Metformin:A promising clinical therapeutical approach for BPH treatment via inhibiting dysregulated steroid hormones-induced prostatic epithelial cells proliferation

The occurrence of benign prostate hyperplasia(BPH)was related to disrupted sex steroid hormones,and metformin(Met)had a clinical response to sex steroid hormone-related gynaecological disease.However,whether Met exerts an antiproliferative effect on BPH via sex steroid hormones remains unclear.Here,our clinical study showed that along with prostatic epithelial cell(PEC)proliferation,sex steroid hormones were dysregulated in the serum and prostate of BPH patients.As the major contributor to dysregulated sex steroid hormones,elevated dihydrotestosterone(DHT)had a significant positive relationship with the clinical characteristics of BPH patients.Activation of adenosine 5'-monophosphate(AMP)-activated protein kinase(AMPK)by Met restored dysregulated sex steroid hormone homeostasis and exerted antiproliferative effects against DHT-induced proliferation by inhibiting the formation of androgen receptor(AR)-mediated Yes-associated protein(YAP1)-TEA domain transcription factor(TEAD4)heterodimers.Met’s anti-proliferative effects were blocked by AMPK inhibitor or YAP1 overexpression in DHT-cultured BPH-1 cells.Our findings indicated that Met would be a promising clinical therapeutic approach for BPH by inhibiting dysregulated steroid hormone-induced PEC proliferation.

The Development Trends and Research Fronts in Orbital Angular Momentum Technology:A Bibliometric Analysis

Orbital angular momentum(OAM)technology,refers to Laguerre-Gaussian(LG)beams,twisted beams,vector/vortex beams,acoustic vortex beams and fractional vortex beams.It is an emerging and promising technology to improve the communication capacity,spectral efficiency,and anti-jamming capability due to its helical phase fronts and infinite orthogonal states.Although the OAM research began in the 1990s,the developing trends,current status,issues and characteristics through a systematic observation have not yet been performed.This paper presents a knowledge-based evolution of OAM research published in the Web of Science(WoS)from 2011 to 2021 using bibliometric analysis in Citepspace.The results demonstrate that the bandwidth,efficiency,gain,divergence,phase quantization,bulky and complex feeding structures,misalignment,distortion,interferences atmospheric turbulence and diffraction were the key issues found in the OAM technology.The main research hotspots and categories,influential authors,leading journals,best institutions of OAM show a strong bias in favor of their functions and technology developments.The research on OAM was mainly performed by the counties that have developed the 5G and now moving towards 6G communications like China,USA and South Korea.This study would serve as an inclusive guide on the future research trends and status especially for the OAM researchers.

A review of occluded objects detection in real complex scenarios for autonomous driving

Autonomous driving is a promising way to future safe,efficient,and low-carbon transportation.Real-time ac-curate target detection is an essential precondition for the generation of proper following decision and control signals.However,considering the complex practical scenarios,accurate recognition of occluded targets is a major challenge of target detection for autonomous driving with limited computational capability.To reveal the overlap and difference between various occluded object detection by sharing the same available sensors,this paper presents a review of detection methods for occluded objects in complex real-driving scenarios.Considering the rapid development of autonomous driving technologies,the research analyzed in this study is limited to the recent five years.The study of occluded object detection is divided into three parts,namely occluded vehicles,pedes-trians and traffic signs.This paper provided a detailed summary of the target detection methods used in these three parts according to the differences in detection methods and ideas,which is followed by the comparison of advantages and disadvantages of different detection methods for the same object.Finally,the shortcomings and limitations of the existing detection methods are summarized,and the challenges and future development prospects in this field are discussed.

Wideband circular-polarized transmitarray for generating a high-purity vortex beam

In this correspondence,a wideband circular-polarized(CP)transmitarray(TA)in the Ka-band is presented for generating a high-purity vortex beam.The proposed element is composed of two identical combinations separated by an air layer.The subwavelength structure and double-resonance characteristics ensure the stable phase shift of the element within the 1-dB transmission bandwidth of 28.4%.A square aperture TA fed by a horn antenna is fabricated and measured.Owing to the honeycomb arrangement of elements,the mode purity of l=−1 is>0.93 in a wide band from 28.5 to 38 GHz.The measured peak gain is 22.3 dBic,and the 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth is 27.6%.The performance of the proposed antenna demonstrates its potential for high-capacity wireless communication and high-quality radar imaging.

Numerical investigation of plane Couette flow with weak spanwise rotation

Direct numerical simulation of rotating plane Couette flow(RPCF) at Re_w= 1300 and Ro = 0.02 was performed with different mesh resolutions and different sizes of computation domain. Our results showed that a grid resolution in wall units with ?x^+=8.51, ?z^+= 4.26, ?y^+|_(min)= 0.0873 and ?y^+|_(max)= 3.89 is fine enough to simulate the problem at the present parameters. The streamwise length Lxand spanwise length Lzof the computational box have different impacts on the flow statistics, where the statistics were converged if Lxis longer than 8πh, while no converged results were obtained for different Lz. More importantly,our results with very long simulation time showed that a state transition would happen if L_x≥ 8πh, from a state with four pairs of roll cells to a state with three pairs of roll cells with L_z= 6πh. Each state could survive for more than 1500 h/U_w, and the flow statistics were different.

Measurement errors on sediment concentration from traditional runoff collection tanks and its correction possibility

Runoff plots are widely used worldwide to monitor water and soil losses.Sediment concentration in runoff collection tank is measured by stirring-sampling procedure,but this method may produce high measurement error due to the uneven mixing of collected sediments with water and soil particle deposition.This study aimed to identify the relationship between actual and measured sediment concentrations,so as to estimate the systematic error of sediment concentration measurement from runoff collection tank by traditional stirring-sampling procedure and the possibility to eliminate it.Four major soils including black soil,silt loess,clay loess,and purple soil in China were used to determine the correlation between the measured and designed sediment concentrations in laboratory.Tested sediment concentration was 1,2,5,8,10,20,50,80,100,200,500,800,and 1000 kg/m^(3),and total sediment-laden water volume was 50 L and 100 L.Five samples were collected successively from collection tank for each treatment and their sediment concentrations were measured by conventional oven-drying method.The results showed that all the measured sediment concentration values were smaller than the designed ones,but both the measured and designed values were linearly correlated significantly with determination coefficients greater than 0.8,generally.In the whole tested concentration range,the systematical error was-0.19 to-319.95 kg/m^(3) and relative error was 0.30%-84.5% for the 4 tested soils and 2 total sediment-laden water volumes.These results indicated a necessity and possibility to correct conventional sediment concentration measurement value.The result is usable to assess and correct the measurement error of sediment concentrations from traditional runoff plot.

Genomic insights into versatile lifestyle of three new bacterial candidate phyla

Metagenomic explorations of the Earth's biosphere enable the discovery of previously unknown bacterial lineages of phylogenetic and ecological significance.Here,we retrieved 11 metagenomic-assembled genomes(MAGs)affiliated to three new monophyletic bacterial lineages from the seawater of the Yap Trench.Phylogenomic analysis revealed that each lineage is a new bacterial candidate phylum,subsequently named Candidatus Qinglongiota,Candidatus Heilongiota,and Candidatus Canglongiota.Metabolic reconstruction of genomes from the three phyla suggested that they adopt a versatile lifestyle,with the potential to utilize various types of sugars,proteins,and/or short-chain fatty acids through anaerobic pathways.This was further confirmed by a global distribution map of the three phyla,indicating a preference for oxygen-limited or particle-attached niches,such as anoxic sedimentary environments.Of note,Candidatus Canglongiota genomes harbor genes for the complete WoodLjungdahl pathway and sulfate reduction that are similar to those identified in some sulfate-reducing bacteria.Evolutionary analysis indicated that gene gain and loss events,and horizontal gene transfer(HGT)play important roles in shaping the genomic and metabolic features of the three new phyla.This study presents the genomic insight into the ecology,metabolism,and evolution of three new phyla,which broadens the phylum-level diversity within the domain Bacteria.

Correction of measurement errors on sediment concentration sampled by stirring-sampling method from traditional runoff collection tanks

Stirring-sampling method is a widely adopted method to measure sediment concentrations in collection tanks of runoff plots,but with high systematic measurement errors.This research aimed to advance an approach for building correction equations to remove measurement errors in designed sediment concentration range.Experimental data of sediment measurement from the stirring-sampling method,with four representative soils,under the designed sediment concentrations(1,2,5,8,10,20,50,80,100,200,500,800,and 1000 kg/m^(3))were used to demonstrate the correction methodological process.Two correction methods(step-wise correction and universal correction)were suggested for the trial in this study based on the distribution of measurement errors.In the step-wise correction,the correction equations were made with a series of linear functions without intercept for the low concentration group(0-20 kg/m^(3)),a series of linear functions with intercept for the high(20-200 kg/m^(3))and extremely high(200-1000 kg/m^(3))concentration groups,consecutively.The correction equations were a series of power functions in the universal correction.For the step-wise correction,most of the relative errors of correction sediment concentrations were smaller than 15%and 10%under high and extremely high concentration groups,but the corrected accuracy was not good in the sediment concentration of 1,2,5 kg/m^(3)with the corrected relative errors of 0.20%-206.07%.For the universal correction,the corrected relative errors(0.19%-31.81%)of the four soils were low under the condition of extremely high sediment concentrations,but other corrected accuracies weren’t good with the corrected relative errors of 0.68%-1154.71%.The corrected accuracy of step-wise correction is higher than that of the universal correction,but the universal correction is more convenient.These results indicated that the correction equations could efficiently revise the measurement errors of the tested soils and that this method can be generalized to other soil types and was meaningful in monitoring soil erosion.

Transcription factor YY1 is essential for iNKT cell development

Invariant natural killer T(iNKT)cells develop from CD4+CD8+double-positive(DP)thymocytes and express an invariant Vα14–Jα18 T-cell receptor(TCR)α-chain.Generation of these cells requires the prolonged survival of DP thymocytes to allow for Vα14–Jα18 gene rearrangements and strong TCR signaling to induce the expression of the iNKT lineage-specific transcription factor PLZF.Here,we report that the transcription factor Yin Yang 1(YY1)is essential for iNKT cell formation.Thymocytes lacking YY1 displayed a block in iNKT cell development at the earliest progenitor stage.YY1-deficient thymocytes underwent normal Vα14–Jα18 gene rearrangements,but exhibited impaired cell survival.Deletion of the apoptotic protein BIM failed to rescue the defect in iNKT cell generation.Chromatin immunoprecipitation and deep-sequencing experiments demonstrated that YY1 directly binds and activates the promoter of the Plzf gene.Thus,YY1 plays essential roles in iNKT cell development by coordinately regulating cell survival and PLZF expression.

Novel organoid model in drug screening: Past, present, and future

Advances in the field of stem cells have led to the development of a technology called organoids.Organoids are cell cluster structures formed by the cultivation of stem cells in a three-dimensional environment in vitro,and they can simulate the living environment of cells in vivo.Organoids play an important role in the screening of drugs for tumor therapy.Compared with traditional drug screening models,tumor organoid models derived from patient tumors have higher sensitivity,heterogeneity,and stability and can restore the real situation of tumors more effectively.Researchers have conducted a number of researches on the feasibility of using organoid technology in drug screening.By testing and comparing the effects of antitumor drugs in organoids and primary tumors,we can select the most appropriate treatment drugs for patients.In the past ten years,organoids from dozens of tissues and biological sample banks from several main organs have been established,and a large number of anticancer drugs have been screened out.This article summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of traditional drug screening models,discusses the development history of organoid technology,and reviews the research results on organoids from tumor drug screening.In addition,the combination of organoid technology and other modern biotechnologies is put forward to further promote the role of organoid technology in the medical field.Finally,this article reviews the history,progress,and prospect on organoids from the view of antitumor drug screening.