In Situ Deposition of Drug and Gene Nanoparticles on a Patterned Supramolecular Hydrogel to Construct a Directionally Osteochondral Plug

The integrated repair of bone and cartilage boasts advantages for osteochondral restoration such as a long-term repair effect and less deterioration compared to repairing cartilage alone.Constructing multifactorial,spatially oriented scaffolds to stimulate osteochondral regeneration,has immense significance.Herein,targeted drugs,namely kartogenin@polydopamine(KGN@PDA)nanoparticles for cartilage repair and miRNA@calcium phosphate(miRNA@CaP)NPs for bone regeneration,were in situ deposited on a patterned supramolecular-assembled 2-ureido-4[lH]-pyrimidinone(UPy)modified gelation hydrogel film,facilitated by the dynamic and responsive coordination and complexation of metal ions and their ligands.This hydrogel film can be rolled into a cylindrical plug,mimicking the Haversian canal structure of natural bone.The resultant hydrogel demonstrates stable mechanical properties,a self-healing ability,a high capability for reactive oxygen species capture,and controlled release of KGN and miR-26a.In vitro,KGN@PDA and miRNA@CaP promote chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells via the JNK/RUNX1 and GSK-3β/β-catenin pathways,respectively.In vivo,the osteochondral plug exhibits optimal subchondral bone and cartilage regeneration,evidenced by a significant increase in glycosaminoglycan and collagen accumulation in specific zones,along with the successful integration of neocartilage with subchondral bone.This biomaterial delivery approach represents a significant toward improved osteochondral repair.

Species’ geographical range, environmental range and traits lead to specimen collection preference of dominant plant species of grasslands in Northern China

Many different factors,such as species traits,socio-economic factors,geographical and environmental factors,can lead to specimen collection preference.This study aims to determine whether grassland specimen collection in China is preferred by species traits(i.e.,plant height,flowering and fruiting period),environmental range(i.e.,the temperature and precipitation range)and geographical range(i.e.,distribution range and altitudinal range).Ordinary least squares models and phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models were used to analyze the relationships between specimen number and the explanatory variables.Random Forest models were then used to find the most parsimonious multivariate model.The results showed that interannual variation in specimen number between 1900 and 2020 was considerable.Specimen number of these species in southeast China was notably lower than that in northwest China.Environmental range and geographical range of species had significant positive correlations with specimen number.In addition,there were relatively weak but significant associations between specimen number and species trait(i.e.,plant height and flowering and fruiting period).Random Forest models indicated that distribution range was the most important variable,followed by flowering and fruiting period,and altitudinal range.These findings suggest that future floristic surveys should pay more attention to species with small geographical range,narrow environmental range,short plant height,and short flowering and fruiting period.The correction of specimen collection preference will also make the results of species distribution model,species evolution and other works based on specimen data more accurate.

Bird specimen number linked with species trait and climate niche breadth

Biological specimens are fundamental for taxonomy and flora/fauna research.More importantly,they also play crucial roles in recording environmental impacts on morphology and behavior,which is vital for biodiversity research and conservation.However,there are few systematic studies on the patterns and drivers of bird specimen number at regional scales.This study is the first attempt to examine the relationships between bird specimen number and species traits as well as climate niche breadth in China,aiming to answer two questions:1)how do species’temperature niche breadth and precipitation niche breadth influence specimen number?2)which trait is most associated with bird specimen number?The associations between bird specimen number and explanatory variables were examined using ordinary least squares,generalized linear models,phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models,and multiple comparisons.The results showed that Muscicapidae was the family with the highest specimen number,and Passeriformes was the order with the highest specimen number.Bird specimen number significantly increased with larger temperature niche breadth and precipitation niche breadth.Specimen number was also positively associated with geographic range size,habitat specificity,hunting vulnerability and clutch size,but negatively associated with body size.These findings suggest that future bird specimen collection should pay more attention to birds with limited ecological niches,large body sizes,and small clutch sizes.This research enhances the use of bird specimen data to study and preserve biodiversity.

Robust adaptive leaderless consensus of unknown non-minimum phase linear multi-agent systems subject to disturbances and/or unmodeled dynamics

This article investigates the problem of robust adaptive leaderless consensus for heterogeneous uncertain nonminimumphase linear multi-agent systems over directed communication graphs. Each agent is assumed tobe of unknown nominal dynamics and also subject to external disturbances and/or unmodeled dynamics. Anovel distributed robust adaptive control strategy is proposed. It is shown that the robust adaptive leaderlessconsensus problem is solved with the proposed control strategy under some sufficient conditions. Two examplesare provided to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control strategy.

Distributed Adaptive Output Consensus of Unknown Heterogeneous Non-Minimum Phase Multi-Agent Systems

This article addresses the leader-following output consensus problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems with unknown agent parameters under directed graphs.The dynamics of followers are allowed to be non-minimum phase with unknown arbitrary individual relative degrees.This is contrary to many existing works on distributed adaptive control schemes where agent dynamics are required to be minimum phase and often of the same relative degree.A distributed adaptive pole placement control scheme is developed,which consists of a distributed observer and an adaptive pole placement control law.It is shown that under the proposed distributed adaptive control scheme,all signals in the closed-loop system are bounded and the outputs of all the followers track the output of the leader asymptotically.The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by one practical example and one numerical example.

Lyapunov-Based Output Containment Control of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems With Markovian Switching Topologies and Distributed Delays

This paper considers the mean square output containment control problem for heterogeneous multi-agent systems(MASs)with randomly switching topologies and nonuniform distributed delays.By modeling the switching topologies as a continuous-time Markov process and taking the distributed delays into consideration,a novel distributed containment observer is proposed to estimate the convex hull spanned by the leaders'states.A novel distributed output feedback containment controller is then designed without using the prior knowledge of distributed delays.By constructing a novel switching Lyapunov functional,the output containment control problem is then solved in the sense of mean square under an easily-verifiable sufficient condition.Finally,two numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

A theoretical insight about co-pyrolysis reaction of natural gas and coal

The co-pyrolysis of natural gas and coal is a promising way for the production of acetylene due to its high efficiency for energy and hydrogen utilization.This work investigated the thermodynamics for the copyrolysis reaction of natural gas and coal using density functional theory.The favorable reaction conditions are presented in the form of phase diagrams.The calculation results show that the extra amount of methane may benefit the production of acetylene in the co-pyrolysis reaction,and the C/H ratio of 1:1,temperature around 3000 K and pressure at 0.1 MPa are most favorable.The results would provide basic data for related industrial process for the production of acetylene.

Endemic medicinal plant distribution correlated with stable climate,precipitation,and cultural diversity

Medicinal plants provide crucial ecosystem services,especially in developing countries such as China,which harbors diverse endemic medicinal plant species with substantial cultural and economic value.Accordingly,understanding the patterns and drivers of medicinal plant distribution is critical.However,few studies have investigated the patterns and drivers of endemic medicinal plants distribution in China.Here,we linked endemic medicinal plants distribution with possible explanatory variables,i.e.,paleoclimate change,contemporary climate,altitudinal range and ethnic minority human population size at the prefecture city level in China.Our results show that endemic medicinal plants are concentrated in southern China,especially in southwestern China.Notably,both endemic medicinal plant species richness and the ratio of endemic medicinal plant species richness are negatively associated with glacialinterglacial anomaly in temperature,and positively associated with contemporary precipitation and altitudinal range.In addition,we found that endemic medicinal plant species richness is positively associated with ethnic minority population sizes as well as its ratio to the overall population size.These findings suggest that the distribution of endemic medicinal plants is determined by multiple drivers.Furthermore,our findings stress that dramatic future climate changes and massive anthropogenic activities in southern China pose great challenges to the conservation of China's endemic medicinal plants.

Opportunistic admission and resource allocation for slicing enhanced IoT networks

Network slicing is envisioned as one of the key techniques to meet the extremely diversified service requirements of the Internet of Things(IoT)as it provides an enhanced user experience and elastic resource configuration.In the context of slicing enhanced IoT networks,both the Service Provider(SP)and Infrastructure Provider(InP)face challenges of ensuring efficient slice construction and high profit in dynamic environments.These challenges arise from randomly generated and departed slice requests from end-users,uncertain resource availability,and multidimensional resource allocation.Admission and resource allocation for distinct demands of slice requests are the key issues in addressing these challenges and should be handled effectively in dynamic environments.To this end,we propose an Opportunistic Admission and Resource allocation(OAR)policy to deal with the issues of random slicing requests,uncertain resource availability,and heterogeneous multi-resources.The key idea of OAR is to allow the SP to decide whether to accept slice requests immediately or defer them according to the load and price of resources.To cope with the random slice requests and uncertain resource availability,we formulated this issue as a Markov Decision Process(MDP)to obtain the optimal admission policy,with the aim of maximizing the system reward.Furthermore,the buyer-seller game theory approach was adopted to realize the optimal resource allocation,while motivating each SP and InP to maximize their rewards.Our numerical results show that the proposed OAR policy can make reasonable decisions effectively and steadily,and outperforms the baseline schemes in terms of the system reward.

Erratum to “A robust beam tracking scheme for millimeter wave HetNets” [Digit. Commun. Network. 8 (6) (2022) 1115–1121]

The Editorial office regrets that a note about the affiliation of the first author Qing Xue was omitted in the initially published version of this paper.The note is that Qing Xue was co-first affiliated with the UESTC and CQUPT for the work of this paper.

MRTF-A通过HOTAIR调控非小细胞肺癌细胞A549的增殖及迁移

背景与目的非小细胞肺癌(non-small cell lung cancer, NSCLC)作为肺癌的一种,由于其高发病率一直备受关注。准确揭示其发病机制对于NSCLC的诊断以及治疗具有重要的指导意义。MATF-A作为转录调控因子在多种肿瘤的发生发展过程中发挥着重要作用,可以调控多种肿瘤细胞的迁移过程。HOTAIR是近年研究发现的一个长链非编码RNA,在多种肿瘤中异常表达并参与多种肿瘤的增殖及迁移的进程。本研究旨在探究MRTF-A通过HOTAIR调控NSCLC的增殖及迁移进程。方法构建MRTF-A的过表达质粒及干扰质粒,检测对A549细胞增殖及迁移的影响。设计合成HOTAIR的si RNA检测对A549细胞增殖及迁移的作用。q RT-PCR检测MRTF-A对HOTAIR表达的调控作用。构建HOTAIR的启动子检测MRTF-A对HOTAIR启动子活性的影响。结果过表达MRTF-A促进A549细胞的增殖,沉默MRTF-A的表达抑制A549细胞的增殖及迁移。干扰HOTAIR的表达抑制A549细胞的增殖及迁移。MRTF-A能够影响HOTAIR的表达,同时能够调控HOTAIR启动子的活性。结论 MRTF-A通过HOTAIR调控NSCLCA549细胞的增殖及迁移进程。

TMSN-AA纳米复合物促进人胚胎干细胞向心肌细胞分化的潜在机制研究

目的研究优化后的TMSN-AA纳米复合物促进人胚胎干细胞(h ESCs)心肌分化的可能性,并探讨其诱导心肌分化的潜在机制。方法采用优化抗坏血酸(AA)负载的荧光TRITC介孔二氧化硅纳米粒子(TMSN-AA)作为诱导剂,诱导h ESCs细胞心肌分化。通过荧光定位检测该诱导剂进入细胞情况,流式细胞仪检测其进入细胞后对细胞存活与凋亡的影响,Western blot检测TMSN-AA诱导后,心肌标记基因cTn I、FLK-1以及干性基因OCT4和SOX2的表达以及相关信号通路ERK1/2的激活情况。结果荧光定位发现TMSN-AA可以靶向进入h ESCs细胞,流式细胞仪分析结果显示,二氧化硅和荧光染料四甲基罗丹明修饰介孔二氧化硅不会影响h ESCs的存活和凋亡;且TMSN-AA诱导后,干性基因OCT4和SOX2均下调,且上调心肌标记基因c Tn I和FLK-1的表达。Western blot检测结果显示,TMSN-AA的处理可以激活ERK1/2信号通路,同时证实,该过程Akt信号通路并未参与其中。结论优化后的TMSN-AA纳米载体可以成功进入h ESCs细胞,并靶向诱导其心肌分化,而该诱导过程,至少在一定程度上是通过激活ERK1/2,而不是Akt信号通路实现的。

Physical Safety and Cyber Security Analysis of Multi-Agent Systems:A Survey of Recent Advances

Multi-agent systems(MASs)are typically composed of multiple smart entities with independent sensing,communication,computing,and decision-making capabilities.Nowadays,MASs have a wide range of applications in smart grids,smart manufacturing,sensor networks,and intelligent transportation systems.Control of the MASs are often coordinated through information interaction among agents,which is one of the most important factors affecting coordination and cooperation performance.However,unexpected physical faults and cyber attacks on a single agent may spread to other agents via information interaction very quickly,and thus could lead to severe degradation of the whole system performance and even destruction of MASs.This paper is concerned with the safety/security analysis and synthesis of MASs arising from physical faults and cyber attacks,and our goal is to present a comprehensive survey on recent results on fault estimation,detection,diagnosis and fault-tolerant control of MASs,and cyber attack detection and secure control of MASs subject to two typical cyber attacks.Finally,the paper concludes with some potential future research topics on the security issues of MASs.

Multicenter Clinical Study for Evaluation of Efficacy and Safety of Transdermal Fentanyl Matrix Patch in Treatment of Moderate to Severe Cancer Pain in 474 Chinese Cancer Patients

Objective: Although a new matrix formulation fentanyl has been used throughout the world for cancer pain management, few data about its efficacy and clinical outcomes associated with its use in Chinese patients have been obtained. This study aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of the new system in Chinese patients with moderate to severe cancer pain. Methods: A total of 474 patients with moderate to severe cancer pain were enrolled in this study and were treated with the new transdermal fentanyl matrix patch (TDF) up to 2 weeks. All the patients were asked to record pain intensity, side effects, quality of life (QOL), adherence and global satisfaction. The initial dose of fentanyl was 25 ?g/h titrated with opioid or according to National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines. Transdermal fentanyl was changed every three days. Results: After 2 weeks. The mean pain intensity of the 459 evaluated patients decreased significantly from 5.63?1.26 to 2.03?1.46 (P<0.0001). The total remission rate was 91.29%, of which moderate remission rate 53.16%, obvious remission rate 25.49% and complete remission rate 12.64%. The rate of adverse events was 33.75%, 18.78% of which were moderate and 3.80% were severe. The most frequent adverse events were constipation and nausea. No fatal events were observed. The quality of life was remarkably improved after the treatment (P<0.0001). Conclusion: The new TDF is effective and safe in treating patients with moderate to severe cancer pain, and can significantly improve the quality of life.

Human parvovirus B19-associated early postoperative acquired pure red cell aplasia in simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation:A case report

BACKGROUND Acquired pure red cell aplasia(aPRCA)related to human parvovirus B19(HPV B19)is rarely reported in simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation(SPKT)recipients;there has yet to be a case report of early postoperative infection.In this current study,we report the case of a Chinese patient who experienced the disease in the early postoperative period.CASE SUMMARY A 63-year-old man,with type 2 diabetes and end-stage renal disease,received a brain dead donor-derived SPKT.Immunosuppression treatment consisted of tacrolimus,prednisone,enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium(EC-MPS),and thymoglobulin combined with methylprednisolone as induction.The hemoglobin(Hb)level declined due to melena at postoperative day(POD)3,erythropoietinresistant anemia persisted,and reticulocytopenia was diagnosed at POD 20.The bone marrow aspirate showed decreased erythropoiesis and the presence of giant pronormoblasts at POD 43.Metagenomic next-generation sequencing(mNGS)of a blood sample identified HPV B19 infection at POD 66.EC-MPS was withdrawn;three cycles of intravenous immunoglobulin(IVIG)infusion therapy were administered;and tacrolimus was switched to cyclosporine.The HPV B19-associated aPRCA resolved completely and did not relapse within the 1-year follow-up period.The diminution in mNGS reads was correlated with Hb and reticulocyte count improvements.CONCLUSION HPV B19-associated aPRCA can occur at an early period after SPKT.An effective therapy regimen includes IVIG infusion and adjustment of the immunosuppressive regimen.Moreover,mNGS can be used for the diagnosis and to reflect disease progression.

Effect of Zr-doping on Pd/CexZr1-xO2 catalysts for oxidative carbonylation of phenol

Ce–Zr solid solution(CexZr1-xO2,CZO)was prepared by the citric acid sol–gel method.The CZO was then used as a support for Pd/CZO catalysts for the oxidative carbonylation of phenol to diphenyl carbonate.The Pd/CZO catalyst showed enhanced activity and diphenyl carbonate selectivity compared with the Pd/CeO2 catalyst.The catalytic performance of Pd/CZO was influenced by the calcination temperature of the CZO support.X-ray diffraction,scanning electron microscopy,N2 adsorption–desorption measurements,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and H2 temperature-programmed reduction measurements were used to investigate the effects of Zr doping and calcination temperature.The catalytic performance of Pd/CZO and Pd/CeO2 for the oxidative carbonylation of phenol was affected by several factors,including the specific surface area,Ce^3+and/or oxygen vacancy content,oxygen species type and Pd(II)content of the catalyst.All these properties were influenced by Zr doping and the calcination temperature of the CZO support.

Stabilization of a class of switched nonlinear systems

The stabilization of a class of switched nonlinear systems is investigated in the paper. The systems concerned are of （generalized） switched Byrnes-Isidori canonical form, which has all switched models in （generalized） Byrnes- Isidori canonical form. First, a stability result of switched systems is obtained. Then it is used to solve the stabilization problem of the switched nonlinear control systems. In addition, necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for a switched affine nonlinear system to be feedback equivalent to （generalized） switched Byrnes-Isidori canonical systems are presented. Finally, as an application the stability of switched lorenz systems is investigated.

Pelvic lipomatosis and renal transplantation:A case report

BACKGROUND Pelvic lipomatosis is a rare disease of unknown etiology,characterized by the overgrowth of pelvic adipose tissue that causes compression of the urinary tract including the bladder and ureters,rectum and blood vessels.The patient may progressively develop obstructive uropathy which could subsequently lead to renal failure.At present,there are no reports of renal transplantation due to uremia caused by pelvic lipomatosis.The ideal management of patients with pelvic lipomatosis after renal transplantation is not yet well-established due to the lack of literature and follow-up data.CASE SUMMARY We report a 37-year-old male patient with pelvic lipomatosis who received a successful living donor renal transplantation on July 22,2015.The operation was complicated as the iliac vessels and bladder were wrapped entirely in excessive abnormal fat.The external iliac artery and vein were located using ultrasonographic guidance.The adipose tissue around the right bladder was removed as far as possible,and the graft ureter was reimplanted into the bladder,using the Lich-Gregoir technique.At 22 mo after transplantation,graft percutaneous nephrostomy was performed under ultrasonographic guidance for urinary diversion due to hydronephrosis of the graft kidney.Follow-up at four years showed that the renal allograft function was stable.CONCLUSION When patients with pelvic lipomatosis develop renal failure,renal transplantation could be a feasible treatment strategy.

Nonsynchronized state estimation of uncertain discrete-time piecewise affine systems

This paper investigates the problem of robust H-infinity state estimation for a class of uncertain discretetime piecewise affine systems where state space instead of measurable output space partitions are assumed so that the filter implementation may not be synchronized with plant state trajectory transitions. Based on a piecewise quadratic Lyapunov function combined with S-procedure and some matrix inequality convexifying techniques, two different approaches are developed to the robust filtering design for the underlying piecewise affine systems. It is shown that the filter gains can be obtained by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities （LMIs）. Finally, a simulation example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.

Suture ligation for submucosal hemostasis during hand-sewn sideto-side duodeno-ileostomy in simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplantation

BACKGROUND Enteric anastomotic(EA)bleeding is a potentially life-threatening surgical complication associated with enteric anastomosis during simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplantation(SPKT).AIM To investigate whether suture ligation(SL)for submucosal hemostasis during hand-sewn enteric anastomosis could decrease the morbidity of early EA bleeding in SPKT.METHODS We compared the outcomes of 134 patients classified into SL(n=44)and no SL(NSL)groups(n=90).This study adheres to the declarations of Istanbul and Helsinki and all donors were neither paid nor coerced.RESULTS During the first postoperative week,the EA bleeding rate in the SL group was lower than that in the NSL group(2.27%vs 15.56%;P=0.021);no relationship was found between EA bleeding and donor age,mean pancreatic cold ischemia time,platelet count,prothrombin time international normalized rate,activated partial thromboplastin time,and thrombin time.Anastomotic leakage was observed in one case in the SL group at postoperative day(POD)14 and in one case at POD 16 in the NSL group(P=0.754).No significant difference was found between the two groups in the patient survival,pancreas graft survival,or kidney graft survival.CONCLUSION SL for submucosal hemostasis during hand-sewn enteric anastomosis in SPKT can decrease the morbidity of early EA bleeding without increasing the anastomotic leakage rate.