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A single atomic slice of α-tin—stanene—has been predicted to host the quantum spin Hall effect at room temperature, offering an ideal platform to study low-dimensional and topological physics. Although recent research has focused on monolayer stanene, the quantum size effect in few-layer stanene could profoundly change material properties, but remains unexplored. By exploring the layer degree of freedom, we discover superconductivity in few-layer stanene down to a bilayer grown on PbTe, while bulk α-tin is not superconductive. Through substrate engineering, we further realize a transition from a single-band to a two-band superconductor with a doubling of the transition temperature. In situ angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) together with first-principles calculations elucidate the corresponding band structure. The theory also indicates the existence of a topologically non-trivial band. Our experimental findings open up novel strategies for constructing two-dimensional topological superconductors.

Indigo naturalis (also known as Qing-dai, or QD), a traditional Chinese medicine, has been widely used as an anticolitis regimen in the clinical practice of Chinese medicine. However, the precise mechanisms behind its efficacy remain unknown. We investigated the protective effects and associated molecular mechanisms of QD in DSS-induced colitis in mice. We found that QD administration attenuated DSS-induced colon shortening, tissue damage, and the disease activity index during the onset of colitis. Moreover, QD administration significantly suppressed colonic MPO activity and increased the activities of colonic T-SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px, as well the expression of p-AMPK and Nrf-2 in colon tissues of colitic mice. In addition, QD was capable of reducing the colonic Th1 and Th17 cell cytokines, the frequencies of Th1 and Th17 cells, and the phosphorylation of p-STAT1 and p-STAT3 in the mesenteric lymph nodes of colitic mice. An in vitro assay showed that QD significantly suppressed the differentiation of Th1 and Th17 cells. These findings suggest that QD has the potential to alleviate experimental colitis by suppressing colonic oxidative stress and restraining colonic Th1/Th17 responses, which are associated with activating AMPK/Nrf-2 signals and inhibiting STAT1/STAT3 signals, respectively. These findings also support QD as an effective regimen in the treatment of IBD.

Aim： Glyoxalase I （GLOI）, a glutathione （GSH）-dependent enzyme, is overexpressed in tumor cells and related to multi-drug resistance in chemotherapy, making GLOI inhibitors as potential anti-tumor agents. But the most studied GSH analogs exhibit poor pharmacokinetic properties. The aim of this study was to discover novel non-GSH analog GLOI inhibitors and analyze their binding mechanisms. Methods： Mouse GLOI （mGLOI） was expressed in BL21 （DE3） pLysS after induction with isopropyl-β-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside and purified using AKTA FPLC system. An in vitro mGLOI enzyme assay was used to screen a small pool of compounds containing carboxyl groups. Crystal structure of the mGLOI-inhibitor complex was determined at 2.3 A resolution. Molecular docking study was performed using Discovery Studio 2.5 software package. Results： A natural compound 18-β-glycyrrhetinic acid （GA） and its derivative carbenoxolone were identified as potent competitive non- GSH analog mGLOI inhibitors with Ki values of 0.29 pmol/L and 0.93 pmol/L, respectively. Four pentacyclic triterpenes （ursolic acid, oleanolic acid, betulic acid and tripterine） showed weak activities （mGLOI inhibition ratio 〈25% at 10 pmol/L） and other three （maslinic acid, corosolic acid and madecassic acid） were inactive. The crystal structure of the mGLOI-GA complex showed that the carboxyl group of GA mimicked the γ-glutamyl residue of GSH by hydrogen bonding to the glutamyl sites （residues Arg38B, AsnlO4B and Arg123A） in the GSH binding site of mGLOI. The extensive van der Waals interactions between GA and the surrounding residues also contributed greatly to the binding of GA and mGLOI. Conclusion： This work demonstrates a carboxyl group to be an important functional feature of non-GSH analog GLOI inhibitors.

The purpose of this prospective study is to present and evaluate a new technique using suture anchors for the treatment of the avulsion fractures of the tibial eminence. Twenty-three consecutive patients with the displaced avulsion fracture of the tibial attachment of anterior cruciate ligament were treated using mini-open technique with suture anchors between 2005 and 2008. According to the classification of Meyers and McKeever, there were 5 type II, 13 type III, and 5 type IV fractures. The median follow-up period was 18 months (range, 12–32 months). The patient assessment included Lysholm score, Tegner score, IKDC score, and radiographic evaluation. The median Lysholm score improved from 32 (range, 28–48) preoperatively to 98 (range, 85–100) postoperatively. The median preoperative Tegner score was 3 (range, 2–5), and the median postoperative Tegner score was 7 (range, 5–9). The global IKDC objective score was normal (A) in 21 knees and nearly normal (B) in 2 knees. At final follow-up, the Lachman test and anterior drawer test were negative. The results showed that mini-open reduction and fixation of avulsion fracture of the tibial eminence with suture anchors have achieved satisfactory results. We suggest the use of this technique for treating avulsion fractures of the tibial eminence.

The aim of this study was to observe the liver function recovery of COVID-19 patients after discharge. A total of 253 discharged COVID-19 patients in Shenzhen city, China were selected. The clinical characteristics of these patients were assessed. A 2-month follow-up and laboratory hematology test were performed to examine the status of patients' liver function. Patients combined with liver diseases, especially fatty liver, are more likely to progress to severe condition ( 0.05). Patients in severe condition and those with liver diseases have higher rates of liver injuries during hospitalization, characterized by a significant increase in alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST, 0.01). The ALT, AST/ALT, gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total protein (TP), albumin (ALB), and A/G levels showed significant differences in comparison with the control group ( 0.05, and 0.001); and the outlier ratio of A/G, ALT, GGT and ALP of patients remained abnormal higher within 14 days after discharge ( 0.001). Liver injuries of COVID-19 patients may be related to the epidemiological characteristics, clinical indexes, basic diseases, symptoms, drug treatment during hospitalization and the complications. Indicators of liver function were correlated with cardiac function, renal function, thyroid function, lipid metabolism, glucose metabolism, immune index, leukocyte, erythrocyte, hemoglobin and platelet related indexes. The outlier ratio of TP, ALB and GLB remained extremely low throughout the follow-up period; the outlier ratio of ALT, AST and GGT decreased below 10% from a high level at 40 days after discharged. However, the outlier ratio of A/G, AST/ALT and ALP remained high during the follow-up period. : Abnormal liver function might indicate worse recovery of COVID-19 patients. Changes in liver function should be emphasized during long-term follow-up of COVID-19 patients after hospital discharge; the necessity of employing appropriate interventions for liver function repair should be emphasized.

Research on recovering COVID-19 patients could be helpful for containing the pandemic and developing vaccines, but we still do not know much about the clinical features, recovery process, and antibody reactions during the recovery period. We retrospectively analysed the epidemiological information, discharge summaries, and laboratory results of 324 patients. In all, 15 (8.62%) patients experienced chest distress/breath shortness, where 8 of the 15 were severely ill. This means severely ill patients need an extended amount of time to recover after discharge; next, 20 (11.49%) patients experienced anxiety and 21 (12.07%) had headache/insomnia and a small fraction of them complained of anosmia/ageusia, indicating that these patients need treatment for mental and psychological health issues. Regarding the re-positive patients, their CT and laboratory test results showed no obvious evidence of illness progress or infectivity but a high anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody expression. Recovered COVID-19 patients need psychological and physiological care and treatment, re-positivity can occur in any person, but juveniles, females, and patients with mild/moderate existing symptoms have higher rates of re-positivity, While there is no evidence that turning re-positive has an impact on their infectivity, but it still alerted us that we need differentiate them in the following managements.

In this paper defines an adaptive hybrid complex projective synchronization method to synchronize two chaotic complex systems. Base on Lyapunov stability theory, the adaptive control law and parameter update law are derived to make the state of two chaotic complex systems, which are adaptive hybrid complex projective synchronized. This paper extends projective synchronization from the field of real numbers to the field of complex numbers for a chaotic complex system. Different components of the complex system synchronized to different scale complex numbers. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive controllers.

This paper presents finite-time hybrid projective synchronization for the unified chaotic system. The significant contribution of this paper is that master–slave system realizes hybrid projective synchronization within a pre-specified convergence time. Base on the Lyapunov stability theory and finite-time stability theory, a finite-time controller is derived to make the state of the slave system exponentially synchronize the state of the master system, and the different components of state of the slave system and the master system synchronize up to different desired scaling constant. Numerical simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of theoretical analysis.

This paper presents a parallel TBB-CUDA implementation for the acceleration of single-Gaussian distribution model, which is effective for background removal in the video-based fire detection system. In this framework, TBB mainly deals with initializing work of the estimated Gaussian model running on CPU, and CUDA performs background removal and adaption of the model running on GPU. This implementation can exploit the combined computation power of TBB-CUDA, which can be applied to the real-time environment. Over 220 video sequences are utilized in the experiments. The experimental results illustrate that TBB+CUDA can achieve a higher speedup than both TBB and CUDA. The proposed framework can effectively overcome the disadvantages of limited memory bandwidth and few execution units of CPU, and it reduces data transfer latency and memory latency between CPU and GPU.

This paper investigates the problem of chaos synchronization in complex oscillators networks. An adaptive complex feedback controller is designed to realize chaos synchronization in complex oscillators networks. The adaptive complex feedback controller consisting of real part controller and imaginary part controller. The real part controller and the imaginary part controller control the real part system and the imaginary part system of complex oscillators system of complex dynamical networks, respectively. Chaos synchronization in complex oscillators networks with constant delay and chaos synchronization in complex oscillators networks with time-varying coupling delay are researched. Finally, the numerical simulations show the effectiveness of theoretical analysis.