Secure Decentralized IoT Service Platform using Consortium Blockchain

Blockchain technology has gained increasing popularity in the research of Internet of Things (IoT) systems in the past decade. As a distributed and immutable ledger secured by strong cryptography algorithms, the blockchain brings a new perspective to secure IoT systems. Many studies have been devoted to integrating blockchain into IoT device management, access control, data integrity, security, and privacy. In comparison, the blockchain-facilitated IoT communication is much less studied. Nonetheless, we see the potential of blockchain in decentralizing and securing IoT communications. This paper proposes an innovative IoT service platform powered by consortium blockchain technology. The presented solution abstracts machine-to-machine (M2M) and human-to-machine (H2M) communications into services provided by IoT devices. Then, it materializes data exchange of the IoT network through smart contracts and blockchain transactions. Additionally, we introduce the auxiliary storage layer to the proposed platform to address various data storage requirements. Our proof-of-concept implementation is tested against various workloads and connection sizes under different block configurations to evaluate the platform's transaction throughput, latency, and hardware utilization. The experiment results demonstrate that our solution can maintain high performance under most testing scenarios and provide valuable insights on optimizing the blockchain configuration to achieve the best performance

Blockage of bone marrow kinase in chromosome X enhances ABC294640-induced growth inhibition and apoptosis of colorectal cancer cells

Purpose: To investigate the role of bone marrow kinase in chromosome X (BMX) in colorectal cancer (CRC) cell resistance to ABC294640 treatment.Methods: HCT-116R, LS174T and WiDr cells were transfected with either BMX-specific siRNA or scrambled siRNA, and then BMX mRNA and protein expressions were detected by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blotting, respectively. The cells were treated with ABC294640 and cell viability evaluated using cell counting and colony formation assays. Apoptosis wasdetermined by detecting caspase 3/7 activity. To evaluate tumor growth of  HCT-116R cells, a xenograft model was utilized to measure tumor size.Results: Pharmacological inhibition of sphingosine kinase type 2 (SK2) with ABC294640 significantly decreased cell viability (p < 0.001) when compared with control group. SK2 inhibition also remarkably induced apoptosis in HCT-116 CRC cells in a dose-dependent manner (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001). However, no significant effects were observed in HCT-116R, LS174T, or WiDr cells following ABC294640 treatment. BMX mRNA and protein expression increased in ABC294640-resistant cell lines. In addition, silencing BMX expression with siRNA potentiated  ABC294640-induced inhibition of tumor growth in CRC cells in vitro and in vivo.Conclusion: ABC294640-induced BMX upregulation impedes the antitumor effect of ABC294640 in CRC cells. Therefore, these results may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for CRC using a combination of ABC294640 treatment and BMX blockade.Keywords: ABC294640, Apoptosis, Bone marrow kinase in chromosome X, Cell viability, Colorectal cance

Asymptotic behavior of solutions for the thermoviscous acoustic systems

We study some asymptotic properties of solutions for the acoustic coupled systems in thermoviscous fluids which was proposed by [Karlsen-Bruus, \emph{Phys. Rev. E} (2015)]. Basing on the WKB analysis and the Fourier analysis, we derive optimal estimates and large time asymptotic profiles of the energy term via diagonalization procedure, and of the velocity potential via reduction methodology. We found that the wave effect has a dominant influence for lower dimensions comparing with thermal-viscous effects. Moreover, by employing suitable energy methods, we rigorously demonstrate global (in time) inviscid limits as the momentum diffusion coefficient vanishes, whose limit model can be regarded as the thermoelastic acoustic systems in isotropic solids. These results explain some influence of the momentum diffusion on asymptotic behavior of solutions

Latent profile analysis of burnout, depression, and anxiety symptoms among Chinese medical staff with frontline anti-epidemic experience in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era

BackgroundFrontline medical staff’s psychological symptoms deserve persistent attention after 3 years of high-pressure and high-intensity work during the pandemic. In addition, the meaning of burnout and its relationship with depression and anxiety have long been debated. This study aimed to identify profiles of these symptoms among Chinese medical staff with frontline anti-epidemic experience, along with their distinguishing characteristics.MethodsPsychological symptoms of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy), depression, and anxiety from 989 doctors and 1,105 nurses were explored with latent profile analysis. The R3step method was conducted to analyze the predictive factors of those medical staff’s symptoms.ResultsThree symptom profiles were identified for medical staff, with high-level (62.1%), moderate-level (28.9%), and low-level symptoms (9.0%). In the low-level and moderate-level profiles, symptom variables considered had a consistent trend. However, within the high-level profile, the inefficacy of burnout remained at a lower level, and anxiety performed as the most prominent symptom. Variables of gender, age, salary satisfaction, work hours, and work intensity predicted medical staff profiles (p < 0.05).ConclusionIn the post-COVID-19 era, former frontline Chinese medical staff’s psychological symptoms were divided into three latent profiles. Symptoms of burnout, depression, and anxiety did not move in lock-step, indicating that they are different and robust constructs. Targeted intervention strategies should be developed for different subgroups

StaPep: an open-source tool for the structure prediction and feature extraction of hydrocarbon-stapled peptides

Many tools exist for extracting structural and physiochemical descriptors from linear peptides to predict their properties, but similar tools for hydrocarbon-stapled peptides are lacking.Here, we present StaPep, a Python-based toolkit designed for generating 2D/3D structures and calculating 21 distinct features for hydrocarbon-stapled peptides.The current version supports hydrocarbon-stapled peptides containing 2 non-standard amino acids (norleucine and 2-aminoisobutyric acid) and 6 nonnatural anchoring residues (S3, S5, S8, R3, R5 and R8).Then we established a hand-curated dataset of 201 hydrocarbon-stapled peptides and 384 linear peptides with sequence information and experimental membrane permeability, to showcase StaPep's application in artificial intelligence projects.A machine learning-based predictor utilizing above calculated features was developed with AUC of 0.85, for identifying cell-penetrating hydrocarbon-stapled peptides.StaPep's pipeline spans data retrieval, cleaning, structure generation, molecular feature calculation, and machine learning model construction for hydrocarbon-stapled peptides.The source codes and dataset are freely available on Github: https://github.com/dahuilangda/stapep_package.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Controllable ingestion and release of guest components driven by interfacial molecular orientation of host liquid crystal droplets

Controllable construction and manipulation of artificial multi-compartmental structures are crucial in understanding and imitating smart molecular elements such as biological cells and on-demand delivery systems. Here, we report a liquid crystal droplet (LCD) based three-dimensional system for controllable and reversible ingestion and release of guest aqueous droplets (GADs). Induced by interfacial thermodynamic fluctuation and internal topological defect, microscale LCDs with perpendicular anchoring condition at the interface would spontaneously ingest external components from the surroundings and transform them as radially assembled tiny GADs inside LCDs. Landau–de Gennes free-energy model is applied to describe and explain the assembly dynamics and morphologies of these tiny GADs, which presents a good agreement with experimental observations. Furthermore, the release of these ingested GADs can be actively triggered by changing the anchoring conditions at the interface of LCDs. Since those ingestion and release processes are controllable and happen very gently at room temperature and neutral pH environment without extra energy input, these microscale LCDs are very prospective to provide a unique and viable route for constructing hierarchical 3D structures with tunable components and compartments

Investigating the shared genetic architecture between hypothyroidism and rheumatoid arthritis

BackgroundThere is still controversy regarding the relationship between hypothyroidism and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and there has been a dearth of studies on this association. The purpose of our study was to explore the shared genetic architecture between hypothyroidism and RA.MethodsUsing public genome-wide association studies summary statistics of hypothyroidism and RA, we explored shared genetics between hypothyroidism and RA using linkage disequilibrium score regression, ρ-HESS, Pleiotropic analysis under a composite null hypothesis (PLACO), colocalization analysis, Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS (MTAG), and transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS), and investigated causal associations using Mendelian randomization (MR).ResultsWe found a positive genetic association between hypothyroidism and RA, particularly in local genomic regions. Mendelian randomization analysis suggested a potential causal association of hypothyroidism with RA. Incorporating gene expression data, we observed that the genetic associations between hypothyroidism and RA were enriched in various tissues, including the spleen, lung, small intestine, adipose visceral, and blood. A comprehensive approach integrating PLACO, Bayesian colocalization analysis, MTAG, and TWAS, we successfully identified TYK2, IL2RA, and IRF5 as shared risk genes for both hypothyroidism and RA.ConclusionsOur investigation unveiled a shared genetic architecture between these two diseases, providing novel insights into the underlying biological mechanisms and establishing a foundation for more effective interventions

Effect of “universal two-child” policy on population changes in Shandong province, China: an interrupted time series analysis

BackgroundAs population aging intensifies and women’s fertility levels decline continuously, the improvement of fertility policies has emerged as a pivotal concern for most governments. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the “universal two-child” policy implementation on the birth population trend.MethodsA quasi-experimental interrupted time series (ITS) study was conducted to analyze the collected data. Data on the birth population of Shandong province from 2000 to 2022 were collected to observe trend changes before and after the intervention.ResultsThe birth rate increased immediately in the first year after the intervention (p < 0.001), but the trend significantly declined in the following years (p < 0.001). After further adjustment for the influence of the pre-fertility policies, urbanization rate, and per capita disposable income, the birth population level still showed a downward trend year by year in the post-intervention period (p < 0.001).ConclusionThe policy implementation helped to boost the population growth in the short term, but the long-term effect of the policy was not optimistic. More targeted incentive strategies should be considered to reverse the continuous decline in fertility rates