Bioinformatics-based analysis of the roles of basement membrane-related gene AGRN in systemic lupus erythematosus and pan-cancer development

IntroductionSystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease involving many systems and organs, and individuals with SLE exhibit unique cancer risk characteristics. The significance of the basement membrane (BM) in the occurrence and progression of human autoimmune diseases and tumors has been established through research. However, the roles of BM-related genes and their protein expression mechanisms in the pathogenesis of SLE and pan-cancer development has not been elucidated.MethodsIn this study, we applied bioinformatics methods to perform differential expression analysis of BM-related genes in datasets from SLE patients. We utilized LASSO logistic regression, SVM-RFE, and RandomForest to screen for feature genes and construct a diagnosis model for SLE. In order to attain a comprehensive comprehension of the biological functionalities of the feature genes, we conducted GSEA analysis, ROC analysis, and computed levels of immune cell infiltration. Finally, we sourced pan-cancer expression profiles from the TCGA and GTEx databases and performed pan-cancer analysis.ResultsWe screened six feature genes (AGRN, PHF13, SPOCK2, TGFBI, COL4A3, and COLQ) to construct an SLE diagnostic model. Immune infiltration analysis showed a significant correlation between AGRN and immune cell functions such as parainflammation and type I IFN response. After further gene expression validation, we finally selected AGRN for pan-cancer analysis. The results showed that AGRN’s expression level varied according to distinct tumor types and was closely correlated with some tumor patients’ prognosis, immune cell infiltration, and other indicators.DiscussionIn conclusion, BM-related genes play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of SLE, and AGRN shows immense promise as a target in SLE and the progression of multiple tumors

Spatial Coupling and Causal Effects between the Recreational Use of Ecological Land and Restoration: A Case Study of the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration

As the urbanization and industrialization of China’s urban agglomerations reach increasingly high levels, residents are voicing a growing demand for improved green public sport and recreational space. The coordination of ecological land restoration (ELR) and recreational use at the regional level is therefore urgent. This study demonstrates the spatiotemporal evolution of coupled ELR and the recreational use of ecological land (RUoEL) in the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration based on spatial interpretation, remote sensing mapping, and spatial statistical analysis. A geographical and temporally weighted regression is used to test the spatial effects of the RUoEL on the evolution of the ELR patterns. The results show that the RUoEL (mainly greenways and ecological recreational spaces) and ELR exert a certain degree of coupled spatial characteristics, and that the former significantly impacts the latter. These spatial differences are more notable in areas with high-level ecological recreational spaces, or which are located near densely populated built-up areas. Recreation-oriented ELR is therefore relatively easy to develop in these areas. The results provide important guidelines for the development of ecosystem service patterns in urban agglomerations that include the coexistence of ELR and recreational use, which will strengthen the academic support for regional ELR planning and improve public health

Spatial drivers and effects of urban food accessibility : Comparison of conventional and online-to-offline services

Nowadays, online-to-offline food delivery services have grown rapidly. However, the factors determining the spatial distribution of online-to-offline food delivery restaurants (O2O-FDR) and the effects (e.g., dietary health) they cause are poorly understood. This study explored the differences in spatial patterns and influencing factors between O2O-FDR and conventional restaurants (CR) accessibility in Nanjing, as well as the driving mechanisms for the food environment. The results show that (1) O2O-FDR accessibility and CR accessibility both have a centrally distributed pattern, while O2O-FDR accessibility is smaller and more dispersed. (2) O2O-FDR shows a clear economic orientation, with the regional economy (q = 0.48) having the strongest influence and interacting with the factor of distance to commercial center to influence 61% of the spatial distribution; while the distance to commercial centers is the dominant factor for CR accessibility (q = 0.53), and its interaction with the regional economy was the strongest (q = 0.66). (3) The proliferation of O2O-FDR in Nanjing is more consistent with the innovation diffusion hypothesis. (4) In comparison to CR, O2O-FDR has a stronger correlation with fast food restaurants accessibility, which potentially increases the availability of less healthy food products. This study contributes to urban planning and urban design that promotes healthy eating

Commission Fee is not Enough: A Hierarchical Reinforced Framework for Portfolio Management

Portfolio management via reinforcement learning is at the forefront of fintech research, which explores how to optimally reallocate a fund into different financial assets over the long term by trial-and-error. Existing methods are impractical since they usually assume each reallocation can be finished immediately and thus ignoring the price slippage as part of the trading cost. To address these issues, we propose a hierarchical reinforced stock trading system for portfolio management (HRPM). Concretely, we decompose the trading process into a hierarchy of portfolio management over trade execution and train the corresponding policies. The high-level policy gives portfolio weights at a lower frequency to maximize the long-term profit and invokes the low-level policy to sell or buy the corresponding shares within a short time window at a higher frequency to minimize the trading cost. We train two levels of policies via a pre-training scheme and an iterative training scheme for data efficiency. Extensive experimental results in the U.S. market and the China market demonstrate that HRPM achieves significant improvement against many state-of-the-art approaches

Distinguishing the impact of tourism development on ecosystem service trade-offs in ecological functional zone

Tourism in ecological functional zones (EFZs) is rapidly becoming an increasing trend; however, its impact on ecosystem services remains poorly understood owing to the absence of a consistent quantification framework. This study uses the Taihang Mountains (THM), an EFZ in China, as an example to develop a framework for evaluating the direct and indirect impact pathways of scenic spots on the trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services by identifying the linkages between scenic spot development, socioeconomic change, land use transitions, and ecosystem services. The results show that the continued conversion of agricultural land, grassland, and forest to constructed land around scenic spots in 2000–2020 was accompanied by a decline in water yield (WY) and habitat quality (HQ); while food production (FP), carbon storage (CS), and soil retention (SR) increased. Land use and ecosystem service changes around scenic spots in the THM also exhibited significant spatial gradient effects. In particular, a 10-km buffer area was identified as a distinct “influence zone” where the ecosystem services trade-offs and land use changes were the most pronounced. In 2010, scenic spot revenue was the dominant factor that increased the trade-offs between SR with FP and CS via direct pathways. However, in 2020, the dominant factor was scenic spot level, which shifted the impact toward the relationship between CS and WY and HQ by intensifying the trade-offs to facilitating synergies. This was accomplished in an indirect manner, such as the facilitation of local population growth, industrial restructuring, and infrastructure development. This study reveals the varying effects of scenic spot development via different pathways, thereby providing useful insights for global EFZs to more precisely design policies that can adequately balance human activities with ecosystem services

The hybrid Pt nanoclusters/Ru nanowires catalysts accelerating alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction

Water electrolysis via alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a promising approach for large-scale production of high-purity hydrogen at a low cost, utilizing renewable and clean energy. However, the sluggish kinetics derived from the high energy barrier of water dissociation impedes seriously its practical application. Herein, a series of hybrid Pt nanoclusters/Ru nanowires (Pt/Ru NWs) catalysts are demonstrated to accelerate alkaline HER. And the optimized Pt/Ru NWs (10 ​% wt Pt) exhibits exceptional performance with an ultralow overpotential (24 ​mV at 10 ​mA ​cm−2), a small Tafel slope (26.3 ​mV dec−1), and long-term stability, outperforming the benchmark commercial Pt/C-JM-20 ​% wt catalyst. This amazing performance also occurred in the alkaline anion-exchange membrane water electrolysis devices, where it delivered a cell voltage of about 1.9 ​V at 1 ​A ​cm−2 and an outstanding stability (more than 100 ​h). The calculations have revealed such a superior performance exhibited by Pt/Ru NWs stems from the formed heterointerfaces, which significantly reduce the energy barrier of the decisive rate step of water dissociation via cooperative-action between Pt cluster and Ru substance. This work provides valuable perspectives for designing advanced materials toward alkaline HER and beyond

Integrating tourism supply-demand and environmental sensitivity into the tourism network identification of ecological functional zone

One of the challenges facing ecological functional zones (EFZs) is achieving a balance between economic growth and environmental protection (management). Tourism presents an important avenue to tackle this challenge. However, research inadequately addresses the identification of tourism networks. Combining geo-referenced social media data analysis, the three-step floating catchment area method, and the minimum cumulative resistance model, this paper developed a multi-tiered mechanism for identifying tourism networks using scenic spots as nodes. This approach involved indicators like tourism potential (supply), tourists’ emotional appeal (demand), and ecological sensitivity. We employed the Taihang Mountains (THM), a representative EFZ, as an application case. Results indicate spatial heterogeneity in THM’s tourism potential, with higher tourism potential and relatively greater ecological sensitivity in the South and East THM. Furthermore, a substantial spatial mismatch in tourism demand and supply is evident, with South THM leading with a match of 0.29, while East THM recording the lowest match at 0.16. Based on this, this study identified a multi-level tourism development network having 34 tourism sources (9 primary sources, 13 secondary sources and 12 tertiary sources) and 51 corridors (11 primary corridors, 21 secondary corridors, and 19 tertiary corridors) consisted of a total length of 5,263 km, with an average length of 67 km. Our tourism networks have been tested to not only protect ecologically sensitive areas but also connect areas with economic advantages in tourism (i.e., South and East THM), which is conducive to achieving mutual benefits between tourism development and environmental protection. Our findings are conducive to improving the efficiency of tourism planning and management and provide a new path for coordinating EFZs’ conservation and development