Impurity and vortex States in the bilayer high-temperature superconductor La3Ni2O7\mathrm{La}_3\mathrm{Ni}_2\mathrm{O}_7

We perform a theoretical examination of the local electronic structure in the recently discovered bilayer high-temperature superconductor ${\mathrm{La}_3\mathrm{Ni}_2\mathrm{O}_7}$. Our method begins with a bilayer two-orbital tight-binding model, incorporating various pairing interaction channels. We determine superconducting order parameters by self-consistently solving the real-space Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations, revealing a robust and stable extended s-wave pairing symmetry. We investigate the single impurity effect using both self-consistent BdG equations and non-self-consistent T-matrix methods, uncovering low-energy in-gap states that can be explained with the T-matrix approach. Additionally, we analyze magnetic vortex states using a self-consistent BdG technique, which shows a peak-hump structure in the local density of states at the vortex center. Our results provide identifiable features that can be used to determine the pairing symmetry of the superconducting ${\mathrm{La}_3\mathrm{Ni}_2\mathrm{O}_7}$ material.Comment: 8 pages. 8 figures. including the Supplemental materia

BSL: Understanding and Improving Softmax Loss for Recommendation

Loss functions steer the optimization direction of recommendation models and are critical to model performance, but have received relatively little attention in recent recommendation research. Among various losses, we find Softmax loss (SL) stands out for not only achieving remarkable accuracy but also better robustness and fairness. Nevertheless, the current literature lacks a comprehensive explanation for the efficacy of SL. Toward addressing this research gap, we conduct theoretical analyses on SL and uncover three insights: 1) Optimizing SL is equivalent to performing Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) on the negative data, thereby learning against perturbations on the negative distribution and yielding robustness to noisy negatives. 2) Comparing with other loss functions, SL implicitly penalizes the prediction variance, resulting in a smaller gap between predicted values and and thus producing fairer results. Building on these insights, we further propose a novel loss function Bilateral SoftMax Loss (BSL) that extends the advantage of SL to both positive and negative sides. BSL augments SL by applying the same Log-Expectation-Exp structure to positive examples as is used for negatives, making the model robust to the noisy positives as well. Remarkably, BSL is simple and easy-to-implement -- requiring just one additional line of code compared to SL. Experiments on four real-world datasets and three representative backbones demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal. The code is available at https://github.com/junkangwu/BS

Masked Pre-trained Model Enables Universal Zero-shot Denoiser

In this work, we observe that the model, which is trained on vast general images using masking strategy, has been naturally embedded with the distribution knowledge regarding natural images, and thus spontaneously attains the underlying potential for strong image denoising. Based on this observation, we propose a novel zero-shot denoising paradigm, i.e., Masked Pre-train then Iterative fill (MPI). MPI pre-trains a model with masking and fine-tunes it for denoising of a single image with unseen noise degradation. Concretely, the proposed MPI comprises two key procedures: 1) Masked Pre-training involves training a model on multiple natural images with random masks to gather generalizable representations, allowing for practical applications in varying noise degradation and even in distinct image types. 2) Iterative filling is devised to efficiently fuse pre-trained knowledge for denoising. Similar to but distinct from pre-training, random masking is retained to bridge the gap, but only the predicted parts covered by masks are assembled for efficiency, which enables high-quality denoising within a limited number of iterations. Comprehensive experiments across various noisy scenarios underscore the notable advances of proposed MPI over previous approaches with a marked reduction in inference time. Code is available at https://github.com/krennic999/MPI.git.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Divergent effects of single and combined stress of drought and salinity on the physiological traits and soil properties of Platycladus orientalis saplings

Drought and salinity are two abiotic stresses that affect plant productivity. We exposed 2-year-old Platycladus orientalis saplings to single and combined stress of drought and salinity. Subsequently, the responses of physiological traits and soil properties were investigated. Biochemical traits such as leaf and root phytohormone content significantly increased under most stress conditions. Single drought stress resulted in significantly decreased nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) content in stems and roots, while single salt stress and combined stress resulted in diverse response of NSC content. Xylem water potential of P. orientalis decreased significantly under both single drought and single salt stress, as well as the combined stress. Under the combined stress of drought and severe salt, xylem hydraulic conductivity significantly decreased while NSC content was unaffected, demonstrating that the risk of xylem hydraulic failure may be greater than carbon starvation. The tracheid lumen diameter and the tracheid double wall thickness of root and stem xylem was hardly affected by any stress, except for the stem tracheid lumen diameter, which was significantly increased under the combined stress. Soil ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and available potassium content was only significantly affected by single salt stress, while soil available phosphorus content was not affected by any stress. Single drought stress had a stronger effect on the alpha diversity of rhizobacteria communities, and single salt stress had a stronger effect on soil nutrient availability, while combined stress showed relatively limited effect on these soil properties. Regarding physiological traits, responses of P. orientalis saplings under single and combined stress of drought and salt were diverse, and effects of combined stress could not be directly extrapolated from any single stress. Compared to single stress, the effect of combined stress on phytohormone content and hydraulic traits was negative to P. orientalis saplings, while the combined stress offset the negative effects of single drought stress on NSC content. Our study provided more comprehensive information on the response of the physiological traits and soil properties of P. orientalis saplings under single and combined stress of drought and salt, which would be helpful to understand the adapting mechanism of woody plants to abiotic stress

Aquaglyceroporins are involved in uptake of arsenite into murine gastrointestinal tissues

Aquaglyceroporins (AQGPs) are members of aquaporin (AQP) family and belong to a subgroup of this water channel family ; they are transmembrane proteins that transport water as well as glycerol and other solutes of small molecules. Recent studies have also identified that AQGPs are important transporters of trivalent metalloid in some mammalian cells. However, the uptake routes of arsenite in mammals are still less defined. In this study, to understand the routes of arsenite intake in mammals, mice were treated with Hg(II), glycerol, and As(III) and uptake of As(III) into the gastrointestinal tissues was measured. The level of inorganic arsenic (iAs) in gastrointestinal tissues after As(III) stimulation was much higher than Hg(II) +As(III) or glycerol+As(III) group. RT-PCR results showed that AQGPs were extensively expressed in gastrointestinal tissues of mice. We also treated Caco-2 cells with Hg(II) and As(III) ; the level of iAs in a group treated with Hg(II)+As(III) decreased compared with As(III)-treated group. Our results suggested that AQGPs could be important transporters in arsenite uptake into gastrointestinal tissues of mice, but more data are need to prove if AQGPs is the only pathway involved in As transport in mammals or just one of them

Design and optimization analysis of a new double-layer tube type heat exchanger for lead-bismuth reactors

Double-layer heat tubes have been designed to effectively reduce the occurrence of heat pipe rupture accidents. However, inter-tube thermal contact resistance can decrease heat transfer efficiency, thus hampering the heat dissipation in the primary loop system of lead-bismuth reactors. Therefore, optimizing the design of double-layer heat tubes is necessary. This work focuses on the double-layer heat exchanger of a lead-bismuth reactor and utilizes gallium-based graphene nanofluids as a thermal interface material to fill the gap between the heat tubes. Furthermore, the impact of the length, wall thickness, outer diameter, and spacing of heat tubes on the heat transfer performance of the double-layer heat exchanger with and without the nanofluids has been analyzed. The study aims to optimize the JF factor and cost-effectiveness ratio (CER). Genetic algorithms are employed to optimize and evaluate the heat transfer performance of the main heat exchanger based on the four aforementioned parameters. Consequently, a new design scheme is obtained for the double-layer heat exchanger, which increases the optimized overall heat transfer coefficient of the main heat exchanger by 5.79%, pressure drop in the primary loop by 2.32%, JF factor by 5%, and CER by 24.62%. These results demonstrate that the gallium-based graphene nanofluids can effectively enhance the heat transfer performance of the double-layer heat exchanger while reducing the likelihood of steam generator tube rupture accidents

A draft physical map of a D-genome cotton species (Gossypium raimondii)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genetically anchored physical maps of large eukaryotic genomes have proven useful both for their intrinsic merit and as an adjunct to genome sequencing. Cultivated tetraploid cottons, <it>Gossypium hirsutum </it>and <it>G. barbadense</it>, share a common ancestor formed by a merger of the A and D genomes about 1-2 million years ago. Toward the long-term goal of characterizing the spectrum of diversity among cotton genomes, the worldwide cotton community has prioritized the D genome progenitor <it>Gossypium raimondii </it>for complete sequencing.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A whole genome physical map of <it>G. raimondii</it>, the putative D genome ancestral species of tetraploid cottons was assembled, integrating genetically-anchored overgo hybridization probes, agarose based fingerprints and 'high information content fingerprinting' (HICF). A total of 13,662 BAC-end sequences and 2,828 DNA probes were used in genetically anchoring 1585 contigs to a cotton consensus genetic map, and 370 and 438 contigs, respectively to <it>Arabidopsis thaliana </it>(AT) and <it>Vitis vinifera </it>(VV) whole genome sequences.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Several lines of evidence suggest that the <it>G. raimondii </it>genome is comprised of two qualitatively different components. Much of the gene rich component is aligned to the <it>Arabidopsis </it>and <it>Vitis vinifera </it>genomes and shows promise for utilizing translational genomic approaches in understanding this important genome and its resident genes. The integrated genetic-physical map is of value both in assembling and validating a planned reference sequence.</p

A role for the arginine methylation of Rad9 in checkpoint control and cellular sensitivity to DNA damage

The genome stability is maintained by coordinated action of DNA repairs and checkpoints, which delay progression through the cell cycle in response to DNA damage. Rad9 is conserved from yeast to human and functions in cell cycle checkpoint controls. Here, a regulatory mechanism for Rad9 function is reported. In this study Rad9 has been found to interact with and be methylated by protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5). Arginine methylation of Rad9 plays a critical role in S/M and G2/M cell cycle checkpoints. The activation of the Rad9 downstream checkpoint effector Chk1 is impaired in cells only expressing a mutant Rad9 that cannot be methylated. Additionally, Rad9 methylation is also required for cellular resistance to DNA damaging stresses. In summary, we uncovered that arginine methylation is important for regulation of Rad9 function, and thus is a major element for maintaining genome integrity