Existence and iteration of monotone positive solutions for third-order nonlocal BVPs involving integral conditions

This paper is concerned with the existence of monotone positive solution for the following third-order nonlocal boundary value problem $u^{\prime \prime \prime }\left(t\right) +f\left( t,u\left( t\right), u^{\prime}\left( t\right)\right) =0,\, 0<t<1$; $u\left( 0\right) =0,$ $au^{\prime}\left( 0\right)-b u^{\prime\prime}\left( 0\right)=\alpha[u],$ $c u^{\prime}\left( 1\right)+d u^{\prime\prime}\left( 1\right)=\beta[u],$ where $f\in C([0,1]\times R^{+}\times R^{+}, R^{+})$, $\alpha[u]=\int_{_{0}}^{1}u(t)dA(t)$ and $\beta[u]=\int_{_{0}}^{1}u(t)dB(t)$ are linear functionals on $C[0,1]$ given by Riemann-Stieltjes integrals. By applying monotone iterative techniques, we not only obtain the existence of monotone positive solution but also establish an iterative scheme for approximating the solution. An example is also included to illustrate the main results

Observation of forbidden phonons and dark excitons by resonance Raman scattering in few-layer WS2_2

The optical properties of the two-dimensional (2D) crystals are dominated by tightly bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) and lattice vibration modes (phonons). The exciton-phonon interaction is fundamentally important to understand the optical properties of 2D materials and thus help develop emerging 2D crystal based optoelectronic devices. Here, we presented the excitonic resonant Raman scattering (RRS) spectra of few-layer WS$_2$ excited by 11 lasers lines covered all of A, B and C exciton transition energies at different sample temperatures from 4 to 300 K. As a result, we are not only able to probe the forbidden phonon modes unobserved in ordinary Raman scattering, but also can determine the bright and dark state fine structures of 1s A exciton. In particular, we also observed the quantum interference between low-energy discrete phonon and exciton continuum under resonant excitation. Our works pave a way to understand the exciton-phonon coupling and many-body effects in 2D materials.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Clematis chinensis Extract Protects against Diabetic Nephropathy in Rats

Purpose: To study the effect of Clematis chinensis extract (CCE) on diabetic nephropathy in rats.Methods: Eight-week old male Wistar rats were injected with streptozotocin to induce diabetes. The effects of CCE(250 or 500 mg/kg) on renal function index, fasting blood glucose (FBG), blood fat, oxidation index, and pathological kidney changes for 3 weeks were compared to those of the positive control drug, captopril.Results: At 12 weeks, CCE(500 mg/kg) treatment had significantly decreased serum blood urea nitrogen (BUN, 12.61 ± 1.42 mmol/L), serum creatinine (SCr, 84.64 ± 6.37 μmol/L), creatinine clearance (CCr, 0.88 ± 0.10 mmol/L), interleukin-6 (IL-6, 297.56 ± 19.62 pg/mL), urinary albumin, urinary albumin excretion rate (UAER, 11.68 ± 0.97 μg/min), kidney hypertrophy index (kidney weight/body weight, 0.58 ± 0.03%) and FBG (11.51 ± 0.96 mmol·L-1). It significantly decreased triglyceride (TG, 0.26 ± 0.05 mmol/L), total cholesterol (TC, 1.52 ± 0.06 mmol/L) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c, 0.71 ± 0.06 mmol/L) levels and increased high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-c, 0.65 ± 0.05 mmol/L). CCE treatment also significantly decreased malondialdehyde (MDA, 16.14 ± 1.24 nmol/mgprot) levels and increased superoxide dismutase (SOD, 95.17 ± 4.06 U/mgprot) and glutathione peroxidase (GSHPx, 154.33 ± 11.76 mmol/L) (both p &lt; 0.05). Finally, CCE reduced the degree of glomerular basement membrane and renal tubular thickening and swelling in diabetic rats.Conclusion: CCE has a significant inhibitory effect on diabetic nephropathy-induced renal injury in rats.Keywords: Clematis chinensis, Diabetic nephropathy, Renal function, Pathological morpholog

Rapid Synthesis of Flavor Compound 4-Ethyloctanoic Acid under Microwave Irradiation

Rapid synthesis of 4-ethyloctanoic acid by means of microwave irradiation is described. Diethyl malonate reacted with 2-ethyl-1-bromohexane in the presence of sodium ethoxide to give diethyl (2-ethylhexyl)malonate (1b). 1b was saponified in the solution of ethanol and potassium hydroxide and then acidified to form (2-ethylhexyl)propanedioic acid (1c), and 1c was heated and decarboxylized to give 4-ethyloctanoic acid (1d). The influence of reaction temperature and reaction time on the yield of 1b and the effect of reaction time on the yield of 1c and 1d were investigated in order to optimize the synthetic conditions. The relative optimal conditions for the synthesis of 1b were a mole ratio of sodium to diethyl malonate to 2-ethylhexyl bromide of 0.1:0.11:0.11, a reaction temperature of 80–85 °C, and a reaction time of 2–2.5 h. The yield of 1b was about 79%. 1b was saponified for 30 min and then acidified to form 1c, and the yield of 1c was 96%. 1c was heated for 16 min at 180°C to give 1d, and the yield of 1d was about 90%. The overall yield of 1d is 70% under microwave irradiation. The reaction time was reduced greatly. In order to compare the result of microwave irradiation with that of an oil bath, the reactions were also performed in an oil bath. The structures of intermediates, product and by-product were confirmed by HRMS, 1H NMR, 13C-NMR and IR

Improving accuracy of protein contact prediction using balanced network deconvolution

Residue contact map is essential for protein three‐dimensional structure determination. But most of the current contact prediction methods based on residue co‐evolution suffer from high false‐positives as introduced by indirect and transitive contacts (i.e., residues A–B and B–C are in contact, but A–C are not). Built on the work by Feizi et al. (Nat Biotechnol 2013; 31:726–733), which demonstrated a general network model to distinguish direct dependencies by network deconvolution, this study presents a new balanced network deconvolution (BND) algorithm to identify optimized dependency matrix without limit on the eigenvalue range in the applied network systems. The algorithm was used to filter contact predictions of five widely used co‐evolution methods. On the test of proteins from three benchmark datasets of the 9th critical assessment of protein structure prediction (CASP9), CASP10, and PSICOV (precise structural contact prediction using sparse inverse covariance estimation) database experiments, the BND can improve the medium‐ and long‐range contact predictions at the L/5 cutoff by 55.59% and 47.68%, respectively, without additional central processing unit cost. The improvement is statistically significant, with a P‐value < 5.93 × 10−3 in the Student's t‐test. A further comparison with the ab initio structure predictions in CASPs showed that the usefulness of the current co‐evolution‐based contact prediction to the three‐dimensional structure modeling relies on the number of homologous sequences existing in the sequence databases. BND can be used as a general contact refinement method, which is freely available at: http://www.csbio.sjtu.edu.cn/bioinf/BND/. Proteins 2015; 83:485–496. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110720/1/prot24744.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110720/2/prot24744-sup-0001-suppinfo.pd

All-optical vector cesium magnetometer

Based on power modulation of a pump laser and precessional projection detection, we present an all-optical vector magnetometer of cesium, which has a demonstrated magnitude sensitivity of 80 fT/Hz 1/2 and an orientation sensitivity of 0.1°/Hz 1/2. In the device, four main factors are measured experimentally, which are the Larmor precession frequency of a polarized magnetic moment that depends on the modulus of the measured magnetic field only, two phase shifts and amplitude ratio of the precession projection in the two probe directions relative to the magnetic field orientation. This kind of magnetometer with high sensitivity in the range of the spatial angle is suitable for solving the inverse problem and geomagnetic navigation

The relationship between serum FSH level and ovarian response during controlled ovarian stimulation

Objectives: To evaluate whether serum follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) level during the early controlled ovarian stimulation can be used as a predictor of the ovarian response in the in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI) cycles. Material and methods: The participants of this retrospective study were chosen from Reproductive Medicine Center, Weifang People’s Hospital between January 2015 and December 2020.The participants of this study met the age of 20~43 years old, anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) ≥ 1.2 ng/mL, antral follicle count (AFC) ≥ 5, and the data was complete and no cancellation cycle. Each participant was given GnRH agonist protocol and given a fixed dose of recombinant FSH in the first four days during the controlled ovarian stimulation (COS). According to the number of oocytes retrieved, the participants were divided into two different ovarian response groups. Serum FSH level after the fourth recombinant follicle stimulating hormone (rFSH) injection were compared during the different ovarian responders. Results: The number of participants who met both the inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria was 235. Serum sFSH levels (mean: 11.76 ± 3.10 IU/L) in the inappropriate responders was significantly higher than serum sFSH levels (mean: 10.79 ± 2.52 IU/L) in the superior responders(p = 0.029). There was a weak correlation between serum sFSH levels and the number of oocytes retrieved (r = −0.134, p = 0.041). Serum sFSH levels had significant clinical valuable (p = 0.0346) in predicting the number of oocytes retrieved. Conclusions: Serum sFSH levels may be a potential marker to predict the ovarian response during the early COS in the IVF/ICSI cycles, which can guide the adjustment of the exogenous rFSH dose

Identification of key genes in late-onset major depressive disorder through a co-expression network module

Late-onset major depressive disorder (LOD) increases the risk of disability and suicide in elderly patients. However, the complex pathological mechanism of LOD still remains unclear. We selected 10 LOD patients and 12 healthy control samples from the GSE76826 dataset for statistical analysis. Under the screening criteria, 811 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened. We obtained a total of two most clinically significant modules through the weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Functional analysis of the genes in the most clinically significant modules was performed to explore the potential mechanism of LOD, followed by protein–protein interaction (PPI) analysis and hub gene identification in the core area of the PPI network. Furthermore, we identified immune infiltrating cells using the cell-type identification by estimating relative subsets of RNA transcripts (CIBERSORT) algorithm between healthy subjects and LOD patients with the GSE98793 dataset. Next, six hub genes (CD27, IL7R, CXCL1, CCR7, IGLL5, and CD79A) were obtained by intersecting hub genes with DEGs, followed by verifying the diagnostic accuracy with the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). In addition, we constructed the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression model for hub gene cross-validation. Finally, we found that CD27 and IGLL5 were good diagnostic indicators of LOD, and CD27 may be the key gene of immune function change in LOD. In conclusion, our research shows that the changes in the immune function may be an important mechanism in the development of LOD, which can provide some guidance for the related research of LOD in the future

Quantum blockade and loop current induced by a single lattice defect in graphene nanoribbons

We investigate theoretically the electronic transport properties in narrow graphene ribbons with an adatom-induced defect. It is found that the lowest conductance step of a metallic graphene nanoribbon may develop a dip even down to zero at certain values of the Fermi energy due to the defect. Accompanying the occurrence of the conductance dip, a loop current develops around the defect. We show how the properties of the conductance dip depend on the parameters of the defect, such as the relative position and severity of the defect as well as the width and edges of the graphene ribbons. In particular, for metallic armchair-edges graphene nanoribbons, whether the conductance dip appears or not, they can be controlled by choosing the position of the single defect.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure