Picosecond cubic and quintic nonlinearity of lithium niobate at 532 nm

The nonlinear (NL) optical response of bulk lithium niobate (LiNbO$_3$) was investigated at 532 nm using the second harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser delivering pulses of 12 ps. The experiments were performed using the D4$\sigma$ method combined with the conventional Z-scan technique. Two- and three-photon absorption coefficients equal to 0.27 cm/GW and 2.5x10^(-26) m3/W2, respectively, were determined. The NL absorption processes were due to transitions from the valence to the conduction band and to free-carriers absorption. The third- and fifth-order NL refractive indices were $n_2=(2.5 \pm 0.6)\times 10^{-19}$ m$^2$/W and $n_4<5.5 \times 10^{-36}$ m$^4$/W$^2$. The present results give support for previous experiments that indicate possible fifth-order processes in bulk samples and channel waveguides fabricated with LiNbO$_3$

Study Progress on Tissue Culture of Maize Mature Embryo

AbstractIt has been paid more and more attention on maize tissue culture as it is a basic work in maize genetic transformation, especially huge breakthrough has been made in maize tissue culture utilizing mature embryos as explants in the recent years. This paper reviewed the study progress on maize tissue culture and plant regeneration utilizing mature embryos as explants from callus induction, subculture, plant regeneration and browning reduction and so on

Analysis of pre- and post-mine closure surface deformations in western xuzhou coalfield from 2006 to 2018

Economic development and population expansion in mining cities have led to a growing scarcity of land for construction and thus the closed mines land reuse is extremely urgent. Exploration of the law of surface deformation in closed mine is therefore significance for the development of mining cities. In this study, we first used the StaMSBAS technique to reveal surface deformation of western Xuzhou coalfield from 16/6/2006 to 19/8/2018, based on 77 SAR images. The result of ALOS-1 monitoring was validated by levelling data, and it was shown that the root-mean-square-error and standard deviation were 31.8 mm and 28.9 mm, respectively. The law of surface deformation that occurred before and after mine closure was finally analysed. It was found that: 1) After mine closure, the surface deformation of Jiahe mine experienced the process of subsidence, relative stability and then uplift, and the surface deformations of Zhangxiaolou and Pangzhuang mines changed from slow subsidence to accelerated subsidence. 2) Where the maximum pre-closure subsidence occurred at Jiahe mine, the residual subsidence and uplift that occurred after mine closure was also significant, the correlation coefficients were 0.62 and 0.65, respectively. When the mines were active, surface subsidence of Jiahe and Zhangxiaolou mines was positively correlated with the strike mining degree, with correlation coefficients of 0.90 and 0.83, respectively. After Jiahe mine closure, the residual subsidence was positively correlated with the strike mining degree, and the surface uplift was positively correlated with the depth-to-thickness ratio, the correlation coefficients were both 0.70.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Intestinal fungi and antifungal secretory immunoglobulin A in Crohn’s disease

The human gastrointestinal tract harbors trillions of commensal microorganisms. Emerging evidence points to a possible link between intestinal fungal dysbiosis and antifungal mucosal immunity in inflammatory bowel disease, especially in Crohn’s disease (CD). As a protective factor for the gut mucosa, secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) prevents bacteria from invading the intestinal epithelium and maintains a healthy microbiota community. In recent years, the roles of antifungal SIgA antibodies in mucosal immunity, including the regulation of intestinal immunity binding to hyphae-associated virulence factors, are becoming increasingly recognized. Here we review the current knowledge on intestinal fungal dysbiosis and antifungal mucosal immunity in healthy individuals and in patients with CD, discuss the factors governing antifungal SIgA responses in the intestinal mucosa in the latter group, and highlight potential antifungal vaccines targeting SIgA to prevent CD

Gene-MOE: A sparsely gated prognosis and classification framework exploiting pan-cancer genomic information

Benefiting from the advancements in deep learning, various genomic analytical techniques, such as survival analysis, classification of tumors and their subtypes, and exploration of specific pathways, have significantly enhanced our understanding of the biological mechanisms driving cancer. However, the overfitting issue, arising from the limited number of patient samples, poses a challenge in improving the accuracy of genome analysis by deepening the neural network. Furthermore, it remains uncertain whether novel approaches such as the sparsely gated mixture of expert (MOE) and self-attention mechanisms can improve the accuracy of genomic analysis. In this paper, we introduce a novel sparsely gated RNA-seq analysis framework called Gene-MOE. This framework exploits the potential of the MOE layers and the proposed mixture of attention expert (MOAE) layers to enhance the analysis accuracy. Additionally, it addresses overfitting challenges by integrating pan-cancer information from 33 distinct cancer types through pre-training.We pre-trained Gene-MOE on TCGA pan-cancer RNA-seq dataset with 33 cancer types. Subsequently, we conducted experiments involving cancer classification and survival analysis based on the pre-trained Gene-MOE. According to the survival analysis results on 14 cancer types, Gene-MOE outperformed state-of-the-art models on 12 cancer types. Through detailed feature analysis, we found that the Gene-MOE model could learn rich feature representations of high-dimensional genes. According to the classification results, the total accuracy of the classification model for 33 cancer classifications reached 95.8%, representing the best performance compared to state-of-the-art models. These results indicate that Gene-MOE holds strong potential for use in cancer classification and survival analysis

Association of dietary patterns with depressive symptoms in Chinese adolescents: a cross-sectional study

ObjectiveDepression is highly prevalent in adolescents and may have adverse social and health consequences. To investigate the effect of diet on the occurrence of depression in adolescents, this study examined the correlation between dietary patterns and depression in adolescents.MethodsA total of 853 participants were recruited in September to October 2022 in Taizhou, Zhejiang, China. The Chinese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 was used to assess the subjects’ depressive symptoms in the past 2 weeks. Relevant dietary information was obtained through a food frequency questionnaire. The associations between dietary patterns and the risk of depression were assessed using a logistic regression model.ResultsFour dietary patterns were identified by factor analysis, including the modern pattern, the snack-aquatic pattern, the traditional pattern, and the vegetarian pattern. The risk of mild depression among adolescents was higher in the Q2 and Q3 groups of the modern model than in the Q1 group of this type, and the risk of mild depression was higher in the Q4 group of the snack-aquatic model than in the Q1 group of this type; while the risk of moderate depressive symptoms was lower in the Q3 group of the vegetarian model compared with the Q1 group.ConclusionModern and snack-aquatic patterns are associated with an increased risk of depression in Chinese adolescents, and vegetarian patterns are associated with a reduced risk of depression. The current findings emphasize the importance of adolescents consuming moderate amounts of rice flour, adequate vegetables and fruits, and reducing snack intake

A review of enhancement of biohydrogen productions by chemical addition using a supervised machine learning method

In this work, the impact of chemical additions, especially nano‐particles (NPs), was quan-titatively analyzed using our constructed artificial neural networks (ANNs)‐response surface methodology (RSM) algorithm. Fe‐based and Ni‐based NPs and ions, including Mg2+, Cu2+, Na+, NH4+, and K+, behave differently towards the response of hydrogen yield (HY) and hydrogen evolution rate (HER). Manipulating the size and concentration of NPs was found to be effective in enhancing the HY for Fe‐based NPs and ions, but not for Ni‐based NPs and ions. An optimal range of particle size (86–120 nm) and Ni‐ion/NP concentration (81–120 mg L−1) existed for HER. Meanwhile, the manipulation of the size and concentration of NPs was found to be ineffective for both iron and nickel for the improvement of HER. In fact, the variation in size of NPs for the enhancement of HY and HER demonstrated an appreciable difference. The smaller (less than 42 nm) NPs were found to definitely improve the HY, whereas for the HER, the relatively bigger size of NPs (40–50 nm) seemed to significantly increase the H2 evolution rate. It was also found that the variations in the concentration of the investigated ions only statistically influenced the HER, not the HY. The level of response (the enhanced HER) towards inputs was underpinned and the order of significance towards HER was identified as the following: Na+ \u3e Mg2+ \u3e Cu2+ \u3e NH4+ \u3e K+

Polysulfide-mediated solvation shell reorganization for fast Li+ transfer probed by in-situ sum frequency generation spectroscopy

Understanding of interfacial Li$^+$ solvation shell structures and dynamic evolution at the electrode/electrolyte interface is requisite for developing high-energy-density Li batteries. Herein, the reorganization of Li$^+$ solvation shell at the sulfur/electrolyte interface along with the presence of a trace amount of lithium polysulfides is verified by in-situ sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy together with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Both the spectroelectrochemical and DFT calculation results reveal a strongly competitive anion adsorption of the polysulfide anion additive against the pristine electrolyte anion on the sulfur cathode surface, reorganizing the interfacial local solvation shell structure facilitating rapid Li ion transfer and conduction. Meanwhile, the evolution of the SFG signals along with the discharging/charging cycle exhibits improved reversibility, indicating the transformation of the inner Helmholtz plane layer into a stable molecular-layer polysulfide interphase rather than a dynamic diffusion layer. Consequently, applications in practical Li-S batteries reveal the capacity and cycling stability of the corresponding cells are significantly enhanced. Our work provides a methodology using in-situ SFG for probing solvation reorganization of charge carriers at electrochemical interfaces

Antibiotics influence the risk of anti-drug antibody formation during anti-TNF therapy in Chinese inflammatory bowel disease patients

Aims: The formation of anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) during anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapy is reported to lead to reducing serum drug levels, which may bring about a loss of response to treatment. Previous research has suggested an association between specific antibiotic classes and ADA formation during anti-TNF therapy. However, there are few studies specifically examining this association in Chinese inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients. Therefore, our study aimed to evaluate the possible effect of antibiotic use on ADA formation to anti-TNF therapy in Chinese patients with IBD.Methods: A total of 166 patients with IBD, including 149 with Crohn’s disease (CD) and 17 with ulcerative colitis (UC), were included in this retrospective analysis. These patients were initially treated with anti-TNF therapy (infliximab or adalimumab) after January 2018 and reviewed with available ADA levels before October 2023. After univariable analysis of all the variables, a multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the association between antibiotic use and ADA development.Results: Among 166 IBD patients treated with infliximab (108/166, 65.1%) or adalimumab (58/166, 34.9%), 31 patients (18.7%) were measured as positive ADA levels. Cox proportional hazard model demonstrated an increased risk of ADA formation in IBD patients who used β-lactam-β-lactamase inhibitor combinations (BL-BLIs) (HR = 5.143, 95%CI 1.136–23.270, p = 0.033), or nitroimidazoles (HR = 4.635, 95%CI 1.641–13.089, p = 0.004) during 12 months before the ADA test. On the contrary, a reduced risk was noted in patients treated with fluoroquinolones (HR = 0.258, 95% CI 0.072–0.924, p = 0.037). Moreover, the median serum infliximab or adalimumab concentration in patients with positive ADA levels was significantly lower than that in patients with negative ADA levels (infliximab: 0.30 vs. 1.85 μg/mL, p &lt; 0.0001; adalimumab: 0.45 vs. 7.55 μg/mL, p = 0.0121).Conclusion: ADA development is associated with various antibiotic classes. BL-BLIs and nitroimidazoles might increase the risk of ADA formation during anti-TNF therapy in Chinese IBD patients, while the treatment with fluoroquinolones could probably reduce such risk. There were certain limitations in the retrospective analysis of the study, therefore, the results are just for reference, and other studies are needed to further confirm our findings