A Mott insulator continuously connected to iron pnictide superconductors

Iron-based superconductivity develops near an antiferromagnetic order and out of a bad metal normal state, which has been interpreted as originating from a proximate Mott transition. Whether an actual Mott insulator can be realized in the phase diagram of the iron pnictides remains an open question. Here we use transport, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and neutron scattering to demonstrate that NaFe$_{1-x}$Cu$_x$As near $x\approx 0.5$ exhibits real space Fe and Cu ordering, and are antiferromagnetic insulators with the insulating behavior persisting above the N\'eel temperature, indicative of a Mott insulator. Upon decreasing $x$ from $0.5$, the antiferromagnetic ordered moment continuously decreases, yielding to superconductivity around $x=0.05$. Our discovery of a Mott insulating state in NaFe$_{1-x}$Cu$_x$As thus makes it the only known Fe-based material in which superconductivity can be smoothly connected to the Mott insulating state, highlighting the important role of electron correlations in the high-$T_{\rm c}$ superconductivity.Comment: in press, Nat. Commun., 4 figures, supplementary information available upon reques

Removal of point source leakage from time-order data filtering

Time-ordered data (TOD) from ground-based CMB experiments are generally filtered before map-making to remove or reduce the contamination from the ground and the atmospheric emissions. However, when the observation region contains strong point sources, the filtering process will result in considerable leakage around the point sources in a measured CMB map, and leave spurious polarization signals. Therefore, such signals need to be assessed and removed before CMB science exploitation. In this work, we present a new method that we call "template fitting" and can effectively remove these leakage signals in pixel domain, not only satisfying the requirement for measuring primordial gravitational waves from CMB-$B$ modes, but also avoiding time-consuming operations on TOD.Comment: 13pages, 6 figures, 5 table

Teach-DETR: Better Training DETR with Teachers

In this paper, we present a novel training scheme, namely Teach-DETR, to learn better DETR-based detectors from versatile teacher detectors. We show that the predicted boxes from teacher detectors are effective medium to transfer knowledge of teacher detectors, which could be either RCNN-based or DETR-based detectors, to train a more accurate and robust DETR model. This new training scheme can easily incorporate the predicted boxes from multiple teacher detectors, each of which provides parallel supervisions to the student DETR. Our strategy introduces no additional parameters and adds negligible computational cost to the original detector during training. During inference, Teach-DETR brings zero additional overhead and maintains the merit of requiring no non-maximum suppression. Extensive experiments show that our method leads to consistent improvement for various DETR-based detectors. Specifically, we improve the state-of-the-art detector DINO with Swin-Large backbone, 4 scales of feature maps and 36-epoch training schedule, from 57.8% to 58.9% in terms of mean average precision on MSCOCO 2017 validation set. Code will be available at https://github.com/LeonHLJ/Teach-DETR

Molecular epidemiology of hepatitis E virus infections in Shanghai, China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hepatitis E virus (HEV) causes acute or fulminant hepatitis in humans and is an important public health concern in many developing countries. China has a high incidence of HEV epidemics, with at least three genotypes (1, 3 and 4) and nine subtypes (1b, 1c, 3b, 4a, 4b, 4d, 4g, 4h and 4i) so far identified. Since genotype 3 and the newly identified subtype 4i have been exclusively limited geographically to Shanghai and its neighboring provinces, the epidemiology of HEV infections within the municipality, a major industrial and commercial center, deserves closer attention.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>A total of 65 sequences, 60 located within the HEV SH-SW-zs1 genome [GenBank:<ext-link ext-link-id="EF570133" ext-link-type="gen">EF570133</ext-link>], together with five full-length swine and human HEV genomic sequences, all emanating from Shanghai, were retrieved from GenBank. Consistent with the primary role of genotype 4 in China overall, analysis of the sequences revealed this to have been the dominant genotype (58/65) in Shanghai. Six HEV subtypes (3b, 4a, 4b, 4d, 4h and 4i) were also represented. However, although subtype 4a is the dominant subtype throughout China, subtype 4i (29/65) was the most prevalent subtype among the Shanghai sequences, followed by subtypes 4d (10/65) and 4h (9/65). Subtypes 4h, 4i and 4d were found in both swine and humans, whereas 4b was found only in swine and subtype 4a only in humans.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Six different swine and human HEV subtypes have so far been documented in Shanghai. More molecular epidemiological investigations of HEV in swine, and particularly among the human population, should be undertaken.</p

Using Polygraph to Detect Passengers Carrying Illegal Items

The present study examined the effectiveness of a Modified-Comparison Questions Technique, used in conjunction with the polygraph, to differentiate between common travelers, drug traffickers, and terrorists at transportation hubs. Two experiments were conducted using a mock crime paradigm. In Experiment 1, we randomly assigned 78 participants to either a drug condition, where they packed and lied about illicit drugs in their luggage, or a control condition, where they did not pack or lie about any illegal items. In Experiment 2, we randomly assigned 164 participants to one of the two conditions in Experiment 1 or an additional bomb condition, where they packed and lied about a bomb in their luggage. For both experiments, we assessed participants’ RR interval, heart rate, peak-to-peak amplitude of Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and all three combined, using Discriminant Analyses to determine the classification accuracy of participants in each condition. In both experiments, we found decelerated heart rates and increased peak-to-peak amplitude of GSR in guilty participants when lying in response to questions regarding their crime. We also found accurate classifications of participants, in both Experiment 1 (drug vs. control: 84.2% vs. 82.5%) and Experiment 2 (drug vs. control: 82:1% vs. 95.1%; bomb vs. control: 93.2% vs. 95.1%; drug vs. bomb: 92.3% vs. 90.9%), above chance level. These findings indicate that Modified-CQT, combined with a polygraph test, is a viable method for investigating suspects of drug trafficking and terrorism at transportation hubs such as train stations and airports

Biocrust reduces the soil erodibility of coral calcareous sand by regulating microbial community and extracellular polymeric substances on tropical coral island, South China Sea

Tropical coral islands assume a pivotal role in the conservation of oceanic ecosystem biodiversity. However, their distinctive environmental attributes and limited vegetation render them highly susceptible to soil erosion. The biological soil crust (biocrust), owing to its significant ecological role in soil stabilization and erosion prevention, is deemed an effective means of mitigating soil erosion on coral island. However, existing research on the mechanisms through which biocrusts resist soil erosion has predominantly concentrated on arid and semi-arid regions. Consequently, this study will specifically delve into elucidating the erosion-resistant mechanisms of biocrusts in tropical coral island environments, South China Sea. Specifically, we collected 16 samples of biocrusts and bare soil from Meiji Island. High-throughput amplicon sequencing was executed to analyze the microbial community, including bacteria, fungi, and archaea. Additionally, quantitative PCR was utilized to assess the abundance of the bacterial 16S rRNA, fungal ITS, archaeal 16S rRNA, and cyanobacterial 16S rRNA genes within these samples. Physicochemical measurements and assessments of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) were conducted to characterize the soil properties. The study reported a significantly decreased soil erodibility factor after biocrust formation. Compared to bare soil, soil erodibility factor decreased from 0.280 to 0.190 t h MJ−1 mm−1 in the biocrusts. Mechanistically, we measured the microbial EPS contents and revealed a negative correlation between EPS and soil erodibility factor. Consistent with increased EPS, the abundance of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and cyanobacteria were also detected significantly increased with biocrust formation. Correlation analysis detected Cyanobacteria, Chloroflexi, Deinococcota, and Crenarchaeota as potential microbials promoting EPSs and reducing soil erosion. Together, our study presents the evidence that biocrust from tropical coral island in the South China Sea promotes resistance to soil erosion, pinpointing key EPSs-producing microbials against soil erosion. The findings would provide insights for island soil restoration

Stable radiation field positron acceleration in a micro-tube

Nowadays, there is a desperate need for an ultra-acceleration-gradient method for antimatter particles, which holds great significance in exploring the origin of matter, CP violation, astrophysics, and medical physics. Compared to traditional accelerators with low gradients and a limited acceleration region for positrons in laser-driven charge separation fields, we propose an innovative high-gradient positron acceleration mechanism with implementation advantages. Injecting a relativistic electron beam into a dense plasma micro-tube generates a stable and periodic high-intensity mid-infrared radiation (mid-IR) field, reaching tens of GV/m. This field, propagating synchronously with the electron beam, achieves a 1 GeV energy gain for the positron bunch within 140 picoseconds with a minimal energy spread-approximately 1.56% during a stable phase. By utilizing continuous mid-IR, the efficiency of energy transfer from the electron beam to either a single positron bunch or three positron bunches simultaneously could reach up to 20% and 40%, respectively. This acceleration scheme can achieve cascaded acceleration for a single positron bunch and series acceleration for multiple positron bunches in a continuous, stable, and efficient manner.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Accurate prediction of protein function using statistics-informed graph networks

Understanding protein function is pivotal in comprehending the intricate mechanisms that underlie many crucial biological activities, with far-reaching implications in the fields of medicine, biotechnology, and drug development. However, more than 200 million proteins remain uncharacterized, and computational efforts heavily rely on protein structural information to predict annotations of varying quality. Here, we present a method that utilizes statistics-informed graph networks to predict protein functions solely from its sequence. Our method inherently characterizes evolutionary signatures, allowing for a quantitative assessment of the significance of residues that carry out specific functions. PhiGnet not only demonstrates superior performance compared to alternative approaches but also narrows the sequence-function gap, even in the absence of structural information. Our findings indicate that applying deep learning to evolutionary data can highlight functional sites at the residue level, providing valuable support for interpreting both existing properties and new functionalities of proteins in research and biomedicine

The effect and safety of CDK4/6 inhibitors combined endocrine therapy on HR+, HER2-breast cancer: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Introduction: The purpose of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of cyclin-dependent kinase4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) combined with endocrine therapy (ET) on hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2–) breast cancer (BC). Material and methods: A search was conducted in the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases before July 2022. Results: A total of 19 studies comprising 19,004 patients were eligible for this meta-analysis. This meta-analysis found that for unresectable locally advanced or metastatic HR+, HER2– BC, CDK4/6i combined with ET can significantly improve the progression-free survival (PFS) (hazard ratio = 0.59, p &lt; 0.001), overall survival (OS) (hazard ratio = 0.77, p &lt; 0.001), objective response rate (ORR) [risk ratio (RR) = 1.32, p = 0.001)], disease control rate (DCR) (RR = 1.10, p &lt; 0.001), and clinical benefit response (CBR) (RR = 1.15, p = 0.001). For early HR+, HER2- BC, CDK4/6i combined with ET improved ORR (RR = 1.14, p = 0.05) and invasive disease free survival (iDFS) (hazard ratio = 0.87, p = 0.045) but had no effect on pathologic complete response (pCR) (RR = 1.75, p = 0.33), distant recurrence free survival (DRFS) (hazardratio = 0.83, p = 0.311), and OS (hazard ratio = 1.08, p = 0.705). Conclusion: CDK4/6i combined with ET can improve the prognosis of patients with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic HR+, HER2– BC, but it has no obvious effect on patients with early HR+, HER2– BC. It is generally safe and manageable