hong Kong and Macao Chinese), the larger-operand-first problems elicited greater negative potentials across representative electrodes of the whole scalp, emerging at about 120 ms after the onset of the second operand and lasting until around 750 ms. These results suggest that the particular experience of acquiring multiplication facts had pronounced impact on their representations in the brain.

The Effects of Objective and Subjective Socioeconomic Status on Subjective Well-Being among Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China: The Moderating Role of Subjective Social Mobility.

Although previous investigations have agreed that Chinese rural-to-urban migrants' socioeconomic status (SES) increases with their migration, the association between SES and subjective well-being is uncertain. To address this research gap, the present study proposed that the association between objective SES and subjective well-being is mediated by subjective SES. This model was tested with a sample of 432 Chinese rural-to-urban migrants. The results indicate a significant association between objective SES and subjective well-being and a partial mediating effect of subjective SES. Furthermore, subjective social mobility, which is one's expectation about the possibility to move upward in the social hierarchy, was found to moderate both the direct path from objective SES to subjective well-being and the indirect path from subjective SES to subjective well-being. These findings suggest that Chinese rural-to-urban migrants gained in subjective well-being not only because of direct financial achievement but also because of their perceptions and beliefs about their relative social status.

Event-related potentials of single-digit addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

This study compared the event-related potentials elicited by single-digit addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems. With a delayed verification paradigm, 18 Chinese undergraduates were first asked to solve the arithmetic problems that were presented visually for 200 ms and, after 1.5 s, to judge whether a presented solution was correct or not. Results showed that, compared to addition and subtraction, multiplication elicited a greater N300 at the left frontal electrodes peaking around 320 ms (in the interval between 275 and 334 ms after the onset of the arithmetic problem). To control for the confounding effects of task difficulty and solution size, comparisons were further made between "large" addition problems (with sums between 11 and 17) and "small" multiplication problems (with products between 6 and 24). Similar results were obtained (i.e., a significant difference between addition and multiplication in the N300 component between 296 and 444 ms). Source analyses demonstrated that a single dipole in the left anterior brain areas could have contributed to the topographies of the difference waveforms ("multiplication-addition", "multiplication-subtraction", and "'small' multiplication-'large' addition"). These results are interpreted in terms of the greater reliance on phonological processing for the retrieval of multiplication facts than for the retrieval of addition and subtraction facts.