Effects of network topology and trait distribution on collective decision making

Individual-level interactions shape societal or economic processes, such as infectious diseases spreading, stock prices fluctuating and public opinion shifting. Understanding how the interaction of different individuals affects collective outcomes is more important than ever, as the internet and social media develop. Social networks representing individuals' influence relations play a key role in understanding the connections between individual-level interactions and societal or economic outcomes. Recent research has revealed how the topology of a social network affects collective decision-making in a community. Furthermore, the traits of individuals that determine how they process received information for making decisions also change a community's collective decisions. In this work, we develop stochastic processes to generate networks of individuals with two simple traits: Being a conformist and being an anticonformist. We introduce a novel deterministic voter model for a trait-attributed network, where the individuals make binary choices following simple deterministic rules based on their traits. We show that the simple deterministic rules can drive unpredictable fluctuations of collective decisions which eventually become periodic. We study the effects of network topology and trait distribution on the first passage time for a sequence of collective decisions showing periodicity

Synthesis and biological evaluation of chrysin derivatives containing α-lipoic acid for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease

This study introduces newly discovered chrysin derivatives that show potential as candidate molecules for treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Compound 4b, among the synthesized compounds, displayed significant inhibitory effects on monocyte adhesion to colon epithelium induced by TNF-α, with an IC50 value of 4.71 μM. Further mechanistic studies demonstrated that 4b inhibits the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and downregulates the expression of ICAM-1 and MCP-1, key molecules involved in monocyte-epithelial adhesion, as well as the transcriptional activity of NF-κB. In vivo experiments have shown that compound 4b exhibits a dose-dependent inhibition of 2, 4, 6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis in rats, thereby validating its effectiveness as a colitis inhibitor in animal models. These results indicate that 4b shows considerable promise as a therapeutic agent for managing IBD

Aconitine and its derivatives: bioactivities, structure-activity relationships and preliminary molecular mechanisms

Aconitine (AC), which is the primary bioactive diterpene alkaloid derived from Aconitum L plants, have attracted considerable interest due to its unique structural feature. Additionally, AC demonstrates a range of biological activities, such as its ability to enhance cardiac function, inhibit tumor growth, reduce inflammation, and provide analgesic effects. However, the structure-activity relationships of AC are remain unclear. A clear understanding of these relationships is indeed critical in developing effective biomedical applications with AC. In line with these challenges, this paper summarized the structural characteristics of AC and relevant functional and bioactive properties and the structure-activity relationships presented in biomedical applications. The primary temporal scope of this review was established as the period spanning from 2010 to 2023. Subsequently, the objective of this review was to provide a comprehensive understanding of the specific action mechanism of AC, while also exploring potential novel applications of AC derivatives in the biomedical field, drawing upon their structural characteristics. In conclusion, this review has provided a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and prospects associated with AC in the elucidation of structure-bioactivity relationships. Furthermore, the importance of exploring modern biotechnology approaches to enhance the potential biomedical applications of AC has been emphasized

Decoding the spermatogonial stem cell niche under physiological and recovery conditions in adult mice and humans

The intricate interaction between spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) and testicular niche is essential for maintaining SSC homeostasis; however, this interaction remains largely uncharacterized. In this study, to characterize the underlying signaling pathways and related paracrine factors, we delineated the intercellular interactions between SSC and niche cell in both adult mice and humans under physiological conditions and dissected the niche-derived regulation of SSC maintenance under recovery conditions, thus uncovering the essential role of C-C motif chemokine ligand 24 and insulin-like growth factor binding protein 7 in SSC maintenance. We also established the clinical relevance of specific paracrine factors in human fertility. Collectively, our work on decoding the adult SSC niche serves as a valuable reference for future studies on the aetiology, diagnosis, and treatment of male infertility.</p

Research on the Characteristics of High-Temperature Heat Waves and Outdoor Thermal Comfort: A Typical Space in Chongqing Yuzhong District as an Example

For the high-density urban space heat wave problem, take the core urban area of the mountainous city of Chongqing as an example, four types of typical urban functional spaces, including commercial areas, residential areas, mountain parks, and riverfront parks, were measured during a heat wave cycle, and the characteristics of high-temperature heat waves in different urban spaces were compared through the analysis of air temperature, surface temperature, relative humidity, solar thermal radiation, and other thermal environment parameters. Combined with the questionnaire research related to the heat comfort of the urban population, the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) was selected to describe the heat sensation of the human body, to summarize the elements and patterns of the influence of heat waves on heat comfort of the population in urban spaces, and to establish a prediction model of outdoor heat comfort in summer. It shows that: (1) temperatures recorded during the heat waves are influenced by urban space elements and are differentiated, with older residential areas recording the highest temperatures, followed by commercial areas, and green park areas comparing favorably with both; (2) crowd thermal comfort is correlated with the thermal environment formed by space elements, PET is significantly positively correlated with air temperature, thermal radiation and surface temperature, and significantly negatively correlated with relative humidity, air temperature and thermal radiation have more influence on thermal comfort has a greater impact, while relative humidity and surface temperature have a relatively small impact; (3) reasonable spatial form and shade planning, vegetation and water body settings, high thermal storage substrate and other design elements can alleviate high-temperature heat waves, reduce the thermal neutral temperature and improve thermal comfort. The research results provide some basis for the investigation of the formation mechanism of high-temperature heat waves in mountainous cities and the optimal design of urban spatial thermal environment

Research on the Characteristics of High-Temperature Heat Waves and Outdoor Thermal Comfort: A Typical Space in Chongqing Yuzhong District as an Example

For the high-density urban space heat wave problem, take the core urban area of the mountainous city of Chongqing as an example, four types of typical urban functional spaces, including commercial areas, residential areas, mountain parks, and riverfront parks, were measured during a heat wave cycle, and the characteristics of high-temperature heat waves in different urban spaces were compared through the analysis of air temperature, surface temperature, relative humidity, solar thermal radiation, and other thermal environment parameters. Combined with the questionnaire research related to the heat comfort of the urban population, the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) was selected to describe the heat sensation of the human body, to summarize the elements and patterns of the influence of heat waves on heat comfort of the population in urban spaces, and to establish a prediction model of outdoor heat comfort in summer. It shows that: (1) temperatures recorded during the heat waves are influenced by urban space elements and are differentiated, with older residential areas recording the highest temperatures, followed by commercial areas, and green park areas comparing favorably with both; (2) crowd thermal comfort is correlated with the thermal environment formed by space elements, PET is significantly positively correlated with air temperature, thermal radiation and surface temperature, and significantly negatively correlated with relative humidity, air temperature and thermal radiation have more influence on thermal comfort has a greater impact, while relative humidity and surface temperature have a relatively small impact; (3) reasonable spatial form and shade planning, vegetation and water body settings, high thermal storage substrate and other design elements can alleviate high-temperature heat waves, reduce the thermal neutral temperature and improve thermal comfort. The research results provide some basis for the investigation of the formation mechanism of high-temperature heat waves in mountainous cities and the optimal design of urban spatial thermal environment

Redesigning the Wearable Camera Pipeline to Detect Key Body Parts at Low Power

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the problem of designing wearable devices suited for continuous mobile vision. Given power budgets, it is infeasible either to stream all video off board for analysis, or to perform all analysis on board. A compromise is to off-load only &quot;interesting&quot; frames for further analysis. We identify windows containing people and parts of their bodies as being interesting. We show that using a careful combination of emerging thermal sensors and ultra-lowpower coarse stereo enabled by modern low-power FPGAs, it is possible to detect the presence of these &quot;key&quot; body parts at well within wearable power budgets. We combine our (hardware) binary presence detector with a mobile CPU running a classifier to identify which body part is detected. Using this combination, we show how to detect faces, hands (of the video wearer) and bodies of those in the field of view at under 30mW; running on just the phone draws over 1W