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Improving the detection efficiency and maintenance benefits is one of the greatest challenges in road testing and maintenance. To address this problem, this paper presents a method for combining the you only look once (YOLO) series with 3D ground-penetrating radar (GPR) images to recognize the internal defects in asphalt pavement and compares the effectiveness of traditional detection and GPR detection by evaluating the maintenance benefits. First, traditional detection is conducted to survey and summarize the surface conditions of tested roads, which are missing the internal information. Therefore, GPR detection is implemented to acquire the images of concealed defects. Then, the YOLOv5 model with the most even performance of the six selected models is applied to achieve the rapid identification of road defects. Finally, the benefits evaluation of maintenance programs based on these two detection methods is conducted from economic and environmental perspectives. The results demonstrate that the economic scores are improved and the maintenance cost is reduced by $49,398/km based on GPR detection; the energy consumption and carbon emissions are reduced by 792,106 MJ/km (16.94%) and 56,289 kg/km (16.91%), respectively, all of which indicates the effectiveness of 3D GPR in pavement detection and maintenance.

Background Exosomes have emerged as vital biomarkers of multiple cancers and contain abundant circular RNAs (circRNAs). However, the potential for exosomal circRNAs to be used in diagnostics and their molecular mechanism of action in colorectal cancer (CRC) remain unclear. Methods CRC-specific exosomal circRNAs were identified by RNA sequencing, exoRBase database and a tissue microarray. The diagnostic performance of plasma exosomal circRNAs was evaluated among cancer-free controls, precancer individuals, CRC patients, and patients with other types of cancer. The corresponding biological functions were mainly assessed using circRNA pull-down, proteomic analysis, and RNA immunoprecipitation assay underlying cellular and mouse models. Results CircLPAR1 was encapsulated in exosomes with high stability and detectability, and its expression in plasma exosomes was remarkably decreased during CRC development but recovered after surgery. Exosomal circLPAR1 showed cancer specificity in CRC diagnosis and increased the diagnostic performance to an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.875, as determined by analysing its performance in combination with common clinical biomarkers CEA and CA19–9. Additionally, circLPAR1 was downregulated in CRC tissues and was associated with overall survival. Mechanistically, exosomal circLPAR1 was internalized by CRC cells, and it suppressed tumor growth, likely because exosomal circLPAR1 directly bound with eIF3h specifically suppressed the METTL3-eIF3h interaction, decreasing the translation of oncogene BRD4 . Conclusions This comprehensive study highlights plasma exosomal circLPAR1 as a promising predictor in CRC diagnosis and describes its biological regulation of colorectal tumorigenesis. This study provides a new perspective on early diagnosis in the clinic and pathogenesis in disease development.

Background Emerging evidence has shown that dysregulation function of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) implicated in gastric cancer (GC). However, the role of the differentially expressed lncRNAs in GC has not fully explained. Methods LncRNA expression profiles were determined by lncRNA microarray in five pairs of normal and GC tissues, further validated in another 75 paired tissues by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Overexpression of lncRNA MT1JP was conducted to assess the effect of MT1JP in vitro and in vivo. The biological functions were demonstrated by luciferase reporter assay, western blotting and rescue experiments. Results LncRNA MT1JP was significantly lower in GC tissues than adjacent normal tissues, and higher MT1JP was remarkably related to lymph node metastasis and advance stage. Besides, GC patients with higher MT1JP expression had a well survival. Functionally, overexpression of lncRNA MT1JP inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion and promoted cell apoptosis in vitro, and inhibited tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. Functional analysis showed that lncRNA MT1JP regulated FBXW7 expression by competitively binding to miR-92a-3p. MiR-92a-3p and down-regulated FBXW7 reversed cell phenotypes caused by lncRNA MT1JP by rescue analysis. Conclusion MT1JP , a down-regulated lncRNA in GC, was associated with malignant tumor phenotypes and survival of GC. MT1JP regulated the progression of GC by functioning as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to competitively bind to miR-92a-3p and regulate FBXW7 expression. Our study provided new insight into the post-transcriptional regulation mechanism of lncRNA MT1JP , and suggested that MT1JP may act as a potential therapeutic target and prognosis biomarker for GC.

The realm of chemiresistive gas sensors has witnessed a notable surge in interest in two-dimensional (2D) materials. The advancement of high-performance 2D gas sensing materials necessitates a quantitative theoretical method capable of accurately predicting their response. In this context, we present our first-principles framework for calculating the response of 2D materials, incorporating both carrier concentration and mobility. We showcase our method by applying it to prototype NH 3 sensing on 2D MoS 2 and comparing the results with prior experiments in the literature. Our approach offers a thorough solution for carrier concentration, taking into account the electronic structure around the Fermi level. In conjunction with the mobility calculation, this enables us to provide a quantitative prediction of the response profile and limit of detection (LOD), yielding a notably improved alignment with prior experimental findings. Further analysis quantifies the contributions of carrier concentration and mobility to the overall response of 2D MoS 2 to NH 3 . We identify that discrepancies in the charge-transfer-based method primarily stem from overestimating carrier concentrations. Our method opens exciting opportunities to explore carrier mobility-dominated sensing materials, facilitates efficient screening of promising gas sensing materials, and quantitative understanding of the sensing mechanism.

Background Failure time data frequently occur in many medical studies and often accompany with various types of censoring. In some applications, left truncation may occur and can induce biased sampling, which makes the practical data analysis become more complicated. The existing analysis methods for left-truncated data have some limitations in that they either focus only on a special type of censored data or fail to flexibly utilize the distribution information of the truncation times for inference. Therefore, it is essential to develop a reliable and efficient method for the analysis of left-truncated failure time data with various types of censoring. Method This paper concerns regression analysis of left-truncated failure time data with the proportional hazards model under various types of censoring mechanisms, including right censoring, interval censoring and a mixture of them. The proposed pairwise pseudo-likelihood estimation method is essentially built on a combination of the conditional likelihood and the pairwise likelihood that eliminates the nuisance truncation distribution function or avoids its estimation. To implement the presented method, a flexible EM algorithm is developed by utilizing the idea of self-consistent estimating equation. A main feature of the algorithm is that it involves closed-form estimators of the large-dimensional nuisance parameters and is thus computationally stable and reliable. In addition, an R package LTsurv is developed. Results The numerical results obtained from extensive simulation studies suggest that the proposed pairwise pseudo-likelihood method performs reasonably well in practical situations and is obviously more efficient than the conditional likelihood approach as expected. The analysis results of the MHCPS data with the proposed pairwise pseudo-likelihood method indicate that males have significantly higher risk of losing active life than females. In contrast, the conditional likelihood method recognizes this effect as non-significant, which is because the conditional likelihood method often loses some estimation efficiency compared with the proposed method. Conclusions The proposed method provides a general and helpful tool to conduct the Cox’s regression analysis of left-truncated failure time data under various types of censoring.

A genetically encoded unnatural amino acid analog and its acidic deprotection enable the site-specific incorporation of phosphotyrosine (pTyr) into proteins such as ubiquitin, where it can be used to study the function of this phosphorylated residue. Access to phosphoproteins with stoichiometric and site-specific phosphorylation status is key to understanding the role of protein phosphorylation. Here we report an efficient method to generate pure, active phosphotyrosine-containing proteins by genetically encoding a stable phosphotyrosine analog that is convertible to native phosphotyrosine. We demonstrate its general compatibility with proteins of various sizes, phosphotyrosine sites and functions, and reveal a possible role of tyrosine phosphorylation in negative regulation of ubiquitination.

Sebaceous glands (SGs), essential elements of the skin barrier in sheep, are tightly regulated by the androgen signaling pathway. This study investigated how androgens influence SGs hyperplasia in sheep by combining morphological assessments with transcriptomic analysis. Histological examination revealed a significant increase ( P  < 0.05) in both the number and average size of SGs in the testosterone-treated groups across four concentration gradients compared to the control group. Transcriptome sequencing was performed on fifteen skin samples, revealing that, compared to the control group, 371 genes were upregulated and 115 were downregulated across the four treatment groups. The upregulated genes were predominantly enriched in lipid metabolism pathways, while the downregulated genes were mainly associated with keratin filament structures. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis identified ten hub genes involved in mitochondrial β-oxidation and lipid synthesis. These findings were further supported by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), which indicated significant activation of fatty acid metabolic pathways ( P  < 0.05). The results of this study suggest that androgens may be involved in SGs hyperplasia in sheep by regulating mitochondrial lipid metabolism-related pathways.

The discovery of ferromagnetism in van der Waals (vdW) materials has enriched the understanding of two-dimensional (2D) magnetic orders and opened new avenues for fundamental physics research and next generation spintronics. However, achieving ferromagnetic order at room temperature, along with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, remains a significant challenge. In this work, we report wafer-scale growth of vdW ferromagnet Fe 3 GaTe 2 using molecular beam epitaxy. The epitaxial Fe 3 GaTe 2 films exhibit robust ferromagnetism, exemplified by high Curie temperature ( T C  = 420 K) and large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) constant K U  = 6.7 × 10 5  J/m 3 at 300 K for nine-unit-cell film. Notably, the ferromagnetic order is preserved even in the one-unit-cell film with T C reaching 345 K, benefiting from the strong PMA ( K U  = 1.8×10 5  J/m 3 at 300 K). In comparison to exfoliated Fe 3 GaTe 2 flakes, our epitaxial films with the same thickness show the significant enhancement of T C , which could be ascribed to the tensile strain effect from the substrate. The successful realization of wafer-scale ferromagnetic Fe 3 GaTe 2 films with T C far above room temperature represents a substantial advancement (in some aspects or some fields, e.g. material science), paving the way for the development of 2D magnet-based spintronic devices. While the list of van der Waals magnetic materials has expanded considerably over the last few years, these are still typically limited to low temperatures. Here, Wu et al report wafer scale growth, and robust room temperature ferromagnetism in Fe3GaTe2.

Objectives This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of 3D-printed guide plate-assisted descending INFIX technology in the management of unstable pelvic ring injuries. Methods This retrospective study analyzed the clinical data of 51 patients who underwent INFIX surgery for pelvic ring fractures at the Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University between January 2023 and December 2024. Based on the use of 3D-printed guide plates, the patients were divided into two groups: conventional group ( n  = 28) and guide plate group ( n  = 23). The surgical parameters, including operative time, number of intraoperative fluoroscopic evaluations, intraoperative blood loss, and incision length, were recorded and compared between the two groups. The postoperative reduction accuracy was evaluated using the Matta imaging scoring system, while the Majeed scoring system was used to obtain functional outcomes in clinical follow-up. All the potential complications were identified and evaluated accordingly. Results Both the patient groups were followed up for a period of 6–11 months, with an average of 8 months. The guide plate group demonstrated shorter surgery duration, fewer fluoroscopic assessments, and fewer guide needle trajectory adjustments compared to the conventional group ( P  < 0.05). The guide plate group exhibited a higher percentage of good Matta scores than the conventional group (17.39% vs. 14.29%). Conclusions The individualized 3D-printed navigation template significantly reduced the complexity of INFIX surgery, minimized intraoperative and postoperative complications, and enhanced clinical outcomes. The procedure can be safely performed in resource-limited medical facilities, making it feasible for junior surgeons with limited pelvic anatomy experience.

Atmospheric NO 2 is of great concern due to its adverse effects on human health and the environment, motivating research on NO 2 detection and remediation. Existing low-cost room-temperature NO 2 sensors often suffer from low sensitivity at the ppb level or long recovery times, reflecting the trade-off between sensor response and recovery time. Here, we report an atomically dispersed metal ion strategy to address it. We discover that bimetallic PbCdSe quantum dot (QD) gels containing atomically dispersed Pb ionic sites achieve the optimal combination of strong sensor response and fast recovery, leading to a high-performance room-temperature p-type semiconductor NO 2 sensor as characterized by a combination of ultra–low limit of detection, high sensitivity and stability, fast response and recovery. With the help of theoretical calculations, we reveal the high performance of the PbCdSe QD gel arises from the unique tuning effects of Pb ionic sites on NO 2 binding at their neighboring Cd sites. Quantum dot-based NO 2 sensors often suffer from low sensitivity or long recovery times. Here, the authors report that bimetallic PbCdSe quantum dot gels containing atomically dispersed Pb ionic sites enable ultra-sensitive and fast NO 2 sensing.