Graphics and Space

Facing increasingly educated, sophisticated, and aware markets, brands are challenged to push their boundaries and integrate the vocabulary of design in all of their expressions, including retail. While lifestyle brands march into this promising retail territory, designers and creative directors are encouraged to experiment in the way they approach their work by broadening the array of their practices. In this book, the author us himself as an example because several of creatives featured ini this book share a similar background, fueled by a desire to express themselves through all media and expand the realm of their practices. The author thinks that it is important to comprehend the trend not only through the filter of pure design, but also through a wider cultural lens. Since brands have for better or for worse become natural extensions of people’s expressions and identities, they need to align themselves culturally with their stakeholders in all of their communication efforts, and in particular through their retail applications like the ones featured in this book

Water use efficiency of China\u27s terrestrial ecosystems and responses to drought

Water use efficiency (WUE) measures the trade-off between carbon gain and water loss of terrestrial ecosystems, and better understanding its dynamics and controlling factors is essential for predicting ecosystem responses to climate change. We assessed the magnitude, spatial patterns, and trends of WUE of China’s terrestrial ecosystems and its responses to drought using a process-based ecosystem model. During the period from 2000 to 2011, the national average annual WUE (net primary productivity (NPP)/evapotranspiration (ET)) of China was 0.79 g C kg−1 H2O. Annual WUE decreased in the southern regions because of the decrease in NPP and the increase in ET and increased in most northern regions mainly because of the increase in NPP. Droughts usually increased annual WUE in Northeast China and central Inner Mongolia but decreased annual WUE in central China. “Turning-points” were observed for southern China where moderate and extreme droughts reduced annual WUE and severe drought slightly increased annual WUE. The cumulative lagged effect of drought on monthly WUE varied by region. Our findings have implications for ecosystem management and climate policy making. WUE is expected to continue to change under future climate change particularly as drought is projected to increase in both frequency and severity

Radiation and temperature dominate the spatiotemporal variability in resilience of subtropical evergreen forests in China

Forest resilience is crucial to the mitigation of climate change, due to the enormous potential of forests to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the possible conversion of forests from net carbon sinks into carbon sources following external disturbances. Subtropical forests are suffering the highest rates of forest change, but how they are evolving in response to climate change is little known. In this study, we estimated the spatial pattern and temporal trend of the resilience of subtropical evergreen forests in China by applying the lag-one autocorrelation (AC1) method to satellite kernel normalized difference vegetation index (kNDVI) data over the past two decades and identified the influential environmental factors that affect the ecosystem resilience by developing random forest (RF) regression models. The computed long-term AC1 based on kNDVI for the 2001–2020 period depicts considerable spatial variability in the resilience of the subtropical evergreen forests in China, with lower resilience at lower latitudes. The RF regression analysis suggests that the spatial variability in the forest resilience can be re-established by forest and climatic variables, and is largely affected by climate, with the three most influential variables being solar radiation (SR, %incMSE = 20.7 ± 1.8%), vapor pressure deficit (VPD, %incMSE = 13.8 ± 0.2%) and minimum temperature (Tmin, %incMSE = 13.3 ± 1.2%). Higher forest resilience is more likely to be located in areas with less radiation stress, adequate water availability, and less warming. Trend analysis shows a declining trend for the resilience of subtropical evergreen forests in China since the 2000s but an increasing forest resilience in the last decade, which is mainly dominated by temperature changes, including average and minimum temperatures. Considering the expected warming-dominated period in times of rapid climatic change, we suggest potential critical responses for subtropical forest productivity to the disturbances should be of greater concern in the future

FisherMP: fully parallel algorithm for detecting combinatorial motifs from large ChIP-seq datasets.

Detecting binding motifs of combinatorial transcription factors (TFs) from chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) experiments is an important and challenging computational problem for understanding gene regulations. Although a number of motif-finding algorithms have been presented, most are either time consuming or have sub-optimal accuracy for processing large-scale datasets. In this article, we present a fully parallelized algorithm for detecting combinatorial motifs from ChIP-seq datasets by using Fisher combined method and OpenMP parallel design. Large scale validations on both synthetic data and 350 ChIP-seq datasets from the ENCODE database showed that FisherMP has not only super speeds on large datasets, but also has high accuracy when compared with multiple popular methods. By using FisherMP, we successfully detected combinatorial motifs of CTCF, YY1, MAZ, STAT3 and USF2 in chromosome X, suggesting that they are functional co-players in gene regulation and chromosomal organization. Integrative and statistical analysis of these TF-binding peaks clearly demonstrate that they are not only highly coordinated with each other, but that they are also correlated with histone modifications. FisherMP can be applied for integrative analysis of binding motifs and for predicting cis-regulatory modules from a large number of ChIP-seq datasets

Integrated transcriptomic analysis of Trichosporon Asahii uncovers the core genes and pathways of fluconazole resistance.

Trichosporon asahii (T. asahii) has emerged as a dangerous pathogen that causes rare but life-threatening infections. Its resistance to certain antifungal agents makes it difficult to treat, especially for patients undergoing long-term antibiotic therapy. In this study, we performed a series of fluconazole (FLC) perturbation experiments for two T. asahii strains, a clinical isolate stain CBS 2479 (T2) and an environmental isolate strain CBS 8904 (T8), to uncover potential genes and pathways involved in FLC resistance. We achieved 10 transcriptomes of T2 and T8 that were based on dose and time series of FLC perturbations. Systematic comparisons of the transcriptomes revealed 32 T2 genes and 25 T8 genes that are highly sensitive to different FLC perturbations. In both T2 and T8 strains with the phenotype of FLC resistance, the processes of oxidation-reduction and transmembrane transport were detected to be significantly changed. The antifungal susceptibility testing of FLC and penicillin revealed their resistance pathways are merged. Accumulated mutations were found in 564 T2 and 225 T8 genes, including four highly mutated genes that are functionally related to the target of rapamycin complex (TOR). Our study provides abundant data towards genome-wide understanding of the molecular basis of FLC resistance in T. asahii

Reliable Password Hardening Service with Opt-Out

As the most dominant authentication mechanism, password-based authentication suffers catastrophic offline password guessing attacks once the authentication server is compromised and the password database is leaked. Password hardening (PH) service, an external/third-party crypto service, has been recently proposed to strengthen password storage and reduce the damage of authentication server compromise. However, all existing schemes are unreliable because they overlook the important restorable property: PH service opt-out. In existing PH schemes, once the authentication server has subscribed to a PH service, it must adopt this service forever, even if it wants to stop the external/third-party PH service and restore its original password storage (or subscribe to another PH service). To fill the gap, we propose a new PH service called PW-Hero that equips its PH service with an option to terminate its use (i.e., opt-out). In PW-Hero, password authentication is strengthened against offline attacks by adding external secret spices to password records. With the opt-out property, authentication servers can proactively request to end the PH service after successful authentications. Then password records can be securely migrated to their traditional salted hash state, ready for subscription to other PH services. Besides, PW-Hero achieves all existing desirable properties, such as comprehensive verifiability, rate limits against online attacks, and user privacy. We define PW-Hero as a suite of protocols that meet desirable properties and build a simple, secure, and efficient instance. Moreover, we develop a prototype implementation and evaluate its performance, which shows the practicality of our PW-Hero service

An Effective Ensemble Framework for Multi-Objective Optimization

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61876110, 61876163, and 61836005, a grant from ANR/RGC Joint Research Scheme sponsored by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China and France National Research Agency (Project No. A-CityU101/16), the Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Key Program Grant U1713212, and CONACyT grant no. 221551.Peer reviewedPostprin

Construction of lncRNA prognostic model related to cuproptosis in esophageal carcinoma

Background: Esophageal carcinoma (ESCA) is one of the most prevalent malignant tumors in the world. The prognosis of patients has significantly improved with the development of surgery, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. But the 5-year survival rate of ESCA patients is still incredibly low. Cuproptosis is a type of mitochondrial cell death induced by copper. It is unclear how cuproptosis-related lncRNAs (CRLs) affect ESCA prognosis.Methods: In this study, we obtained the clinical data of ESCA patients, the transcriptome data from TCGA and identified CRLs by co-expression analysis, lasso regression, and cox regression analysis, to build a prognostic model. Then we validated the prognostic model using the Kaplan-Meier curve, cox regression analysis, and ROC, to create a nomogram based on risk score to forecast the prognosis of ESCA. Next, the immune escape of the CRLs was examined using the TIDE algorithm to assess its sensitivity to possible ESCA medications.Results: To predict the prognosis of ESCA patients, we created a predictive model using 6 CRLs (AC034199.1, AC125437.1, AC107032.2, CTBP1-DT, AL024508.1, and AC008610.1), validated by the Kaplan-Meier and ROC curves. The model has a higher diagnostic value compared to other clinical features. The 6 CRLs expressed high in TCGA and ESCA specimens. Enrichment analysis revealed CRLs largely contributed to the interaction between cytokines and their receptors as well as complement coagulation cascades. The immunity escape analysis demonstrated that immunotherapy had a worse effect in the low-risk group than in the high-risk group. Additionally, we screened out potential antineoplastic drugs according to the results of the immunoassay and obtained 5 drugs, including CP-466722, crizotinib, MS-275, KIN001-135, and CP-466722.Conclusion: The prognosis of patients with ESCA can be correctly predicted by the 6 CRLs chosen from this investigation. It lays the groundwork for more investigation into the ESCA mechanism and the identification of novel therapeutic targets

Experimental study on shear mechanical properties of improved loess based on rubber particle incorporation and EICP technology

Loess is often not suitable for direct use as a roadbed or building foundation due to its collapsibility, and it needs to be improved by adding curing agents. Taking the loess in Xi’an area as the research object, the reinforcement of loess was carried out using waste tire rubber particles and Enzyme Induced Carbonate Precipitation (EICP) technology. The change of shear strength and shear strength index of improved soil with rubber content and rubber particle size under different strengthening conditions was analyzed, and the strengthening mechanism was also expounded. The results show that rubber powder can improve the shear strength of loess to a certain extent, and the combination of EICP technology can increase the strength of improved loess by nearly 50%. In addition, rubber particles have a certain inhibitory effect on EICP, and the shear strength growth rate decreases with the increase of rubber content. When the rubber particle size is 1–2 mm, the shear strength growth rate is the highest. It is suggested that when adding rubber particles or adding rubber particles combined with EICP technology is used to improve loess, the rubber particle size should be selected as 1–2 mm, and the content is about 10%. The test results can provide a scientific basis for the reduction of geologic disasters in loess areas, and at the same time can provide a non-polluting way for the disposal of waste tires