Correlation of Chimerism with Acute Graft-versus-Host Disease in Rats following Liver Transplantation

The accurate diagnosis of acute graft-versus-host disease following liver transplantation (LTx-aGVHD) has been hampered. Chimerism appears in the majority of recipients after LT and its significance in the diagnosis of LTx-aGVHD has not been clearly established. To demonstrate the significance of chimerism on the diagnosis of LTx-aGVHD, we compared the change of chimerism in syngeneic LT recipients, semiallogeneic LT recipients, and LTx-aGVHD induced recipients. Chimerism in PBMCs following sex-mismatched LT was identified by real-time PCR based on a rat Y-chromosome-specific primer. All recipients in semiallogeneic group grew in a normal pattern. However, when 4 × 108 donor splenocytes were transferred simultaneously during LT, the morbidity of lethal aGVHD was 100%. The chimerism appeared slightly higher in the semiallogeneic group than in the syngeneic LT group, but the difference was not significant. However, when the recipients developed lethal aGVHD after LT, chimerism in the PBMCs increased progressively, and even at an early time, a significant increase in chimerism was observed. In conclusion, high level chimerism correlated well with LTx-aGVHD, and detection of chimerism soon after transplantation may be of value in the diagnosis of LTx-aGVHD prior to the onset of symptoms

Multistaged discharge constructing heterostructure with enhanced solid-solution behavior for long-life lithium-oxygen batteries.

Inferior charge transport in insulating and bulk discharge products is one of the main factors resulting in poor cycling stability of lithium-oxygen batteries with high overpotential and large capacity decay. Here we report a two-step oxygen reduction approach by pre-depositing a potassium carbonate layer on the cathode surface in a potassium-oxygen battery to direct the growth of defective film-like discharge products in the successive cycling of lithium-oxygen batteries. The formation of defective film with improved charge transport and large contact area with a catalyst plays a critical role in the facile decomposition of discharge products and the sustained stability of the battery. Multistaged discharge constructing lithium peroxide-based heterostructure with band discontinuities and a relatively low lithium diffusion barrier may be responsible for the growth of defective film-like discharge products. This strategy offers a promising route for future development of cathode catalysts that can be used to extend the cycling life of lithium-oxygen batteries

Tunable Unidirectional Sound Propagation through a Sonic-Crystal-Based Acoustic Diode

Nonreciprocal wave propagation typically requires strong nonlinear materials to break time reversal symmetry. Here, we utilized a sonic-crystal-based acoustic diode that had broken spatial inversion symmetry and experimentally realized sound unidirectional transmission in this acoustic diode. These novel phenomena are attributed to different mode transitions as well as their associated different energy conversion efficiencies among different diffraction orders at two sides of the diode. This nonreciprocal sound transmission could be systematically controlled by simply mechanically rotating the square rods of the sonic crystal. Different from nonreciprocity due to the nonlinear acoustic effect and broken time reversal symmetry, this new model leads to a one-way effect with higher efficiency, broader bandwidth, and much less power consumption, showing promising applications in various sound devices

Analysis and real-time prediction of the full-scale thrust for floating wind turbine based on artificial intelligence

In this paper, numerous aero-hydro-servo-elastic coupled simulations are carried out in time-domain to observe the performance of the real-time thrust acting on the rotor of the OC3-Hywind offshore floating wind turbine. And the studying focuses on investigating the correlation between inputs (surge motion, pitch motion, wind conditions, etc.) and the targeted output (rotor thrust) in the time domain. Besides, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are used to estimate a prediction model of real-time thrust based on the data from simulations. To predict the thrust, data for four comparative coupled environmental conditions are considered, by which the effect of turbulence and wave spectrum on the thrust force is also investigated. Moreover, a series of simulations of frequency-increasing regular wave conditions and speed-increasing wind conditions are carried out to observe their effect on the real-time rotor thrust. Additionally, the impact of the pitch and surge RAOs of the floating foundation and the wind velocity are quantitatively studied. It reveals that the high-frequency response of thrust is dominated by wave change, whereas low-frequency response is dominated by wind change. Besides, one simulation model of the thrust acting on the rotor is estimated regarding high-frequency and low-frequency response separately to account the dominating influence

Customer Cybersecurity and Supplier Cost Management Strategy

In this paper, we explore the spillover effect of customer firms’ data breaches on their upstream supplier firms’ cost management strategies, proxied by cost stickiness. Our primary analyses suggest that data breaches suffered by customer firms are associated with a decrease in cost stickiness among supplier firms. Furthermore, the reductions in supplier cost stickiness are stronger if suppliers are managed by CEOs from national cultural groups with high uncertainty avoidance, low long-term orientations, and/or low individualism. In sum, the findings contribute to both Information Systems (IS) and Operations Management (OM) disciplines in terms of data breach, cost management strategy, and the role of national culture in OM. In particular, the findings can facilitate the management and regulation of data breaches for managers and regulators

Patched Line Segment Learning for Vector Road Mapping

This paper presents a novel approach to computing vector road maps from satellite remotely sensed images, building upon a well-defined Patched Line Segment (PaLiS) representation for road graphs that holds geometric significance. Unlike prevailing methods that derive road vector representations from satellite images using binary masks or keypoints, our method employs line segments. These segments not only convey road locations but also capture their orientations, making them a robust choice for representation. More precisely, given an input image, we divide it into non-overlapping patches and predict a suitable line segment within each patch. This strategy enables us to capture spatial and structural cues from these patch-based line segments, simplifying the process of constructing the road network graph without the necessity of additional neural networks for connectivity. In our experiments, we demonstrate how an effective representation of a road graph significantly enhances the performance of vector road mapping on established benchmarks, without requiring extensive modifications to the neural network architecture. Furthermore, our method achieves state-of-the-art performance with just 6 GPU hours of training, leading to a substantial 32-fold reduction in training costs in terms of GPU hours

Intertwined fractional quantum anomalous Hall states and charge density waves

Motivated by the recent experimental breakthrough on the observation of the fractional quantum anomalous Hall (FQAH) effects in semiconductor and graphene moir\'{e} materials, we explore the rich physics associated with the coexistence of FQAH effect and the charge density wave (CDW) order that spontaneously breaks the translation symmetry. We refer to a state with both properties as "FQAH-crystal". We show that the interplay between FQAH effect and CDW can lead to a rich phase diagram including multiple topological phases and topological quantum phase transitions at the same moir\'e filling. In particular, we demonstrate the possibility of direct quantum phase transitions from a FQAH-crystal with Hall conductivity $\sigma_H = - 2/3$ to a trivial CDW insulator with $\sigma_H = 0$, and more interestingly, to a QAH-crystal with $\sigma_H= -1$.Comment: 9 page