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The incidence rate of kidney stones increased over the past decades globally, which brought medical expenditure and social burden. The systemic immune-inflammatory index (SII) was initially identified as a prognosis of multiple diseases. We performed an updated analysis on the impact of SII on kidney stones. This compensatory cross-sectional study enrolled participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2018. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate the association between SII and kidney stones. Of the 22220 participants, the mean (SD) age was 49.45 ± 17.36 years old, with a 9.87% incidence rate of kidney stones. A fully adjusted model showed that SII higher than 330 x 10 /L was parallel associated with kidney stones (Odds ratio [OR] = 1.282, 95% Confidence interval [CI] = 1.023 to 1.608, = 0.034) in adults aged 20-50. However, no difference was found in the elderly subgroup. Multiple imputation analyses confirmed the robustness of our results. Our findings suggested SII was positively associated with a high risk of kidney stones in US adults aged less than 50. The outcome compensated for previous studies that still needed more large-scale prospective cohorts for validation.

Background This study sought to detect the expression and clinical significance of miR-4516 and miR-21-5p in serum of patients with colorectal cancer. Methods Bioinformatics methods were used to analyze the expression patterns of miR-4516 and miR-21-5p in colorectal cancer. A total of 80 patients with colorectal cancer, 65 patients with benign colorectal tumors and 50 healthy persons were selected. qRT-PCR was performed to detect the expression levels of serum miR-4516 and miR-21-5p before and after operation or postoperative recurrence. The correlation of miR-4516 and miR-21-5p expression levels with the clinical characteristics and prognosis of colorectal cancer was analyzed, and that with the patient’s survival was further examined by Kaplan-Meier analysis. Results MiR-4516 was poorly expressed in colorectal cancer in the preoperative group, and miR-21-5p was highly expressed. While in the postoperative group, miR-4516 was up-regulated, and miR-21-5p was down-regulated. The low expression of miR-4516 was shown to be related to TNM staging, invasion degree, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis of the patients. Whereas the high expression of miR-21-5p was proved to be correlated with TNM staging and lymph node metastasis. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that high expression of miR-4516 or low expression of miR-21-5p could contribute to better overall survival. Conclusion Low miR-4516 or high miR-21-5p could be used as an independent risk factor for prognosis of colorectal cancer.

In the realm of aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA), a paramount task is the extraction of triplets, which define aspect terms, opinion terms, and their respective sentiment orientations within text. This study introduces a novel extraction model, BiLSTM-BGAT-GCN, which seamlessly integrates graph neural networks with an enhanced biaffine attention mechanism. This model amalgamates the sophisticated capabilities of both graph attention and convolutional networks to process graph-structured data, substantially enhancing the interpretation and extraction of textual features. By optimizing the biaffine attention mechanism, the model adeptly uncovers the subtle interplay between aspect terms and emotional expressions, offering enhanced flexibility and superior contextual analysis through dynamic weight distribution. A series of comparative experiments confirm the model’s significant performance improvements across various metrics, underscoring its efficacy and refined effectiveness in ABSA tasks.

Metabolic reprogramming is one of the main characteristics of malignant tumors. The metabolic reprogramming of tumors is not only related to the characteristics of cancer cells, but also closely related to the tumor microenvironment (TME). 'Aerobic glycolysis' is considered to be the classic metabolic mode of tumor cells. However, recent experiments have shown that the TME plays a key role in carcinogenesis and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) dominate in the microenvironment and affect the homeostasis of the TME. The interaction between cancer cells and the surrounding CAFs markedly affects the growth, metabolism, metastasis, and progression of cancer. Based on this, a 'dual-chamber' model, also known as the 'Reverse Warburg effect', is proposed. Specifically, cancer cells secrete hydrogen peroxide into the TME to induce oxidative stress in neighboring stromal cells. CAFs undergo aerobic glycolysis and produce high levels of energy-rich 'fuels' (such as pyruvate, ketone bodies, fatty acids, and lactic acid). In turn, these energy-rich 'fuels' then 'feed' cancer cells. The mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation system produces a large quantity of ATP, such that tumor cells have a higher proliferation ability. The proposed 'Reverse Warburg effect' redefines the tumor cell microenvironment and tumor metabolic reprogramming. Therefore, understanding the 'Reverse Warburg effect' of CAFs and its related mechanisms will help us to understand the association between the microenvironment, the matrix, and cancer cells, and may lead to new treatment strategies and targets.

Cellular mechanotransduction, a critical regulator of numerous biological processes, is the conversion from mechanical signals to biochemical signals regarding cell activities and metabolism. Typical mechanical cues in organisms include hydrostatic pressure, fluid shear stress, tensile force, extracellular matrix stiffness or tissue elasticity, and extracellular fluid viscosity. Mechanotransduction has been expected to trigger multiple biological processes, such as embryonic development, tissue repair and regeneration. However, prolonged excessive mechanical stimulation can result in pathological processes, such as multi-organ fibrosis, tumorigenesis, and cancer immunotherapy resistance. Although the associations between mechanical cues and normal tissue homeostasis or diseases have been identified, the regulatory mechanisms among different mechanical cues are not yet comprehensively illustrated, and no effective therapies are currently available targeting mechanical cue-related signaling. This review systematically summarizes the characteristics and regulatory mechanisms of typical mechanical cues in normal conditions and diseases with the updated evidence. The key effectors responding to mechanical stimulations are listed, such as Piezo channels, integrins, Yes-associated protein (YAP) /transcriptional coactivator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ), and transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4). We also reviewed the key signaling pathways, therapeutic targets and cutting-edge clinical applications of diseases related to mechanical cues.

High-entropy alloys have attracted much attention due to their unique microstructures and excellent properties. Since their invention more than ten years ago, research attention has been mainly focused on the study of multicomponent alloys with equiatomic or near-equiatomic compositions. Here we propose a novel design of non-equiatomic medium-entropy alloys that contain one matrix element and several equiatomic alloying elements. To verify the utility of this new design, a series of Co-free Fe x (CrNiAl) 100−x (at.%, 25 ≤ x ≤ 65) medium-entropy alloys were designed from the much-studied FeNiCrCoAl high-entropy alloy. Detailed characterization reveals that the alloys exhibit novel two-phase microstructures consisting of B2-ordered nanoprecipitates and BCC-disordered matrix. As the alloys deviate far from equiatomic composition, the structure of the nanoprecipitates transfers from a spinodal-like intertwined structure to a nanoparticle dispersed structure. Previous parametric approaches to predict phase formation rules for high-entropy alloys are unable to describe the phase separation behaviors in the studied alloys. Our findings provide a new route to design medium-entropy alloys and also demonstrate a strategy for designing nanostructured alloys from multicomponent alloy systems through simple variations in non-equiatomic compositions.

The rapid development of neuro-inspired computing demands synaptic devices with ultrafast speed, low power consumption, and multiple non-volatile states, among other features. Here, a high-performance synaptic device is designed and established based on a Ag/PbZr 0.52 Ti 0.48 O 3 (PZT, (111)-oriented)/Nb:SrTiO 3 ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ). The advantages of (111)-oriented PZT (~1.2 nm) include its multiple ferroelectric switching dynamics, ultrafine ferroelectric domains, and small coercive voltage. The FTJ shows high-precision (256 states, 8 bits), reproducible (cycle-to-cycle variation, ~2.06%), linear (nonlinearity <1) and symmetric weight updates, with a good endurance of >10 9 cycles and an ultralow write energy consumption. In particular, manipulations among 150 states are realized under subnanosecond (~630 ps) pulse voltages ≤5 V, and the fastest resistance switching at 300 ps for the FTJs is achieved by voltages <13 V. Based on the experimental performance, the convolutional neural network simulation achieves a high online learning accuracy of ~94.7% for recognizing fashion product images, close to the calculated result of ~95.6% by floating-point-based convolutional neural network software. Interestingly, the FTJ-based neural network is very robust to input image noise, showing potential for practical applications. This work represents an important improvement in FTJs towards building neuro-inspired computing systems. Brain-inspired computing demands high-performance synapses. Here, the authors report a subnanosecond ferroelectric tunnel junction with 256 conductance states, 10 9 endurance, and 5.3 fJ/bit energy consumption, satisfactory to build synaptic devices.

Next-generation non-volatile memories with ultrafast speed, low power consumption, and high density are highly desired in the era of big data. Here, we report a high performance memristor based on a Ag/BaTiO 3 /Nb:SrTiO 3 ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) with the fastest operation speed (600 ps) and the highest number of states (32 states or 5 bits) per cell among the reported FTJs. The sub-nanosecond resistive switching maintains up to 358 K, and the write current density is as low as 4 × 10 3  A cm −2 . The functionality of spike-timing-dependent plasticity served as a solid synaptic device is also obtained with ultrafast operation. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that a Nb:SrTiO 3 electrode with a higher carrier concentration and a metal electrode with lower work function tend to improve the operation speed. These results may throw light on the way for overcoming the storage performance gap between different levels of the memory hierarchy and developing ultrafast neuromorphic computing systems. Memristor devices based on ferroelectric tunnel junctions are promising, but suffer from quite slow switching times. Here, the authors report on ultrafast switching times at and above room temperature of 600ps in Ag/BaTiO3/Nb:SrTiO3 based ferroelectric tunnel junctions.

We previously found that the relative abundance of Bifidobacterium was increased after chemotherapy; however, the role of Bifidobacterium longum in chemotherapeutic drug resistance in ovarian cancer (OVC) remains unclear. This study aimed to understand the potential effects and mechanism of B. longum extracellular vesicles (B. longum‐EVs) on carboplatin (CBP) resistance in OVC. Eight normal and 11 ovarian tissues were collected and the expression of B. longum genomic DNA and its association with acquired CBP resistance in OVC patients was determined. After isolating EVs by ultracentrifugation from B. longum (ATCC 15707), CBP‐resistant A2780 cells were treated with PBS, CBP, B. longum‐EVs, or CBP + B. longum‐EVs, and subsequently analyzed by CCK‐8, Edu staining, Annexin V/PI double staining, wound healing, and Transwell assays to detect cell viability, proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion, respectively. MRP1, ATP7A, ATP7B, and p53 expression as well as p53 phosphorylation were measured by western blot analysis. S15A mutation of p53 was assessed to examine the potential role of p53 Ser15 phosphorylation in CBP‐resistant OVC. B. longum levels were elevated and positively associated with CBP resistance in OVC patients. Only high concentrations of B. longum‐EVs attenuated A2780 cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion. B. longum‐EVs exposure significantly enhanced the sensitivity of CBP‐resistant A2780 cells to CBP and decreased the expression of drug resistance‐related proteins. The effect of B. longum‐EVs on reversing CBP resistance was completely inhibited by S15A mutation of p53. B. longum‐EVs enhanced the sensitivity of OVC cells to CBP through p53 phosphorylation on Ser15.

In this paper, we first present multiple numerical simulations of the anti-symmetric matrix in the stability criteria for fractional order systems (FOSs). Subsequently, this paper is devoted to the study of the admissibility criteria for descriptor fractional order systems (DFOSs) whose order belongs to (0, 2). The admissibility criteria are provided for DFOSs without eigenvalues on the boundary axes. In addition, a unified admissibility criterion for DFOSs involving the minimal linear matrix inequality (LMI) variable is provided. The results of this paper are all based on LMIs. Finally, numerical examples were provided to validate the accuracy and effectiveness of the conclusions.