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Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulators during tumorigenesis by serving as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs). In this study, the qRT-PCR results indicated that the lncRNA protein disulfide isomerase family A member 3 pseudogene 1 (PDIA3P) was overexpressed in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and decreased the survival rate of OSCC patients. CCK-8 and clonal colony formation assays were used to detect the effects of PDIA3P on proliferation. Results revealed that silencing PDIA3P by small interfering RNA (siRNA) inhibited OSCC cell proliferation and repressed tumor growth and reduced the expression of proliferation antigen Ki-67 in vivo. Furthermore, the interaction between PDIA3P and miRNAs was then analyzed by qRT-PCR and luciferase reporter gene assay. We found that PDIA3P negatively regulated miR-185-5p in OSCC cells. Simultaneously, we found that silencing PDIA3P by siRNA suppressed proliferation via miR-185-5p in OSCC cells. Moreover, silencing PDIA3P by siRNA inhibited CCND2 protein (no influence on mRNA levels) expression via miR-185-5p in OSCC cells, and CCND2 facilitated cell proliferation of SCC4 and SCC15 cells induced by sh-PDIA3P#1. Therefore, our study demonstrated that PDIA3P may be a therapeutic target for the treatment of OSCC.

The law of momentum conservation rules out many desired processes in optical microresonators. We report broadband momentum transformations of light in asymmetric whispering gallery microresonators. Assisted by chaotic motions, broadband light can travel between optical modes with different angular momenta within a few picoseconds. Efficient coupling from visible to near-infrared bands is demonstrated between a nanowaveguide and whispering gallery modes with quality factors exceeding 10 million. The broadband momentum transformation enhances the device conversion efficiency of the third-harmonic generation by greater than three orders of magnitude over the conventional evanescent-wave coupling. The observed broadband and fast momentum transformation could promote applications such as multicolor lasers, broadband memories, and multiwavelength optical networks.

Background The aim of the study was to investigate the muscle differences in children with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) using opportunistic low-dose chest CT and to compare different methods for the segmentation of muscle in children. Methods This single center retrospective study enrolled children with OI and controls undergoing opportunistic low-dose chest CT obtained during the COVID pandemic. From the CT images, muscle size (cross-sectional area) and density (mean Hounsfield Units [HU]) of the trunk muscles were measured at the mid-T4 and the mid-T10 level using two methods, the fixed thresholds and the Gaussian mixture model. The Bland-Altman method was also used to compute the strength of agreement between two methods. Comparison of muscle results between OI and controls were analyzed with Student t tests. Results 20 children with OI (mean age, 9.1 ± 3.3 years, 15 males) and 40 age- and sex-matched controls were enrolled. Mean differences between two methods were good. Children with OI had lower T4 and T10 muscle density than controls measured by the fixed thresholds (41.2 HU vs. 48.0 HU, p  < 0.01; 37.3 HU vs. 45.9 HU, p  < 0.01). However, children with OI had lower T4 muscle size, T4 muscle density, T10 muscle size and T10 muscle density than controls measured by the Gaussian mixture model (110.9 vs. 127.2 cm 2 , p  = 0.03; 44.6 HU vs. 51.3 HU, p  < 0.01; 72.6 vs. 88.0 cm 2 , p  = 0.01; 41.6 HU vs. 50.3 HU, p  < 0.01, respectively). Conclusions Children with OI had lower trunk muscle density indicating that OI might also impair muscle quality. Moreover, the fixed thresholds may not be suitable for segmentation of muscle in children.

Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is a quantum interference effect arising from different transition pathways of optical fields. Within the transparency window, both absorption and dispersion properties strongly change, which results in extensive applications such as slow light and optical storage. Due to the ultrahigh quality factors, massive production on a chip and convenient all-optical control, optical microcavities provide an ideal platform for realizing EIT. Here we review the principle and recent development of EIT in optical microcavities. We focus on the following three situations. First, for a coupled-cavity system, all-optical EIT appears when the optical modes in different cavities couple to each other. Second, in a single microcavity, all-optical EIT is created when interference happens between two optical modes. Moreover, the mechanical oscillation of the microcavity leads to optomechanically induced transparency. Then the applications of EIT effect in microcavity systems are discussed, including light delay and storage, sensing, and field enhancement. A summary is then given in the final part of the paper.

Dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) featuring broadband coherent frequency comb with compact size and low power consumption, provides an unparalleled tool for nonlinear physics investigation and precise measurement applications. However, the complex nonlinear dynamics generally leads to stochastic soliton formation process and makes it highly challenging to manipulate soliton number and temporal distribution in the microcavity. Here, synthesized and reconfigurable soliton crystals (SCs) are demonstrated by constructing a periodic intra-cavity potential field, which allows deterministic SCs synthesis with soliton numbers from 1 to 32 in a monolithic integrated microcavity. The ordered temporal distribution coherently enhanced the soliton crystal comb lines power up to 3 orders of magnitude in comparison to the single-soliton state. The interaction between the traveling potential field and the soliton crystals creates periodic forces on soliton and results in forced soliton oscillation. Our work paves the way to effectively manipulate cavity solitons. The demonstrated synthesized SCs offer reconfigurable temporal and spectral profiles, which provide compelling advantages for practical applications such as photonic radar, satellite communication and radio-frequency filter. Here the authors demonstrate an on-demand generation of perfect soliton crystal using synthesized potential field. The individual solitons can also be controlled, for example oscillate around their equilibrium position, by the external field.

Integrated optics provides a versatile platform for quantum information processing and transceiving with photons 1 – 8 . The implementation of quantum protocols requires the capability to generate multiple high-quality single photons and process photons with multiple high-fidelity operators 9 – 11 . However, previous experimental demonstrations were faced by major challenges in realizing sufficiently high-quality multi-photon sources and multi-qubit operators in a single integrated system 4 – 8 , and fully chip-based implementations of multi-qubit quantum tasks remain a significant challenge 1 – 3 . Here, we report the demonstration of chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and genuine multipartite entanglement, the core functionalities in quantum technologies, on silicon-photonic circuitry. Four single photons with high purity and indistinguishablity are produced in an array of microresonator sources, without requiring any spectral filtering. Up to four qubits are processed in a reprogrammable linear-optic quantum circuit that facilitates Bell projection and fusion operation. The generation, processing, transceiving and measurement of multi-photon multi-qubit states are all achieved in micrometre-scale silicon chips, fabricated by the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor process. Our work lays the groundwork for large-scale integrated photonic quantum technologies for communications and computations. Four single-photon states are generated and entangled on a single micrometre-scale silicon chip, and provide the basis for the demonstration of chip-to-chip quantum teleportation.

This study aimed to determine the levels of health-related behaviours (physical activity, screen exposure and sleep status) among Chinese students from primary, secondary and high schools during the pandemic of COVID-19, as well as their changes compared with their status before the pandemic. A cross-sectional online survey of 10,933 students was conducted among 10 schools in Guangzhou, China, between 8th and 15th March, 2020. After getting the informed consent from student’s caregivers, an online questionnaire was designed and used to obtain time spending on health-related behaviours during the pandemic of COVID-19, as well as the changes compared with 3 months before the pandemic, which was completed by students themselves or their caregivers. Students were stratified by regions (urban, suburban, exurban), gender (boys and girls), and grades (lower grades of primary school, higher grades of primary schools, secondary schools and high schools). Data were expressed as number and percentages and Chi-square test was used to analyse difference between groups. Overall, the response rate of questionnaire was 95.3% (10,416/10,933). The median age of included students was 13.0 (10.0, 16.0) years and 50.1% (n = 5,219) were boys. 41.4%, 53.6% and 53.7% of total students reported less than 15 min per day in light, moderate and vigorous activities and 58.7% (n = 6,113) reported decreased participation in physical activity compared with the time before pandemic. Over 5 h of screen time spending on online study was reported by 44.6% (n = 4,649) of respondents, particular among high school students (81.0%). 76.9% of students reported increased screen time compared with the time before pandemic. Inadequate sleep was identified among 38.5% of students and the proportion was highest in high school students (56.9%). Our study indicated that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the school closure exerted tremendous negative effects on school-aged children’s health habits, including less physical activity, longer screen exposure and irregular sleeping pattern.

Since its invention, optical frequency comb has revolutionized a broad range of subjects from metrology to spectroscopy. The recent development of microresonator-based frequency combs (microcombs) provides a unique pathway to create frequency comb systems on a chip. Indeed, microcomb-based spectroscopy, ranging, optical synthesizer, telecommunications and astronomical calibrations have been reported recently. Critical to many of the integrated comb systems is the broad coverage of comb spectra. Here, microcombs of more than two-octave span (450 nm to 2,008 nm) is demonstrated through χ (2) and χ (3) nonlinearities in a deformed silica microcavity. The deformation lifts the circular symmetry and creates chaotic tunneling channels that enable broadband collection of intracavity emission with a single waveguide. Our demonstration introduces a new degree of freedom, cavity deformation, to the microcomb studies, and our microcomb spectral range is useful for applications in optical clock, astronomical calibration and biological imaging. Here, the authors demonstrate the use of chaos to obtain 2-octave comb generation. The deformation lifts the circular symmetry and creates chaotic tunneling channels that enable broadband collection of intracavity emission with a single waveguide, introducing a new degree of freedom to microcomb studies.

The ability to track individual cells in space over time is crucial to analyzing heterogeneous cell populations. Recently, microlaser particles have emerged as unique optical probes for massively multiplexed single-cell tagging. However, the microlaser far-field emission is inherently direction-dependent, which causes strong intensity fluctuations when the orientation of the particle varies randomly inside cells. Here, we demonstrate a general solution based on the incorporation of nanoscale light scatterers into microlasers. Two schemes are developed by introducing either boundary defects or a scattering layer into microdisk lasers. The resulting laser output is omnidirectional, with the minimum-to-maximum ratio of the angle-dependent intensity improving from 0.007 (−24 dB) to > 0.23 (−6 dB). After transfer into live cells in vitro, the omnidirectional laser particles within moving cells could be tracked continuously with high signal-to-noise ratios for 2 h, while conventional microlasers exhibited frequent signal loss causing tracking failure.

Background Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that specifically target mutational points in the EGFR gene have significantly reduced suffering and provided greater relief to patients with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). The third-generation EGFR-TKI, Osimertinib, has been successfully employed in clinical treatments to overcome resistance to both original and acquired T790M and L858R mutational points. Nevertheless, the issue of treatment failure response has emerged as an insurmountable problem. Methods By employing a combination of multiple and integrated approaches, we successfully identified a distinct population within the tumor group that plays a significant role in carcinogenesis, resistance, and recurrence. Our research suggests that addressing TKI resistance may involve targeting the renewal and repopulation of stem-like cells. To investigate the underlying mechanisms, we conducted RNA Microarray and m6A Epi-Transcriptomic Microarray analyses, followed by assessment of transcription factors. Additionally, we specifically designed a tag to detect the polypeptide circRNA-AA, and its expression was confirmed through m6A regulations. Results We initially identified unique molecular signatures present in cancer stem cells that contributed to poor therapeutic responses. Activation of the alternative Wnt pathway was found to sustain the renewal and resistant status of these cells. Through bioinformatics analysis and array studies, we observed a significant decrease in the expression of circFBXW7 in Osimertinib-resistant cell lines. Notably, the abnormal expression pattern of circFBXW7 determined the cellular response to Osimertinib. Functional investigations revealed that circFBXW7 inhibits the renewal of cancer stem cells and resensitizes both resistant LUAD cells and stem cells to Osimertinib. In terms of the underlying mechanism, we discovered that circFBXW7 can be translated into short polypeptides known as circFBXW7-185AA. These polypeptides interact with β-catenin in an m6A-dependent manner. This interaction leads to reduced stability of β-catenin by inducing subsequent ubiquitination, thereby suppressing the activation of canonical Wnt signaling. Additionally, we predicted that the m6A reader, YTHDF3, shares common binding sites with hsa-Let-7d-5p. Enforced expression of Let-7d post-transcriptionally decreases the levels of YTHDF3. The repression of Let-7d by Wnt signaling releases the stimulation of m6A modification by YTHDF3, promoting the translation of circFBXW7-185AA. This creates a positive feedback loop contributing to the cascade of cancer initiation and promotion. Conclusions Our bench study, in vivo experiments, and clinical validation have unequivocally shown that circFBXW7 effectively inhibits the abilities of LUAD stem cells and reverses resistance to TKIs by modulating Wnt pathway functions through the action of circFBXW7-185AA on β-catenin ubiquitination and inhibition. The regulatory role of circRNA in Osimertinib treatment has been rarely reported, and our findings reveal that this process operates under the influence of m6A modification. These results highlight the tremendous potential of this approach in enhancing therapeutic strategies and overcoming resistance to multiple TKI treatments.