Modulation of CXCR4, CXCL12, and Tumor Cell Invasion Potential In Vitro by Phytochemicals.

CXCR4 is a chemokine receptor frequently overexpressed on primary tumor cells. Organs to which these cancers metastasize secrete CXCL12, the unique ligand for CXCR4, which stimulates invasion and metastasis to these sites. Similar to our previous work with the chemoprotective phytochemical, 3,3'-diindolylmethane (DIM), we show here that genistein also downregulates CXCR4 and CXCL12 and subsequently lowers the migratory and invasive potentials of breast and ovarian cancer cells. Moreover, genistein and DIM elicit a significantly greater cumulative effect in lowering CXCR4 and CXCL12 levels than either compound alone. Our data suggest a novel mechanism for the protective effects of phytochemicals against cancer progression and indicate that in combination, these compounds may prove even more efficacious

Simulation of chemical reaction dynamics on an NMR quantum computer

Quantum simulation can beat current classical computers with minimally a few tens of qubits and will likely become the first practical use of a quantum computer. One promising application of quantum simulation is to attack challenging quantum chemistry problems. Here we report an experimental demonstration that a small nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR) quantum computer is already able to simulate the dynamics of a prototype chemical reaction. The experimental results agree well with classical simulations. We conclude that the quantum simulation of chemical reaction dynamics not computable on current classical computers is feasible in the near future.Comment: 37 pages, 7 figure

Effects of McDonalds on younger Chinese generation's lives

In 1990, when McDonalds was first introduced to China, fast food restaurants from western countries were not widely accepted in China. In fact, many Chinese had never heard about the typical menu such as French fries and hamburgers that were offered in fast food restaurants. Businessmen were also curious about McDonald's management mode

COVID-19 causes record decline in global CO2 emissions

The considerable cessation of human activities during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected global energy use and CO2 emissions. Here we show the unprecedented decrease in global fossil CO2 emissions from January to April 2020 was of 7.8% (938 Mt CO2 with a +6.8% of 2-{\sigma} uncertainty) when compared with the period last year. In addition other emerging estimates of COVID impacts based on monthly energy supply or estimated parameters, this study contributes to another step that constructed the near-real-time daily CO2 emission inventories based on activity from power generation (for 29 countries), industry (for 73 countries), road transportation (for 406 cities), aviation and maritime transportation and commercial and residential sectors emissions (for 206 countries). The estimates distinguished the decline of CO2 due to COVID-19 from the daily, weekly and seasonal variations as well as the holiday events. The COVID-related decreases in CO2 emissions in road transportation (340.4 Mt CO2, -15.5%), power (292.5 Mt CO2, -6.4% compared to 2019), industry (136.2 Mt CO2, -4.4%), aviation (92.8 Mt CO2, -28.9%), residential (43.4 Mt CO2, -2.7%), and international shipping (35.9Mt CO2, -15%). Regionally, decreases in China were the largest and earliest (234.5 Mt CO2,-6.9%), followed by Europe (EU-27 & UK) (138.3 Mt CO2, -12.0%) and the U.S. (162.4 Mt CO2, -9.5%). The declines of CO2 are consistent with regional nitrogen oxides concentrations observed by satellites and ground-based networks, but the calculated signal of emissions decreases (about 1Gt CO2) will have little impacts (less than 0.13ppm by April 30, 2020) on the overserved global CO2 concertation. However, with observed fast CO2 recovery in China and partial re-opening globally, our findings suggest the longer-term effects on CO2 emissions are unknown and should be carefully monitored using multiple measures

Investigating the Role of Intermediary Organizations in University Autonomy from Management Perspective: Case Studies in the EHEA

This study employed qualitative multiple case study methodology to exam how the two well-known intermediary organizations from different European higher education settings advocate university autonomy by exploring the main difficulties they face as well as the actions in countering the difficulties. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with purposefully selected employees from the two case organizations, and through website analysis as well as review of the relevant documents, striving to present solid evidences to support the findings. Thematic analysis of data resulted in the generation of the four major themes from the massive information collected through the multiple data collection tools, which altogether answered all the research questions posed at the beginning, additionally, the matters related to the concept of university autonomy were also addressed. One major finding of the study is that the two organizations, though practicing in different levels of the European higher education settings, both working for university autonomy with the exclusive focus on strengthening the institutional leadership, regardless of the autonomy of individuals in the university. A second major finding pointed to the various sources of the difficulties the two organizations receive in relation to the advocacy of university autonomy. Though the difficulties were distinct in either substance or the degree to the two organizations, an amicable solution of friendly communication and active negotiation were adopted to triumph over those moments. At last, the paper concludes with critical examination of the study along with along with implications for practical issues, academic communities and possible suggestions for future research

Effect of confinement on the vapor-liquid-liquid three-phase equilibrium during CO2 utilization and sequestration in shale reservoirs

With the rising global energy demand, shale gas and oil emerge as pivotal resources. Recent innovations utilizing CO2 as an injectant can effectively enhance shale oil and gas recovery and facilitate CO2 storage within shale reservoirs. However, low-temperature CO2 injection may result in the coexistence of three hydrocarbon phases, while the abundant nanopores in shale formations also notably influence the phase behavior of reservoir fluids. To optimize shale oil recovery and CO2 sequestration in shale formations, it is a prerequisite for precisely capturing the effect of confinement on the phase behavior of reservoir fluids within nanopores during CO2 injection. In this work, we introduce a novel three-phase vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium calculation algorithm, which is designed to handle the unique phase behavior challenges presented by CO2 utilization and storage in shale reservoirs. To improve the robustness and efficiency, the proposed algorithm integrates a trust region-based stability test with a hybrid flash calculation algorithm that combines the Newton-Raphson and trust-region methods. Our thermodynamic model incorporates the capillarity effect and shifts in the critical points due to molecule-wall interactions, which are essential for accurate phase behavior simulation under confinement. Initial validations against experimental bulk phase data show promising results, and further investigations indicate that confinement alters three-phase vapor-liquid-liquid equilibria by suppressing two-phase and three-phase regions and shifting boundaries in the phase diagrams. The proposed algorithm not only advances our understanding of multiphase equilibrium in nanoporous media but also enhances the practicality of CO2 sequestration and improved oil recovery strategies in shale formations.Document Type: Original articleCited as: Chen, Z., Li, R., Du, Y., Ma, S., Zhang, X., Shi, J. Effect of confinement on the vapor-liquid-liquid three-phase equilibrium during CO2 utilization and sequestration in shale reservoirs. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2025, 16(3): 199-210. https://doi.org/10.46690/ager.2025.06.0

Geo-Encoder: A Chunk-Argument Bi-Encoder Framework for Chinese Geographic Re-Ranking

Chinese geographic re-ranking task aims to find the most relevant addresses among retrieved candidates, which is crucial for location-related services such as navigation maps. Unlike the general sentences, geographic contexts are closely intertwined with geographical concepts, from general spans (e.g., province) to specific spans (e.g., road). Given this feature, we propose an innovative framework, namely Geo-Encoder, to more effectively integrate Chinese geographical semantics into re-ranking pipelines. Our methodology begins by employing off-the-shelf tools to associate text with geographical spans, treating them as chunking units. Then, we present a multi-task learning module to simultaneously acquire an effective attention matrix that determines chunk contributions to extra semantic representations. Furthermore, we put forth an asynchronous update mechanism for the proposed addition task, aiming to guide the model capable of effectively focusing on specific chunks. Experiments on two distinct Chinese geographic re-ranking datasets, show that the Geo-Encoder achieves significant improvements when compared to state-of-the-art baselines. Notably, it leads to a substantial improvement in the Hit@1 score of MGEO-BERT, increasing it by 6.22% from 62.76 to 68.98 on the GeoTES dataset