mlsa-iai-msu-lab/ru_sci_bench_zho_cite_reranking huggingface dataset:
The critical role of apoptosis in mesenchymal stromal cell therapeutics and implications in homeostasis and normal tissue repair

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been extensively tested for the treatment of numerous clinical conditions and have demonstrated good safety but mixed efficacy. Although this outcome can be attributed in part to the heterogeneity of cell preparations, the lack of mechanistic understanding and tools to establish cell pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, as well as the poorly defined criteria for patient stratification, have hampered the design of informative clinical trials. We and others have demonstrated that MSCs can rapidly undergo apoptosis after their infusion. Apoptotic MSCs are phagocytosed by monocytes/ macrophages that are then reprogrammed to become anti-inflammatory cells. MSC apoptosis occurs when the cells are injected into patients who harbor activated cytotoxic T or NK cells. Therefore, the activation state of cytotoxic T or NK cells can be used as a biomarker to predict clinical responses to MSC treatment. Building on a large body of preexisting data, an alternative view on the mechanism of MSCs is that an inflammation-dependent MSC secretome is largely responsible for their immunomodulatory activity. We will discuss how these different mechanisms can coexist and are instructed by two different types of MSC "licensing": one that is cell-contact dependent and the second that is mediated by inflammatory cytokines. The varied and complex mechanisms by which MSCs can orchestrate inflammatory responses and how this function is specifically driven by inflammation support a physiological role for tissue stroma in tissue homeostasis, and it acts as a sensor of damage and initiator of tissue repair by reprogramming the inflammatory environment.
Carbon isotope ratios of n-alkanoic acids: new organic proxies for paleo-productivity in Antarctic ponds

Primary productivity in the Antarctic aquatic environment with simple ecosystems is sensitive to climate and environmental fluctuations. We investigated δ~(13)C values for n-alkanoic acids derived from phototrophic organisms in a lacustrine sediment core (IIL3) to indicate primary productivity in ponds on Inexpressible Island in the western Ross Sea, Antarctica. Short-chain n-alkanoic acids (C_(14)-C_(18)) were abundant in the IIL3 sediment profile. The carbon isotope ratios of short-chain n-alkanoic acids in the sediment samples and floating microbial mats were similar, indicating that the short-chain n-alkanoic acids in the IIL3 sediment profile predominantly originated from phototrophic organisms. The δ~(13)C values for the short-chain n-alkanoic acids varied widely through the sediment profile, and 13C-enrichment of n-alkanoic acids was most likely related to high productivity due to carbon-limited conditions caused by enhanced photosynthetic efficiency. The δ~(13)C values for the n-alkanoic acids changed over the past 3200 years in similar ways to organic proxies for aquatic productivity (n-alkanoic acid and sterol sedimentary fluxes). C16 n-alkanoic acid was enriched in 13C in periods of high aquatic productivity ~750-1650 and 3000-3200 a BP but depleted in 13C in periods of relatively low productivity ~150-600 and 2500-3000 a BP. The results indicated that carbon isotope ratios of lipids from phototrophic organisms could be used as new proxies to reconstruct paleo-productivity in Antarctic lakes and ponds and therefore improve our understanding of past climate changes.
High frequency of alternative splicing variants of the oncogene Focal Adhesion Kinase in neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas and breast

The characteristic genetic abnormality of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs), a heterogeneous group of tumors found in various organs, remains to be identified. Here, based on the analysis of the splicing variants of an oncogene Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) in The Cancer Genome Atlas datasets that contain 9193 patients of 33 cancer subtypes, we found that Box 6/Box 7-containing FAK variants (FAK~(6/7)) were observed in 7 (87.5%) of 8 pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinomas and 20 (11.76%) of 170 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDACs). We tested FAK variants in 157 tumor samples collected from Chinese patients with pancreatic tumors, and found that FAK~(6/7) was positive in 34 (75.6%) of 45 pancreatic NENs, 19 (47.5%) of 40 pancreatic solid pseudopapillary neoplasms, and 2 (2.9%) of 69 PDACs. We further tested FAK splicing variants in breast neuroendocrine carcinoma (BrNECs), and found that FAK~(6/7) was positive in 14 (93.3%) of 15 BrNECs but 0 in 23 non-NEC breast cancers. We explored the underlying mechanisms and found that a splicing factor serine/arginine repetitive matrix protein 4 (SRRM4) was overexpressed in FAK~(6/7)-positive pancreatic tumors and breast tumors, which promoted the formation of FAK~(6/7) in cells. These results suggested that FAK~(6/7) could be a biomarker of NENs and represent a potential therapeutic target for these orphan diseases.
HfAlO-based ferroelectric memristors for artificial synaptic plasticity

Memristors have received much attention for their ability to achieve multilevel storage and synaptic learning. However, the main factor that hinders the application of memristors to simulate neural synapses is the instability of the formation and breakage of conductive filaments inside traditional memristors, which makes it difficult to simulate the function of biological synapses in practice. However, the resistance change of ferroelectric memristors relies on the polarization inversion of the ferroelectric thin film, thus avoiding the above problem. In this study, a Pd/HfAlO/LSMO/STO/Si ferroelectric memristor is proposed, which can achieve resistive switching properties through the combined action of ferroelectricity and oxygen vacancies. The I-V curves show that the device has good stability and uniformity. In addition, the effect of pulse sequence modulation on the conductance was investigated, and the biological synaptic function and learning behavior were simulated successfully. The results of the above studies provide a basis for the development of ferroelectric memristors with neurosynaptic-like behaviors.
Unveiling the potential of space syntax approach for revitalizing historic urban areas: A case study of Yushan Historic District, China

Historic urban areas are a crucial component of urban heritage, embodying the collective memory of urban development and possessing distinctive urban textures and cultural attributes. However, the growing impact of globalization on the urban environment poses challenges to historic urban areas, including diminishing social recognition, aging infrastructure, loss of vitality, and cultural erosion. To address these challenges, this study proposes a novel approach to revitalizing historic urban areas by employing space syntax methodology. The study focuses on Yushan Historic District in China as a case study and uses spatial models within space syntax to describe, analyze, and interpret its urban morphology. The objective is to enhance urban vitality while preserving the heritage fabric of historic urban areas. Additionally, it aims to contribute to the advancement of space syntax research, specifically in the context of urban renewal and revitalization of historic districts. The findings reveal the spatial factors that contribute to the generation of vitality within the district, identify areas requiring intervention, and provide strategies for revitalizing historic urban areas. This study demonstrates the potential of utilizing a space syntax approach in urban revitalization, providing valuable guidance for effectively conserving urban heritage within the context of urban renewal.
Photonic generation of ASK microwave signals with SSB format

Optical beating is the usual approach to generation of microwave signals. However, the highest frequency achievable for microwave signals is limited by the bandwidths of optoelectronic devices. To maximize the microwave frequency with a limited bandwidth of a photodetector (PD) and relieve the bandwidth bottleneck, we propose to generate microwave signals with the single sideband (SSB) format by beating a continuous wave (CW) light with an optical SSB signal. By simply adjusting the frequency difference between the CW light and the carrier of the optical SSB signal, the frequency of the generated microwave SSB signal is changed correspondingly. In the experiment, amplitude shift keying (ASK) microwave signals with the SSB format are successfully generated with different carrier frequencies and coding bit rates, and the recovered coding information agrees well with the original pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS) of 2~7 - 1 bits. The proposed approach can significantly relieve the bandwidth restriction set by optoelectronic devices in high-speed microwave communication systems.
New insights into the carotenoid biosynthesis in Torreya grandis kernels

Torreya grandis is a characteristic rare economic tree species in subtropical mountainous areas. The nut has a variety of bioactive compounds, such as polyphenols and vitamins. However, the carotenoids compositions and its regulatory mechanisms underlying carotenoid biosynthesis in kernels remain unknown. Here, the major carotenoids in the kernel were analyzed. The result showed that lutein and bcarotene were the predominant carotenoids in the kernel, while low levels of a-carotenoid and zeaxanthin were detected. Lutein and bcarotene were decreased during the maturation of kernel. Expression analysis by RNA-seq and qRT-PCR indicated that the expressions of TgCYP97A3 and TgLCYB were also reduced during the maturation of kernel. The contents of lutein or b-carotene were obviously increased in tobacco transiently overexpressing TgCYP97A3 or TgLCYB. Moreover, DPPH radical scavenging activity and FRAP were also significantly enhanced. In addition, several MYB and WRKY transcription factors TgMYBS3, TgMYB48 and TgWRKY11 were identified to positively regulate the TgCYP97A3 expression, while TgMYB48, TgWRKY2 and TgWRKY11 could upregulate the TgLCYB expression. The illustration of carotenoids biosynthesis and its molecular mechanism in kernels not only provides a basis for understanding carotenoids biosynthesis in kernels, but also enables the use of molecular biotechnology to develop new health products rich in carotenoids based on T. grandis nuts.
Production quality and pricing strategy for substitutable products under comparison effects

Comparison effects have been studied extensively in many fields. In particular, existing operations management articles have discussed the impact of comparison effects on enterprises' production and pricing decisions. Research has also shown that consumers' purchasing decisions are primarily determined by three factors: product quality, selling price, and comparison effects. The current study introduces the concepts of social and temporal comparison effects to examine how comparison effects influence a monopolist's production quality and pricing strategy for substitutable products. Results reveal the following: (1) Setting different prices for even two types of substitutable products with negligible quality differences can divide customers into three groups under the influence of social comparison effects in a single-stage model. (2) The monopolist should avoid using a price discrimination strategy in which products with a short market life cycle have the same quality but different prices. (3) When the market life cycle of products is sufficiently long in the single-product market and the market with two substitutable products, the monopolist's optimal choice in the second stage is to keep production quality constant and increase the selling price. Consequently, the number of buyers does not decrease because of temporal comparison effects. Therefore, the firm increases its revenue. (4) For the market with two substitutable products with quality differences, one approximate optimal strategy for the enterprise in the second stage is to keep the selling price constant with the assumption that product quality cannot be adjusted after the first period. At this point, the consumption situation in the market is the same as that in the first stage. Therefore, when no external constraints exist, the monopolist firm can obtain more benefits in the second stage than in the first stage by exploiting the temporal comparison effects of consumers in the second stage. (5) When consumer identity information can be confirmed in the market, social comparison effects, similar to temporal comparison effects, could help the enterprise increase its price and profit while maintaining product quality. These social and temporal comparison effects constrain consumers. Thus, the number of people who continue to buy products does not decrease.
新生儿脾破裂超声表现1例

讨论脾破裂为一种较常见的腹部急症,但在新生儿中非常罕见。脾破裂的典型超声表现为脾实质出现不规则的低回声、无回声或增强回声区,伴脾脏包膜不连续、腹腔积血。然而本例患儿的超声表现并不典型,表现为脾脏明显增大,整体回声减低、增粗,未见脾包膜下及实质内血肿回声,脾周未见其余血块回声。由于该例患儿腹腔内大量血性腹水积存,腹内压力很高,破裂的脾脏形态饱满,位置局限,包膜下破口不易显示。在该病例中,CT能够直观显示脾破裂的直接和间接征象,结合增强扫描检查可以更加清晰地分辨残余的脾脏组织,但存在费用高、增强CT的辐射时间长,且不能移动到床旁等局限性。超声检查简便及时,动态的扫查可以较为准确地对脾破裂做出定性诊断,并对破裂位置、深度做出早期判断,对早期的临床治疗有极大的指导和帮助作用。若为进一步明确创伤部位、程度及血运情况时,超声造影也是一种可以明显提高脾破裂诊断率的方法。
氨甲环酸预防产后出血的有效性和安全性:基于18 649例孕产妇的系统综述和meta分析

产后出血是一种严重的产后并发症,是全球孕产妇死亡的主要原因之一,约占所有孕产妇死亡的1/4。对于产后出血,预防是关键。氨甲环酸是一种抗纤溶剂,因止血作用明显,已广泛用于各种外科手术中。氨甲环酸作为产后出血的有效治疗方法已备受关注,但目前综合评估氨甲环酸防治产后出血的有效性及潜在不良反应的相关研究较为有限。2023年11月24日,BMC Pregnancy Childbirth在线发表了一篇meta分析,对目前氨甲环酸预防产后出血的有效性和安全性的循证依据进行了更新。
Orbital radius keeping of floating partial space elevator in cargo transposition

A floating partial space elevator (PSE) is a PSE with a floating main satellite. This work aims to keep the orbital radius of the main satellite of a floating PSE in cargo transposition without the use of thrusts. A six-degree-of-freedom two-piece dumbbell model was built to analyze the dynamics of a floating PSE. By adjusting the climber's moving speed and rolling of the end body, the main satellite's orbital radius can be kept. A novel control strategy using a proportional shrinking horizon model predictive control law containing a self-stability modified law is proposed to stabilize both the orbital and libration states to regulate the speed of only the climber. Simulation results validated the proposed control strategy. The system provides a successful approach to the desired equilibrium by the end of the transposition.
Astrometric calibration and source characterisation of the latest generation neuromorphic event-based cameras for space imaging

As an emerging approach to space situational awareness and space imaging, the practical use of an event-based camera (EBC) in space imaging for precise source analysis is still in its infancy. The nature of event-based space imaging and data collection needs to be further explored to develop more effective event-based space imaging systems and advance the capabilities of event-based tracking systems with improved target measurement models. Moreover, for event measurements to be meaningful, a framework must be investigated for EBC calibration to project events from pixel array coordinates in the image plane to coordinates in a target resident space object’s reference frame. In this paper, the traditional techniques of conventional astronomy are reconsidered to properly utilise the EBC for space imaging and space situational awareness. This paper presents the techniques and systems used for calibrating an EBC for reliable and accurate measurement acquisition. These techniques are vital in building event-based space imaging systems capable of real-world space situational awareness tasks. By calibrating sources detected using the EBC, the spatiotemporal characteristics of detected sources or “event sources” can be related to the photometric characteristics of the underlying astrophysical objects. Finally, these characteristics are analysed to establish a foundation for principled processing and observing techniques which appropriately exploit the capabilities of the EBC.
Urban Earthquake Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping at the Microscale Based on the Catastrophe Progression Method

Vulnerability assessment and mapping play a crucial role in disaster risk reduction and planning for adaptation to a future earthquake.Turkey is one of the most at-risk countries for earthquake disasters worldwide.Therefore,it is imperative to develop effective earthquake vulnerability assessment and mapping at practically relevant scales.In this study,a holistic earthquake vulnerability index that addresses the multidimensional nature of earthquake vulnerability was constructed.With the aim of representing the vulnerability as a continuum across space,buildings were set as the smallest unit of analysis.The study area is in Izmit City of Turkey,with the exposed human and structural elements falling inside the most hazardous zone of seismicity.The index was represented by the building vulnerability,socioeconomic vulnerability,and vulnerability of the built environment.To minimize the subjectivity and uncertainty that the vulnerability indices based on expert knowledge are suffering from,an extension of the catastrophe progression method for the objective weighing of indicators was proposed.Earthquake vulnerability index and components were mapped,a local spatial autocorrelation metric was employed where the hotspot maps demarcated the earthquake vulnerability,and the study quantitatively revealed an estimate of people at risk.With its objectivity and straightforward implementation,the method can aid decision support for disaster risk reduction and emergency management.
An Efficient Method for Identifying the Inactive Transmission Constraints in a Network-constrained Unit Commitment

Network-constrained unit commitment (NCUC) is one of the most widely used applications in power system and electricity market operations. According to empirical evidence, some of the transmission constraints in a NCUC are inactive. Identifying and eliminating these inactive constraints can improve the efficiency. In this paper, an efficient method is first proposed for identifying the inactive transmission constraints. The physical and economic insights of NCUC are carefully considered and utilized. Both the generating costs and power transfer distribution factor (PTDF) are considered. Not only redundant constraints but also non-binding constraints can be identified via the proposed method. An acceleration method that combines relaxation-based neighborhood search and improved relaxation inducement is proposed for further reducing the computation time. The case study shows that the proposed method can significantly reduce the number of transmission constraints and substantially improve the efficiency of NCUC without impacting the optimality.
Deep Learning-based Robust DC Fault Protection Scheme for Meshed HVDC Grids

Fast and reliable detection of faults is a significant technical challenge in transient-based protection for a modular multi-level converter (MMC) based high voltage direct current (HVDC) system. This is because existing protection schemes rely heavily upon setting a complicated protective threshold, the failure of which causes high DC-fault currents in HVDC grids, and MMC is prone to such strong transient currents. In this context, this paper proposes a DC-line fault diagnosis technique based on a tuned long-short-term memory (LSTM) algorithm to improve the response and accuracy of transient-based protection. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) extracts the transient features of DC-line voltages in the frequency-time domain. Many healthy and faulty samples are incorporated during training even by considering the noise influence. After training, numerous test samples are run to evaluate the proposed algorithm's robustness under various fault conditions. Test results show the proposed algorithm can detect DC faults and has a high recognition accuracy of 98.6%. Compared to contemporary techniques, it can perform well to identify DC-line faults because of the efficient training of characteristic features.
SiC JFETs Modular Cascaded Method with Active Clamp Control Strategy for DC Solid-state Circuit Breaker

Power semiconductor devices cascaded topology is one of the most common solutions for solid-state circuit breakers (SSCBs) working in medium-voltage DC systems. However, when the number of cascaded devices is large, current series technologies of power semiconductor devices will be difficult to be applied since with uneven voltage sharing problems. Thus, this paper proposes a novel cascade method of multi-SiC JFETs based on modules cascaded. This method consists of two parts: one is a single-gate driver cascaded SiC JFETs topology which is used to form the module, the other one is an active clamp control strategy which ensures that each module is protected from overvoltage when modules are cascaded. The proposed cascade method can effectively suppress voltage overshoot of cascading power devices in the switching process. Based on the proposed cascade method, a 5kV/63A SSCB prototype is designed. Finally, an experiment is conducted based on the designed SSCB. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed cascaded method for SSCB.
D2ANet: Difference-aware attention network for multi-level change detection from satellite imagery

Recognizing dynamic variations on the ground, especially changes caused by various natural disasters, is critical for assessing the severity of the damage and directing the disaster response. However, current workflows for disaster assessment usually require human analysts to observe and identify damaged buildings, which is labor-intensive and unsuitable for large-scale disaster areas. In this paper, we propose a difference-aware attention network (D2ANet) for simultaneous building localization and multi-level change detection from the dual-temporal satellite imagery. Considering the differences in different channels in the features of pre-and post-disaster images, we develop a dual-temporal aggregation module using paired features to excite change-sensitive channels of the features and learn the global change pattern. Since the nature of building damage caused by disasters is diverse in complex environments, we design a difference-attention module to exploit local correlations among the multi-level changes, which improves the ability to identify damage on different scales. Extensive experiments on the large-scale building damage assessment dataset xBD demonstrate that our approach provides new state-of-the-art results. Source code is publicly available at https://github.com/mj129/D2ANet.