Overexpression of Kdm6b induces testicular differentiation in a temperature-dependent sex determination system

In reptiles,such as the red-eared slider turtle(Trachemys scripta elegans),gonadal sex determination is highly dependent on the environmental temperature during embryonic stages.This complex process,which leads to differentiation into either testes or ovaries,is governed by the finely tuned expression of upstream genes,notably the testis-promoting gene Dmrt1 and the ovary-promoting gene Foxl2.Recent studies have identified epigenetic regulation as a crucial factor in testis development,with the H3K27me3 demethylase KDM6B being essential for Dmrt1 expression in T.s.elegans.However,whether KDM6B alone can induce testicular differentiation remains unclear.In this study,we found that overexpression of Kdm6b in T.s.elegans embryos induced the male development pathway,accompanied by a rapid increase in the gonadal expression of Dmrt1 at 31°C,a temperature typically resulting in female development.Notably,this sex reversal could be entirely rescued by Dmrt1 knockdown.These findings demonstrate that Kdm6b is sufficient for commitment to the male pathway,underscoring its role as a critical epigenetic regulator in the sex determination of the red-eared slider turtle.

Role of short-chain fatty acids in host physiology

Short-chain fatty acids(SCFAs)are major metabolites produced by the gut microbiota through the fermentation of dietary fiber,and they have garnered significant attention due to their close association with host health.As important mediators between the gut microbiota and the host,SCFAs serve as energy substrates for intestinal epithelial cells and maintain homeostasis in host immune and energy metabolism by influencing host epigenetics,activating G protein-coupled receptors,and inhibiting pathogenic microbial infections.This review provides a comprehensive summary of SCFAs synthesis and metabolism and offering an overview of the latest research progress on their roles in protecting gut health,enhancing energy metabolism,mitigating diseases such as cancer,obesity,and diabetes,modulating the gut-brain axis and gut-l ung axis,and promoting bone health.

Molecular mechanisms of bitterness and astringency in the oral cavity induced by soyasaponin

The interaction mechanism between soyasaponin(Ssa)and bitter receptors/mucin,as well as the saliva interface behavior of Ssa,were investigated to explore the presentation mechanism of Ssa bitterness and astringency(BA).Strong bitterness arising from high Ssa concentrations(0.5–1.5 mg/mL)had a masking effect on astringency.At Ssa concentrations of 1.0–1.5 mg/mL,Ssa micelles altered the structure of mucin,exposing its internal tryptophan to a more polar environment.At Ssa concentrations of 0.05–1.50 mg/mL,its reaction with mucin increased the aggregation of particles in artificial saliva,which reduced the frictional lubricating properties of oral saliva.Ssa-mucin interactions affected the salivary interfacial adsorption layer,and their complexes synergistically reduced the interfacial tension.Ssa monomers and soyasapogenols bind to bitter receptors/mucin via hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions.Class A Ssa binds more strongly than class B Ssa,and thus likely presents a higher BA.In conclusion,Ssa interacts with bitter receptors/mucin causing conformational changes and aggregation of salivary mucin,resulting in diminished frictional lubricating properties of oral saliva.This,in turn,affects taste perception and gustatory transmission.

Flat multifunctional liquid crystal elements through multi-dimensional information multiplexing

Flat optical elements have attracted enormous attentions and act as promising candidates for the next generation of optical components.As one of the most outstanding representatives,liquid crystal(LC)has been widely applied in flat panel display industries and inspires the wavefront modulation with the development of LC alignment techniques.However,most LC elements perform only one type of optical manipulation and are difficult to realize the multifunctionality and light integration.Here,flat multifunctional liquid crystal elements(FMLCEs),merely composed of anisotropic LC molecules with space-variant orientations,are presented for multichannel information manipulation by means of polarization,space and wavelength multiplexing.Specifically,benefiting from the unique light response with the change of the incident polarization,observation plane,and working wavelength,a series of FMLCEs are demonstrated to achieve distinct near-and far-field display functions.The proposed strategy takes full advantage of basic optical parameters as the decrypted keys to improve the information capacity and security,and we expect it to find potential applications in information encryption,optical anti-counterfeiting,virtual/augmented reality,etc.

Infiltration of Ce0.8Gd0.2O1.9 nanoparticles on Sr2Fe1.5Mo0.5O6-δ cathode for CO2 electroreduction in solid oxide electrolysis cell

Solid oxide electrolysis cell(SOEC) can electrochemically convert CO2 to CO at the gas-solid interface with a high current density and Faradaic efficiency, which has attracted increasing attentions in recent years.Exploring efficient catalyst for electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction(CO2 RR) at the cathode is a grand challenge for the research and development of SOEC. Sr2Fe1.5Mo0.5O6-δ(SFM) is one kind of promising cathode materials for SOEC, but suffers from insufficient activity for CO2 RR. Herein, Gd0.2Ce0.8O1.9(GDC)nanoparticles were infiltrated onto the SFM surface to construct a composite GDC-SFM cathode and improve the CO2 RR performance in SOEC. The current density over the GDC infiltrated SFM cathode with a GDC loading of 12.8 wt% reaches 0.446 A cm-2 at 1.6 V and 800 °C, which is much higher than that over the SFM cathode(0.283 A cm-2). Temperature-programmed desorption of CO2 measurements suggest that the infiltration of GDC nanoparticles significantly increases the density of surface active sites and three phase boundaries(TPBs), which are beneficial for CO2 adsorption and subsequent conversion. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy results indicate that the polarization resistance of 12.8 wt% GDCSFM cathode was obviously decreased from 0.46 to 0.30 cm^2 after the infiltration of GDC nanoparticles.

Improving the performance of solid oxide electrolysis cell with gold nanoparticles-modified LSM-YSZ anode

Gold, as the common current collector in solid oxide electrolysis cell(SOEC), is traditionally considered to be inert for oxygen evolution reaction at the anode of SOEC. Herein, gold nanoparticles were loaded onto conventional strontium doped lanthanum manganite-yttria stabilized zirconia(LSM-YSZ) anode, which evidently improved the performance of oxygen evolution reaction at 800 °C. The current densities at 1.2 V and 1.4 V increased by 60.0% and 46.9%, respectively, after loading gold nanoparticles onto the LSM-YSZ anode. Physicochemical characterizations and electrochemical measurements suggested that the improved SOEC performance was attributed to the accelerated electron transfer of elementary process in anodic polarization reaction and the newly generated triple phase boundaries in gold nanoparticles-loaded LSMYSZ anode.

Global-Attention-Based Neural Networks for Vision Language Intelligence

In this paper,we develop a novel global-attentionbased neural network(GANN)for vision language intelligence,specifically,image captioning(language description of a given image).As many previous works,the encoder-decoder framework is adopted in our proposed model,in which the encoder is responsible for encoding the region proposal features and extracting global caption feature based on a specially designed module of predicting the caption objects,and the decoder generates captions by taking the obtained global caption feature along with the encoded visual features as inputs for each attention head of the decoder layer.The global caption feature is introduced for the purpose of exploring the latent contributions of region proposals for image captioning,and further helping the decoder better focus on the most relevant proposals so as to extract more accurate visual feature in each time step of caption generation.Our GANN is implemented by incorporating the global caption feature into the attention weight calculation phase in the word predication process in each head of the decoder layer.In our experiments,we qualitatively analyzed the proposed model,and quantitatively evaluated several state-of-the-art schemes with GANN on the MS-COCO dataset.Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed global attention mechanism for image captioning.

Patterned catalyst layer boosts the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells by optimizing water management

Mass transport is crucial to the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells,especially at high current densities.Generally,the oxygen and the generated water share same transmission medium but move towards opposite direction,which leads to serious mass transfer problems.Herein,a series of patterned catalyst layer were prepared with a simple one-step impressing method using nylon sieves as templates.With grooves 100μm in width and 8μm in depth on the surface of cathode catalyst layer,the maximum power density of fuel cell increases by 10%without any additional durability loss while maintaining a similar electrochemical surface area.The concentration contours calculated by finite element analysis reveal that the grooves built on the surface of catalyst layer serve to accumulate the water nearby while oxygen tends to transfer through relatively convex region,which results from capillary pressure difference caused by the pore structure difference between the two regions.The separation of oxidant gas and generated water avoids mass confliction thus boosts mass transport efficiency.

Coassembled ionic liquid/laponite hybrids as effective CO2 adsorbents

Hybrid adsorbents for COcapture were prepared by coassembling laponite（LP） nanosheets and 1-nbutyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride（BMIMCl）. The prepared BMIMCl/LP layered hybrids were systematically characterized. The interlayer distance of the BMIMCl/LP layered hybrids expanded with an increasing concentration of BMIMCl, indicating that cumulative BMIMCl was intercalated into the LP layers. The efficiency of BMIMCl toward COcapture was significantly enhanced after it was immobilized within LP layers.

Highly dispersed nickel species on iron‐based perovskite for CO_(2) electrolysis in solid oxide electrolysis cell

Feasible construction of cathode materials with highly dispersed active sites can extend the tri‐ple‐phase boundaries,and therefore leading to enhanced electrode kinetics for CO_(2) electrolysis in solid oxide electrolysis cell(SOEC).Herein,highly dispersed nickel species with low loading(1.0 wt%)were trapped within the La_(0.8)Sr_(0.2)FeO_(3)–δ‐Ce_(0.8)Sm_(0.2)O_(2)–δvia a facial mechanical milling ap‐proach,which demonstrated excellent CO_(2) electrolysis performance.The highly dispersed nickel species can significantly alter the electronic structures of the LSF‐SDC without affecting its porous network and facilitate oxygen vacancy formation,thus greatly promote the CO_(2) electrolysis perfor‐mance.The highest current density of 1.53 A·cm^(-2) could be achieved when operated under 800℃ at 1.6 V,which is about 91%higher than the LSF‐SDC counterpart.

Effects of Different Irrigation Management on the Textural Properties of Double-Cropping Late Indica Rice in South China

In order to investigate the effects of different irrigation management on the textural properties of two different double-cropping late indica rice,the effects of three irrigation management including conventional irrigation(CK),constant irrigation(CI)and alternate wetting and drying(AWD)on textural properties has been researched under field conditions of two years.The results indicated that the firmness,cohesiveness and chewiness were decreased under AWD treatment,and the stickiness was increased compared with CK,while the textural properties under CI treatment showed the opposite trend with AWD treatment.Additionally,AWD treatment signifi-cantly improved the springiness of TY871 compared with CK and CI treatment,but had no significant effect in RYHZ,suggesting improvement of the cooking and eating quality of TY871 under AWD treatment.Correlation analysis showed that the chewiness was positively correlated with the firmness and cohesiveness,and the cohesiveness was positively correlated with the firmness.AWD could promote the textural properties of high-quality late indica rice in South China whereas CI treatment has shown the disadvantage of the textural properties,which will provide useful information for the improvement of cooking and eating quality of rice.

固态钠离子电池用PEO基聚合物固体电解质

固态钠离子电池采用固体电解质替代传统有机电解液,具有安全性能高、能量密度高和循环寿命长等优点,被认为是大规模储能应用中最有前景的候选电池之一。在众多固体电解质材料中,聚环氧乙烷(PEO)基聚合物固体电解质因安全性高、成本低、能量密度高、电化学稳定性好、对钠盐溶解度高等特点,被认为是极具前景的固体电解质材料。然而环氧乙烷(EO)链段的高结晶度导致其室温离子电导率低而无法满足实际应用。为此研究人员采用不同策略来降低PEO基聚合物固体电解质的结晶度以提高其离子电导率,常见方法包括聚合物嵌段共聚、共混、交联、添加增塑剂和添加无机填料。本文对PEO基聚合物固体电解质的物理化学性质、制备工艺及上述改性技术进行了评价,并综述了PEO基聚合物固体电解质最新研究进展。

聚离子液体功能材料的合成及应用

聚离子液体(poly(ionic liquid)s)由离子液体单体聚合生成,兼具离子液体小分子的物理化学性质(结构多样性、可调溶解性、化学/热稳定性、导电性等)及聚合物的机械性能及可加工性,在能源器件、智能响应材料、生物医用材料等领域具有广泛的应用前景.本文主要综述了聚离子液体的合成方法及其作为功能材料在能源器件、智能响应材料及抗菌材料领域的潜在应用.

Analysis of structural components of decellularized scaffolds in renal fibrosis

Chronic kidney disease has been recognized as a major public health problem worldwide and renal fibrosis is a common pathological process occurring in chronic renal failure.It is very promising to find the strategies to slow or even prevent the progression of fibrosis.This study focused on whether renal fibrosis decellularized scaffolds has the potential to be a model of cellular mechanisms of tissue fibrosis or donors for tissue engineering.In order to evaluate the feasibility of decellularized scaffolds derived from pathological kidneys,histology,proteomics and ELISA will be used to analysis the changes in the structure and main components of fibrotic tissue.The fibrosis model in this paper was induced by adenine-fed and the results showed that the structure of fibrotic scaffold was changed and some protein were up-regulated or down-regulated,but the cytokines associated with renal regeneration after injury were remained.In cell experiments,endothelial progenitor cells proliferated well,which proved that the fibrotic scaffolds have non-cytotoxic.All these conclusions indicate that the renal fibrosis decellularized scaffolds model has the ability to study fibrosis mechanism and the potential to be engineering donors as well as normal scaffolds.

Poly(ionic liquid)-Based Energy and Electronic Devices

Poly(ionic liquid)s(PILs)refer to a polymeric architecture with repeating ionic liquid species in each unit.They are attracting rapidly increasing interest because of their diverse structures and facial processability.Our group focused on the design and synthesis of PILs for various applications in the past decade,including polyelectrolytes,biomedical materials,and other related fields.In this review,we briefly summarized our recent studies on the application of PiLs for energy and electronic devices,emphasizing the controllable synthesis and regulation of specific structures and functions.The unique properties and designable structures of PILs will inspire further investigation in an extensive variety of potential applications.