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In this book, Yan Geng examines Mao's image from the perspective of its producers, focusing on four artists, chosen for both the diverse media they worked in and their diverse backgrounds. The book suggests an alternative perspective on the making of propaganda not only as a politically themed representation but also as an expression of artists' subjectivities and their roles as pivotal agents in the transition of modern Chinese art history. Mao's Image: Artists and China's 1949 Transition demonstrates how artists portrayed Mao as the nation's leader during the early People's Republic and what such images reveal about Chinese artists' experience during the Communist takeover of the country.

Prolonged exposure to negative stressors could be harmful if a subject cannot respond appropriately. Strategies evolved to respond to stress, including repetitive displacement behaviours, are important in maintaining behavioural homoeostasis. In rodents, self-grooming is a frequently observed repetitive behaviour believed to contribute to post-stress de-arousal with adaptive value. Here we identified a rat limbic di-synaptic circuit that regulates stress-induced self-grooming with positive affective valence. This circuit links hippocampal ventral subiculum to ventral lateral septum (LSv) and then lateral hypothalamus tuberal nucleus. Optogenetic activation of this circuit triggers delayed but robust excessive grooming with patterns closely resembling those evoked by emotional stress. Consistently, the neural activity of LSv reaches a peak before emotional stress-induced grooming while inhibition of this circuit significantly suppresses grooming triggered by emotional stress. Our results uncover a previously unknown limbic circuitry involved in regulating stress-induced self-grooming and pinpoint a critical role of LSv in this ethologically important behaviour. Self-grooming is a frequently observed repetitive behaviour in rodents that is believed to contribute to post-stress de-arousal. The authors identified a previously unknown limbic circuit that includes the ventral lateral septum in rats and is involved in regulating stress-induced self-grooming.

Background Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has demonstrated proven efficacy in some hematologic cancers. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of LCAR-B38M, a dual epitope-binding CAR T cell therapy directed against 2 distinct B cell maturation antigen epitopes, in patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) multiple myeloma (MM). Methods This ongoing phase 1, single-arm, open-label, multicenter study enrolled patients (18 to 80 years) with R/R MM. Lymphodepletion was performed using cyclophosphamide 300 mg/m 2 . LCAR-B38M CAR T cells (median CAR+ T cells, 0.5 × 10 6 cells/kg [range, 0.07 to 2.1 × 10 6 ]) were infused in 3 separate infusions. The primary objective is to evaluate the safety of LCAR-B38M CAR T cells; the secondary objective is to evaluate the antimyeloma response of the treatment based on the general guidelines of the International Myeloma Working Group. Results At data cutoff, 57 patients had received LCAR-B38M CAR T cells. All patients experienced ≥ 1 adverse events (AEs). Grade ≥ 3 AEs were reported in 37/57 patients (65%); most common were leukopenia (17/57; 30%), thrombocytopenia (13/57; 23%), and aspartate aminotransferase increased (12/57; 21%). Cytokine release syndrome occurred in 51/57 patients (90%); 4/57 (7%) had grade ≥ 3 cases. One patient reported neurotoxicity of grade 1 aphasia, agitation, and seizure-like activity. The overall response rate was 88% (95% confidence interval [CI], 76 to 95); 39/57 patients (68%) achieved a complete response, 3/57 (5%) achieved a very good partial response, and 8/57 (14%) achieved a partial response. Minimal residual disease was negative for 36/57 (63%) patients. The median time to response was 1 month (range, 0.4 to 3.5). At a median follow-up of 8 months, median progression-free survival was 15 months (95% CI, 11 to not estimable). Median overall survival for all patients was not reached. Conclusions LCAR-B38M CAR T cell therapy displayed a manageable safety profile and demonstrated deep and durable responses in patients with R/R MM. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov , NCT03090659 ; Registered on March 27, 2017, retrospectively registered

The artificial cooling of mass concrete during reconstruction is essential for preventing structural cracking due to hydration heat. For tanks and other mass post-tensioned prestressed concrete structures, pre-cooled air can be injected into prestressed rebar pipes to facilitate concrete cooling. This air-pipe cooling method eliminates the need for special cooling pipes embedded within the concrete. Thermos-fluid–solid coupling finite element (FE) models were used to assess the temperature distribution and cracking risk in mass concrete walls. The heat transfer coefficient at the concrete-pipe-air interface and its influence factors were researched in this paper. Multiple cooling strategies have been proposed, and comparative analyses have been conducted to identify the most effective cooling approach.

Leukemia is highly heterogeneous, meaning that different types of leukemia require different treatments and have different prognoses. Current clinical diagnostic and typing tests are complex and time‐consuming. In particular, all of these tests rely on bone marrow aspiration, which is invasive and leads to poor patient compliance, exacerbating treatment delays. Morphological analysis of peripheral blood cells (PBC) is still primarily used to distinguish between benign and malignant hematologic disorders, but it remains a challenge to diagnose and type these diseases solely by direct observation of peripheral blood(PB) smears by human experts. In this study, we apply a segmentation‐based enhanced residual network that uses progressive multigranularity training with jigsaw patches. It is trained on a self‐built annotated dataset of 21,208 images from 237 patients, including five types of benign white blood cells(WBCs) and eight types of leukemic cells. The network is not only able to discriminate between benign and malignant cells, but also to typify leukemia using a single peripheral blood cell. The network effectively differentiated acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) from other types of acute myeloid leukemia (non‐APL), achieving a precision rate of 89.34%, a recall rate of 97.37%, and an F1 score of 93.18% for APL. In contrast, for non‐APL cases, the model achieved a precision rate of 92.86%, but a recall rate of 74.63% and an F1 score of 82.75%. In addition, the model discriminates acute lymphoblastic leukemia(ALL) with the Ph chromosome from those without. This approach could improve patient compliance and enable faster and more accurate typing of leukemias for early diagnosis and treatment to improve survival. This pioneering research investigates the manner in which cellular morphological responses are linked to the nature of genome information using deep learning.

Exosomes are a subset of extracellular vesicles that carry specific combinations of proteins, nucleic acids, metabolites, and lipids. Mounting evidence suggests that exosomes participate in intercellular communication and act as important molecular vehicles in the regulation of numerous physiological and pathological processes, including cancer development. Exosomes are released by various cell types under both normal and pathological conditions, and they can be found in multiple bodily fluids. Moreover, exosomes carrying a wide variety of important macromolecules provide a window into altered cellular or tissue states. Their presence in biological fluids renders them an attractive, minimally invasive approach for liquid biopsies with potential biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prediction, and surveillance. Due to their biocompatibility and low immunogenicity and cytotoxicity, exosomes have potential clinical applications in the development of innovative therapeutic approaches. Here, we summarize recent advances in various technologies for exosome isolation for cancer research. We outline the functions of exosomes in regulating tumor metastasis, drug resistance, and immune modulation in the context of cancer development. Finally, we discuss prospects and challenges for the clinical development of exosome-based liquid biopsies and therapeutics.

Bergenin is a natural PPARγ agonist that can prevent neutrophil aggregation, and often be used in clinics for treating respiratory diseases. Recent data show that Th17 cells are important for neutrophil aggregation and asthma through secreting IL-17A. In this study, we investigated the effects of bergenin on Th17 differentiation in vitro and subsequent neutrophilic asthma in mice. Naïve T cells isolated from mouse mesenteric lymph nodes were treated with IL-23, TGF-β, and IL-6 to induce Th17 differentiation. We showed that in naïve T cells under Th17-polarizing condition, the addition of bergenin (3, 10, 30 μM) concentration-dependently decreased the percentage of CD4 + IL-17A + T cells and mRNA expression of specific transcription factor RORγt, and function-related factors IL-17A/F, IL-21, and IL-22, but did not affect the cell vitality and apoptosis. Furthermore, bergenin treatment prevented GLS1-dependent glutaminolysis in the progress of Th17 differentiation, slightly affected the levels of SLC1A5, SLC38A1, GLUD1, GOT1, and GPT2. Glutamine deprivation, the addition of glutamate (1 mM), α-ketoglutarate (1 mM), or GLS1 plasmid all significantly attenuated the above-mentioned actions of bergenin. Besides, we demonstrated that bergenin (3, 10, and 30 μM) concentration-dependently activated PPARγ in naïve T cells, whereas PPARγ antagonist GW9662 and siPPARγ abolished bergenin-caused inhibition on glutaminolysis and Th17 differentiation. Furthermore, we revealed that bergenin inhibited glutaminolysis by regulating the level of CDK1, phosphorylation and degradation of Cdh1, and APC/C-Cdh1-mediated ubiquitin-proteasomal degradation of GLS1 after activating PPARγ. We demonstrated a correlation existing among bergenin-affected GLS1-dependent glutaminolysis, PPARγ, “CDK1-APC/C-Cdh1” signaling, and Th17 differentiation. Finally, the therapeutic effect and mechanisms for bergenin-inhibited Th17 responses and neutrophilic asthma were confirmed in a mouse model of neutrophilic asthma by administration of GW9662 or GLS1 overexpression plasmid in vivo. In conclusion, bergenin repressed Th17 differentiation and then alleviated neutrophilic asthma in mice by inhibiting GLS1-dependent glutaminolysis via regulating the “CDK1-APC/C-Cdh1” signaling after activating PPARγ.

Two rapidly alternating tones with different pitches may be perceived as one integrated stream when the pitch differences are small or two separated streams when the pitch differences are large. Likewise, timbre differences between two tones may also cause such sequential stream segregation . Moreover, the effects of pitch and timbre on stream segregation may cancel each other out, which is called a trade-off. However, how timbre differences caused by specific patterns of spectral shapes interact with pitch differences and affect stream segregation has been largely unexplored. Therefore, we used stripe tones , in which stripe-like spectral patterns of harmonic complex tones were realized by grouping harmonic components into several bands based on harmonic numbers and removing harmonic components in every other band. Here, we show that 2- and 4-band stimuli elicited distinctive stream segregation against pitch proximity. By contrast, pitch separations dominated stream segregation for 16-band stimuli. The results for 8-band stimuli most clearly showed the trade-off between pitch and timbre on stream segregation. These results suggest that the stimuli with a small number ( ≤ 4) of bands elicit strong stream segregation due to sharp timbral contrasts between stripe-like spectral patterns, and that the auditory system looks to be limited in integrating blocks of frequency components dispersed over frequency and time.

Peanut pod rot is one of the major plant diseases affecting peanut production and quality over China, which causes large productivity losses and is challenging to control. To improve the disease resistance of peanuts, breeding is one significant strategy. Crucial preventative and management measures include grading peanut pod rot and screening high-contributed genes that are highly resistant to pod rot should be carried out. A machine vision-based grading approach for individual cases of peanut pod rot was proposed in this study, which avoids time-consuming, labor-intensive, and inaccurate manual categorization and provides dependable technical assistance for breeding studies and peanut pod rot resistance. The Shuffle Attention module has been added to the YOLOv5s (You Only Look Once version 5 small) feature extraction backbone network to overcome occlusion, overlap, and adhesions in complex backgrounds. Additionally, to reduce missing and false identification of peanut pods, the loss function CIoU (Complete Intersection over Union) was replaced with EIoU (Enhanced Intersection over Union). The recognition results can be further improved by introducing grade classification module, which can read the information from the identified RGB images and output data like numbers of non-rotted and rotten peanut pods, the rotten pod rate, and the pod rot grade. The Precision value of the improved YOLOv5s reached 93.8%, which was 7.8%, 8.4%, and 7.3% higher than YOLOv5s, YOLOv8n, and YOLOv8s, respectively; the mAP (mean Average Precision) value was 92.4%, which increased by 6.7%, 7.7%, and 6.5%, respectively. Improved YOLOv5s has an average improvement of 6.26% over YOLOv5s in terms of recognition accuracy: that was 95.7% for non-rotted peanut pods and 90.8% for rotten peanut pods. This article presented a machine vision- based grade classification method for peanut pod rot, which offered technological guidance for selecting high-quality cultivars with high resistance to pod rot in peanut.

The histone demethylase lysine‐specific demethylase 4A (KDM4A) is reported to be overexpressed and plays a vital in multiple cancers through controlling gene expression by epigenetic regulation of H3K9 or H3K36 methylation marks. However, the biological role and mechanism of KDM4A in prostate cancer (PC) remain unclear. Herein, we reported KDM4A expression was upregulation in phosphatase and tensin homolog knockout mouse prostate tissue. Depletion of KDM4A in PC cells inhibited their proliferation and survival in vivo and vitro. Further studies reveal that USP1 is a deubiquitinase that regulates KDM4A K48‐linked deubiquitin and stability. Interestingly, we found c‐Myc was a key downstream effector of the USP1‐KDM4A/androgen receptor axis in driving PC cell proliferation. Notably, upregulation of KDM4A expression with high USP1 expression was observed in most prostate tumors and inhibition of USP1 promotes PC cells response to therapeutic agent enzalutamide. Our studies propose USP1 could be an anticancer therapeutic target in PC. This study identifies USP1 as a critical deubiquitinase for stabilizing KDM4A, thereby promoting prostate cancer growth and tumorigenesis. Targeting KDM4A stabilization through pharmacological inhibition of USP1 by ML323 could thus open an avenue for therapeutic intervention in prostate cancer patients.