Stretchable graphene-based materials of high conductivity

 The application of graphene based materials in the area of stretchable electronics has driven enormous attention, especially in terms of the design of stretchable structures. This thesis has finely tuned the synthesis process of reduced graphene oxide (rGO), focused on the introduction of a thermo-mechanical shrinking process to fabricate wrinkled rGO structure as stretchable conductors and finally presented another potential application of wrinkled rGO structure

Non-adiabatic holonomic quantum computation in linear system-bath coupling

Non-adiabatic holonomic quantum computation in decoherence-free subspaces protects quantum information from control imprecisions and decoherence. For the non-collective decoherence that each qubit has its own bath, we show the implementations of two non-commutable holonomic single-qubit gates and one holonomic nontrivial two-qubit gate that compose a universal set of non-adiabatic holonomic quantum gates in decoherence-free-subspaces of the decoupling group, with an encoding rate of $\frac{N-2}{N}$. The proposed scheme is robust against control imprecisions and the non-collective decoherence, and its non-adiabatic property ensures less operation time. We demonstrate that our proposed scheme can be realized by utilizing only two-qubit interactions rather than many-qubit interactions. Our results reduce the complexity of practical implementation of holonomic quantum computation in experiments. We also discuss the physical implementation of our scheme in coupled microcavities.Comment: 2 figures; accepted by Sci. Re

Serum N‐glycans outperform CA19‐9 in diagnosis of extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma

Extensive efforts have been devoted to improve the diagnosis of extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ECCA) due to its silent clinical character and lack of effective diagnostic biomarkers. Specific alterations in N‐glycosylation of glycoproteins are considered a key component in cancer progression, which can serve as a distinct molecular signature for cancer detection. This study aims to find potential serum N‐glycan markers for ECCA. In total, 255 serum samples from patients with ECCA (n = 106), benign bile tract disease (BBD, n = 60) and healthy controls (HC, n = 89) were recruited. Only 2 μL of serum from individual patients was used in this assay where the N‐glycome of serum glycoproteins was profiled by DNA sequencer‐assisted fluorophore‐assisted capillary electrophoresis (DSA‐FACE) technology. Multi‐parameter models were constructed by combining the N‐glycans and carbohydrate antigen 19‐9 (CA19‐9) which is currently used clinically. Quantitative analyses showed that among 13 N‐glycan structures, the bifucosylated triantennary N‐glycan (peak10, NA3F2) presented the best diagnostic performance for distinguishing ECCA from BBD and HC. Two diagnostic models (Glycotest1 and Glycotest2) performed better than single N‐glycan or CA19‐9. Additionally, two N‐glycan structures (peak9, NA3Fb; peak12, NA4Fb) were tightly related to lymph node metastasis in ECCA patients. In conclusion, sera of ECCA showed relatively specific N‐glycome profiling patterns. Serum N‐glycan markers and models are novel, valuable and noninvasive alternatives in ECCA diagnosis and progression monitoring.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139072/1/elps6272.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139072/2/elps6272_am.pd

Ramulus mori (Sangzhi) alkaloids regulates gut microbiota disorder and its metabolism profiles in obese mice induced by a high-fat diet

The imbalance of gut microbiota has been confirmed to have a close pathological and physiological correlation with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Ramulus Mori (Sangzhi) Alkaloids (SZ-A) derived from twigs of mulberry was approved by the National Medical Products Administration of China in 2020 for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. In addition to its hypoglycemic effect, previous studies have confirmed that SZ-A also alleviates high-fat diet-induced obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and ameliorates obesity-linked adipose tissue metabolism and inflammation, indicating the potential of SZ-A to regulate obesity and metabolic syndrome. However, whether SZ-A can improve obesity and metabolic syndrome by regulating gut microbiota and its metabolism profiles remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of SZ-A on gut microbiota in obese mice and to explore the association among changes in gut microbiota, obesity, and lipid metabolism. The results showed that oral administration of SZ-A could significantly reduce body weight, fat mass, and the level of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein in serum in obese mice induced by a high-fat diet. Interestingly, SZ-A also regulated gut microbiota and changed the fecal metabolite composition of obese mice. Compared with the high-fat diet group, the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroides changed at the phylum level and the abundance of Bifidobacterium and Akkermansia muciniphila significantly increased at the genus level in the SZ-A group. The gut microbiota of the SZ-A group was reshaped and the relative abundance of microbial genes in bile acid metabolism and fatty acid metabolism were altered, which was consistent with the metabolomics results. Additionally, SZ-A greatly enriched the number of goblet cells and reduced inflammatory colon injury and pro-inflammatory macrophage infiltration induced by a high-fat diet in obese mice. In conclusion, SZ-A can alleviate obesity and metabolic syndrome by improving the gut microbiota and its metabolism profiles of obese mice induced by a high-fat diet

The oyster genome reveals stress adaptation and complexity of shell formation

The Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas belongs to one of the most species-rich but genomically poorly explored phyla, the Mollusca. Here we report the sequencing and assembly of the oyster genome using short reads and a fosmid-pooling strategy, along with transcriptomes of development and stress response and the proteome of the shell. The oyster genome is highly polymorphic and rich in repetitive sequences, with some transposable elements still actively shaping variation. Transcriptome studies reveal an extensive set of genes responding to environmental stress. The expansion of genes coding for heat shock protein 70 and inhibitors of apoptosis is probably central to the oyster's adaptation to sessile life in the highly stressful intertidal zone. Our analyses also show that shell formation in molluscs is more complex than currently understood and involves extensive participation of cells and their exosomes. The oyster genome sequence fills a void in our understanding of the Lophotrochozoa. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

linear approximations of addition modulo 2n-1

Addition modulo 231 - 1 is a basic arithmetic operation in the stream cipher ZUC. For evaluating ZUC's resistance against linear cryptanalysis, it is necessary to study properties of linear approximations of the addition modulo 231 - 1. In this paper we discuss linear approximations of the addition of k inputs modulo 2n - 1 for n ≥ 2. As a result, an explicit expression of the correlations of linear approximations of the addition modulo 2n - 1 is given when k = 2, and an iterative expression when k > 2. For a class of special linear approximations with all masks being equal to 1, we further discuss the limit of their correlations when n goes to infinity. It is shown that when k is even, the limit is equal to zero, and when k is odd, the limit is bounded by a constant depending on k. © 2011 Springer-Verlag