Quantum properties of fermionic fields in multi-event horizon spacetime

We investigate the properties of quantum entanglement and mutual information in the multi-event horizon Schwarzschild-de Sitter (SdS) spacetime for massless Dirac fields. We obtain the expression for the evolutions of the quantum state near the black hole event horizon (BEH) and cosmological event horizon (CEH) in the SdS spacetime. Under the Nariai limit, the physically accessible entanglement and mutual information are maximized, and the physically inaccessible correlations are zero. With the increase in temperature of either horizon, the physically accessible correlations experience degradation. Notably, the initial state remains entangled and can be utilized in entanglement-based quantum information processing tasks, which differs form the scalar field case. Furthermore, the degradation of physically accessible correlations is more pronounced for small-mass black holes. In contrast, the physically inaccessible correlations separated by the CEH monotonically increase with the radiation temperature, and such correlations are not decisively influenced by the effect of particle creation at the BEH. Moreover, a similar phenomenon is observed for the inaccessible correlations separated by the BEH. This result differs from the single event spacetime, in which the physically inaccessible entanglement is a monotonic function of the Hawking temperature.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Gravity enhanced quantum spatial target detection

Quantum illumination can utilize entangled light to detect the low-reflectivity target that is hidden in a bright thermal background. We apply this technique to the detection of an object under the curved spacetime of the Earth, and are especially interested in how the curvature of spacetime influences the spatial quantum illumination. We find that in the near-Earth curved spacetime, the spatial quantum illumination with entangled state transmitter outperforms the one with coherent state transmitter. Furthermore, whether the quantum illumination system or the coherent state system is employed, the detection error-probability and the transmitted modes in the curved spacetime case are always lower than those in the flat spacetime case. That is to say, the Earth's gravity makes the spatial target detection more efficient. This is because the effects of gravity on the illumination signal beam can cancel each other out, while the thermal noise in the return signal is reduced because of the gravitational effect.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Rosavin exerts an antitumor role and inactivates the MAPK/ERK pathway in small-cell lung carcinoma in vitro

This study attempts to explore the function and mechanism of action of rosavin in small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) in vitro. The viability and clone formation of SCLC cells were assessed using cell counting kit-8 and colony formation assays, respectively. Apoptosis and cell cycle were detected using flow cytometry and cell cycle analysis, respectively. Wound healing and transwell assays were performed to evaluate the migration and invasion of SCLC cells. Besides, protein levels of p-ERK, ERK, p-MEK and MEK were determined using western blot analysis. Rosavin repressed the viability and clone formation of SCLC cells, and promoted apoptosis and G0/G1 arrest of SCLC cells. At the same time, rosavin suppressed migration and invasion of SCLC cells. Moreover, protein levels of p-ERK/ERK and p-MEK/MEK were decreased after rosavin addition in SCLC cells. Rosavin impaired malignant behaviors of SCLC cells, which may be associated with inhibition of the MAPK/ERK pathway in vitro

Experimental investigations on drag-reduction characteristics of bionic surface with water-trapping microstructures of fish scales

Biological surfaces with unique wettability in nature have provided an enormous innovation for scientists and engineers. More specifically, materials possessing various wetting properties have drawn considerable attention owing to their promising application prospects. Recently, great efforts have been concentrated on the researches on wetting-induced drag-reduction materials inspired by biology because of their ability to save energy. In this work, the drag-reduction characteristics of the bionic surface with delicate water-trapping microstructures of fish Ctenopharyngodon idellus scales were explored by experimental method. Firstly, the resistance of smooth surface and bionic surface experimental sample at different speeds was carefully tested through the testing system for operation resistance. Then, the contact angle (CA) of fish scale surface was measured by means of the contact angle measuring instrument. It was discovered that the bionic surface created a rewarding drag-reduction effect at a low speed, and the drag-reduction rate significantly displayed a downward trend with the increase in flow speed. Thus, when the rate was 0.66 m/s, the drag-reduction effect was at the optimum level, and the maximum drag reduction rate was 2.805%, which was in concordance with the simulated one. Furthermore, a contact angle (CA) of 11.5° appeared on the fish scale surface, exhibiting fine hydrophilic property. It further manifested the spreading-wetting phenomenon and the higher surface energy for the area of apical of fish scales, which played an important role in drag-reduction performance. This work will have a great potential in the engineering and transportation field

Drag reduction mechanism of Paramisgurnus dabryanus loach with self-lubricating and flexible micro-morphology

Underwater machinery withstands great resistance in the water, which can result in consumption of a large amount of power. Inspired by the character that loach could move quickly in mud, the drag reduction mechanism of Paramisgurnus dabryanus loach is discussed in this paper. Subjected to the compression and scraping of water and sediments, a loach could not only secrete a lubricating mucus film, but also importantly, retain its mucus well from losing rapidly through its surface micro structure. In addition, it has been found that flexible deformations can maximize the drag reduction rate. This self-adaptation characteristic can keep the drag reduction rate always at high level in wider range of speeds. Therefore, even though the part of surface of underwater machinery cannot secrete mucus, it should be designed by imitating the bionic micro-morphology to absorb and store fluid, and eventually form a self-lubrication film to reduce the resistance. In the present study, the Paramisgurnus dabryanus loach is taken as the bionic prototype to learn how to avoid or slow down the mucus loss through its body surface. This combination of the flexible and micro morphology method provides a potential reference for drag reduction of underwater machinery

TS-GCN: A novel tumor segmentation method integrating transformer and GCN

As one of the critical branches of medical image processing, the task of segmentation of breast cancer tumors is of great importance for planning surgical interventions, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Breast cancer tumor segmentation faces several challenges, including the inherent complexity and heterogeneity of breast tissue, the presence of various imaging artifacts and noise in medical images, low contrast between the tumor region and healthy tissue, and inconsistent size of the tumor region. Furthermore, the existing segmentation methods may not fully capture the rich spatial and contextual information in small-sized regions in breast images, leading to suboptimal performance. In this paper, we propose a novel breast tumor segmentation method, called the transformer and graph convolutional neural (TS-GCN) network, for medical imaging analysis. Specifically, we designed a feature aggregation network to fuse the features extracted from the transformer, GCN and convolutional neural network (CNN) networks. The CNN extract network is designed for the image's local deep feature, and the transformer and GCN networks can better capture the spatial and context dependencies among pixels in images. By leveraging the strengths of three feature extraction networks, our method achieved superior segmentation performance on the BUSI dataset and dataset B. The TS-GCN showed the best performance on several indexes, with Acc of 0.9373, Dice of 0.9058, IoU of 0.7634, F1 score of 0.9338, and AUC of 0.9692, which outperforms other state-of-the-art methods. The research of this segmentation method provides a promising future for medical image analysis and diagnosis of other diseases

Novel peptide–dendrimer conjugates as drug carriers for targeting nonsmall cell lung cancer

Phage display technology has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for screening useful ligands that are capable of specifically binding to biomarkers on the surface of tumor cells. The ligands found by this technique, such as peptides, have been successfully applied in the fields of early cancer diagnostics and chemotherapy. In this study, a novel nonsmall cell lung cancer-targeting peptide (LCTP, sequence RCPLSHSLICY) was screened in vivo using a Ph.D.-C7C™ phage display library. In order to develop a universal tumor-targeting drug carrier, the LCTP and fluorescence-labeled molecule (FITC) were conjugated to an acetylated polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer of generation 4 (G4) to form a PAMAM–Ac–FITC–LCTP conjugate. The performance of the conjugate was first tested in vitro. In vitro results of cell experiments analyzed by flow cytometry and inverted fluorescence microscopy indicated that PAMAM–Ac–FITC–LCTP was enriched more in NCI-H460 cells than in 293T cells, and cellular uptake was both time- and dose-dependent. The tissue distribution of the conjugate in athymic mice with lung cancer xenografts was also investigated to test the targeting efficiency of PAMAM–Ac–FITC–LCTP in vivo. The results showed that LCTP can effectively facilitate the targeting of PAMAM–Ac–FITC–LCTP to nonsmall cell lung cancer cells and tumors. These results suggest that the LCTP-conjugated PAMAM dendrimer might be a promising drug carrier for targeted cancer diagnosis and treatment

Total Replacement of Dietary Fish Oil with a Blend of Vegetable Oils in the Marine Herbivorous Teleost, Siganus canaliculatus

To investigate the feasibility of total replacement of dietary fish oil with vegetable oils (VO) and the optimal dietary polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) level in the marine herbivorous teleost Siganus canaliculatus, six isonitrogenous (32 %) and isolipidic (8 %) diets were formulated. Control diet (FO) used fish oil as lipid source, whereas diets VO1-VO5 contained various blends of palm, soybean, rapeseed and linseed oils, in which the dietary PUFA levels were 42.0 %, 38.2 %, 33.8 %, 29.9 % and 27.1 %, respectively. After S. canaliculatus juveniles were fed with the diets for 9 weeks, their growth performance exhibited no significant difference among the dietary groups. The tissue fatty acid profiles in liver and fillet generally reflected the dietary fatty acid compositions, and showed no significant difference among the VO dietary groups. The results suggested that dietary fish oil can be replaced completely by VO without affecting their growth performance. Concerning the effects of the dietary FA profile on the survival rate, HSI and VSI, and PUFA composition in fillets, diets VO1 and VO2 were more favorable compared with diets VO3–VO5. Considering the availability and cost of the VOs, diet VO2 was recommended for practical use in S. canaliculatus

The Effect of Wenxin Keli on the mRNA Expression Profile of Rabbits with Myocardial Infarction

Aims. The molecular mechanisms of Chinese traditional medicine Wenxin Keli (WXKL) were unknown. This study was aimed at exploring the effects of WXKL on the gene expression profile and pathological alteration of rabbits with myocardial infarction. Methods. Twenty male adult rabbits were randomly divided into 4 groups: sham, model, WXKL, and captopril groups. Model, WXKL, and captopril groups underwent the ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery while sham group went through an identical procedure without ligation. WXKL (817 mg/kg/d), captopril (8 mg/kg/d), and distilled water (to model and sham groups) were administered orally to each group. After 4 weeks, the rabbits were examined with echocardiography and the hearts were taken for expression chip and pathological staining (H&E, Masson, and Tunel) studies. Results. The data revealed that WXKL downregulated genes associated with inflammation (CX3CR1, MRC1, and FPR1), apoptosis (CTSC and TTC5), and neurohumoral system (ACE and EDN1) and upregulated angiogenesis promoting genes such as RSPO3. Moreover, the results also showed that WXKL improved cardiac function and prevented histopathological injury and apoptosis. Conclusion. The present study demonstrated that WXKL might play an important role in inhibiting inflammation, renin-angiotensin system, and apoptosis. It might be a promising Chinese medicine in the treatment of patients with myocardial infarction