Denoising Time Cycle Modeling for Recommendation

Recently, modeling temporal patterns of user-item interactions have attracted much attention in recommender systems. We argue that existing methods ignore the variety of temporal patterns of user behaviors. We define the subset of user behaviors that are irrelevant to the target item as noises, which limits the performance of target-related time cycle modeling and affect the recommendation performance. In this paper, we propose Denoising Time Cycle Modeling (DiCycle), a novel approach to denoise user behaviors and select the subset of user behaviors that are highly related to the target item. DiCycle is able to explicitly model diverse time cycle patterns for recommendation. Extensive experiments are conducted on both public benchmarks and a real-world dataset, demonstrating the superior performance of DiCycle over the state-of-the-art recommendation methods

Metabolic Profiling Study of Yang Deficiency Syndrome in Hepatocellular Carcinoma by H

This study proposes a 1H NMR-based metabonomic approach to explore the biochemical characteristics of Yang deficiency syndrome in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) based on serum metabolic profiling. Serum samples from 21 cases of Yang deficiency syndrome HCC patients (YDS-HCC) and 21 cases of non-Yang deficiency syndrome HCC patients (NYDS-HCC) were analyzed using 1H NMR spectroscopy and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was applied to visualize the variation patterns in metabolic profiling of sera from different groups. The differential metabolites were identified and the biochemical characteristics were analyzed. We found that the intensities of six metabolites (LDL/VLDL, isoleucine, lactate, lipids, choline, and glucose/sugars) in serum of Yang deficiency syndrome patients were lower than those of non-Yang deficiency syndrome patients. It implies that multiple metabolisms, mainly including lipid, amino acid, and energy metabolisms, are unbalanced or weakened in Yang deficiency syndrome patients with HCC. The decreased intensities of metabolites including LDL/VLDL, isoleucine, lactate, lipids, choline, and glucose/sugars in serum may be the distinctive metabolic variations of Yang deficiency syndrome patients with HCC. And these metabolites may be potential biomarkers for diagnosis of Yang deficiency syndrome in HCC

Histone deacetylase inhibitor sodium butyrate suppresses proliferation and promotes apoptosis in osteosarcoma cells by regulation of the MDM2–p53 signaling

Histone deacetylase inhibitors have been reported to induce tumor cell growth arrest, differentiation, and apoptosis. This study aimed to investigate the effects of one histone deacetylase inhibitor – sodium butyrate (SB) – on osteosarcoma (OS) cell proliferation and apoptosis and also the molecular mechanisms by which SB exerts regulatory effects on OS cells. U2OS and MG63 cells were treated with SB at various concentrations. Then, cell proliferation and apoptosis were determined by 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide and flow cytometry assays, respectively; the expression of Ki67, Bax, Bcl-2, MDM2, and p53 proteins was determined by using Western blot assay. The results showed that SB suppressed proliferation in a concentration-dependent manner and promoted apoptosis of OS cells. In addition, SB enhanced p53 expression and decreased MDM2 expression, indicating that SB can regulate MDM2–p53 feedback loop. p53 inhibited proliferation and promoted apoptosis, whereas MDM2 promoted proliferation and suppressed apoptosis, which indicated that functional effect of SB on OS cell lines at least in part depended on the MDM2–p53 signaling. We also explored the effect of SB on OS cells in vivo and found that SB suppressed the growth of OS cells with no noticeable effect on activity and body weight of mice in vivo. These findings will offer new clues for OS development and progression and offer SB as a potent targeted agent for OS treatment

Rod genesis driven by mafba in an nrl knockout zebrafish model with altered photoreceptor composition and progressive retinal degeneration

Neural retina leucine zipper (NRL) is an essential gene for the fate determination and differentiation of the precursor cells into rod photoreceptors in mammals. Mutations in NRL are associated with the autosomal recessive enhanced S-cone syndrome and autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. However, the exact role of Nrl in regulating the development and maintenance of photoreceptors in the zebrafish (Danio rerio), a popular animal model used for retinal degeneration and regeneration studies, has not been fully determined. In this study, we generated an nrl knockout zebrafish model via the CRISPR-Cas9 technology and observed a surprising phenotype characterized by a reduced number, but not the total loss, of rods and over-growth of green cones. We discovered two waves of rod genesis, nrl-dependent and -independent at the embryonic and post-embryonic stages, respectively, in zebrafish by monitoring the rod development. Through bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing, we characterized the gene expression profiles of the whole retina and each retinal cell type from the wild type and nrl knockout zebrafish. The over-growth of green cones and mis-expression of green-cone-specific genes in rods in nrl mutants suggested that there are rod/green-cone bipotent precursors, whose fate choice between rod versus green-cone is controlled by nrl. Besides, we identified the mafba gene as a novel regulator of the nrl-independent rod development, based on the cell-type-specific expression patterns and the retinal phenotype of nrl/mafba double-knockout zebrafish. Gene collinearity analysis revealed the evolutionary origin of mafba and suggested that the function of mafba in rod development is specific to modern fishes. Furthermore, the altered photoreceptor composition and abnormal gene expression in nrl mutants caused progressive retinal degeneration and subsequent regeneration. Accordingly, this study revealed a novel function of the mafba gene in rod development and established a working model for the developmental and regulatory mechanisms regarding the rod and green-cone photoreceptors in zebrafish

The Main Progress of Perovskite Solar Cells in 2020–2021

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) emerging as a promising photovoltaic technology with high efficiency and low manufacturing cost have attracted the attention from all over the world. Both the efficiency and stability of PSCs have increased steadily in recent years, and the research on reducing lead leakage and developing eco-friendly lead-free perovskites pushes forward the commercialization of PSCs step by step. This review summarizes the main progress of PSCs in 2020 and 2021 from the aspects of efficiency, stability, perovskite-based tandem devices, and lead-free PSCs. Moreover, a brief discussion on the development of PSC modules and its challenges toward practical application is provided