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The shortage of fresh water in the world has brought upon a serious crisis to human health and economic development. Solar‐driven interfacial photothermal conversion water evaporation including evaporating seawater, lake water, or river water has been recognized as an environmentally friendly process for obtaining clean water in a low‐cost way. However, water transport is restricted by itself by solar energy absorption capacity's limits, especially for finite evaporation rates and insufficient working life. Therefore, it is important to seek photothermal conversion materials that can efficiently absorb solar energy and reasonably design solar‐driven interfacial photothermal conversion water evaporation devices. This paper reviews the research progress of carbon‐based photothermal conversion materials and the mechanism for solar‐driven interfacial photothermal conversion water evaporation, as well as the summary of the design and development of the devices. Based on the research progress and achievements of photothermal conversion materials and devices in the fields of seawater desalination and photothermal electric energy generation in recent years, the challenges and opportunities faced by carbon‐based photothermal conversion materials and devices are discussed. The prospect of the practical application of solar‐driven interfacial photothermal conversion evaporation technology is foreseen, and theoretical guidance is provided for the further development of this technology. Carbon‐based materials have excellent photothermal conversion properties and can be used in seawater desalination, electro‐power generation, and sewage treatment. A variety of different carbon‐based materials and devices have been developed. This paper reviewed the types of carbon‐based photothermal conversion materials, device structures, and applications in different fields. The development prospects are prospected.

Viral infections can give rise to a systemic decrease in the total number of lymphocytes in the blood, referred to as lymphopenia. Lymphopenia may affect the host adaptive immune responses and impact the clinical course of acute viral infections. Detailed knowledge on how viruses induce lymphopenia would provide valuable information into the pathogenesis of viral infections and potential therapeutic targeting. In this review, the current progress of viruses-induced lymphopenia is summarized and the potential mechanisms and factors involved are discussed.

In vulnerability assessments, accurately determining the indicator weights is essential to ensure the results’ precision and reliability. This paper proposes an optimized comprehensive symmetric Kullback–Leibler (K–L) distance weighting method, in which the comprehensive symmetric K–L distance for each indicator is calculated using a grid-based approach, and the normalized distance serves as the weight for each indicator. ArcGIS software was employed to assess the Ili River Basin flood vulnerability as a case study. The results reveal the following: (1) The grid-based optimized symmetric K–L distance method facilitated variable weight processing in the disaster assessments, where it offered a scientific and adaptable approach for indexing and weighting the Ili River Basin flood vulnerability, thus improving both the evaluation accuracy and practicality. (2) The spatial distribution of the Ili River Basin flood vulnerability levels was uneven, with higher vulnerability observed in the northwestern, southwestern, and southeastern regions, and lower vulnerability in the eastern and northeastern areas. Yining County, Yining City, and certain southern regions of Cocodala City were particularly vulnerable due to multiple influencing factors, including the population, economy, and society. These areas require focused attention and preventive measures.

When manufacturing aluminum alloy space-frame radomes, the vertical welding distortion is the main factor that affects assembly accuracy, and the residual stress affects the service performance. This paper aims to decrease welding distortion while ensuring that the residual stress is within the appropriate range by adjusting welding direction and sequence. The thermal-elastic–plastic finite element method is used to predict the welding distortion and residual stress in mid-thick aluminum plate-sleeve structures. The numerical model was verified by experimental results of temperature, vertical distortion, and residual stresses. The effect of welding direction and sequence on the distortion and residual stress was examined by the numerical model. Results indicate that the welding direction significantly affects the distribution and magnitude of X-direction distortion (longitudinal shrinkage) but has little effect on vertical distortion and residual stress. The welding sequence significantly affects the magnitude of vertical distortion and the distribution of residual stress. Then, considering the vertical distortion and residual stress, a scheme (Case 3) is recommended for welding mid-thick aluminum plate-sleeve structures. The maximum vertical distortion of the current production scheme (Case 1) and final determined scheme (Case 3) are 5.43 mm and 2.73 mm, and the corresponding maximum tensile residual stress is 186.5 MPa and 193.8 MPa, respectively. Comparing Case 1 with Case 3, Case 3 can reduce the vertical distortion by 49.7%, while the maximum tensile residual stress of the two is close, and the difference is less than 10 MPa.

Urban flooding can be predicted by using different modeling approaches. This study considered different methods of modeling the dynamic flow interactions between pipe systems and surface flooding in urban areas. These approaches can be divided into two categories based on surface runoff collection units. This paper introduces a new hydrodynamic model that couples the storm water management model and the 2D overland model. The model’s efficiency was validated based on the aforementioned experimental dataset; agreement was verified by correlation values above 0.6. Additionally, this study used different approaches and compared their accuracy in predicting flooding patterns. The results show that the use of sub-catchments to model the collection of surface runoff was not predictive of the inundation process, indicating a lower goodness of fit with the recorded values than that of adopting cells. Moreover, to determine which method of adopting cells to collect runoff could better predict rainstorm-induced inundation, an error and correlation analysis was conducted. The analysis found low error and high correlation, suggesting that inundation can be effectively predicted by the new approaches. Ultimately, this study contributes to existing work on numerical analysis of the interaction methods of urban flooding.

A large body of evidence suggests that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is clinically effective in treating neuropsychiatric disorders and multiple sessions are commonly used. However, it is unknown whether multiple sessions of rTMS improve cognitive control, which is a function of the neural circuitry of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)-cingulate cortex in healthy individuals. In addition, it is still unclear which stages of neural processing are altered by rTMS. In this study, we investigated the effects of high-frequency rTMS on cognitive control and explored the time course changes of cognitive processing after rTMS using event-related potentials (ERPs). For seven consecutive days, 25 young healthy participants underwent one 10-Hz rTMS session per day in which stimulation was applied over the left DLPFC, and a homogeneous participant group of 25 individuals received a sham rTMS treatment. A Stroop task was performed, and an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The results revealed that multiple sessions of rTMS can decrease reaction time (RTs) under both congruent and incongruent conditions and also increased the amplitudes of both N2 and N450 compared with sham rTMS. The negative correlations between the mean amplitudes of both N2 and N450 and the RTs were found, however, the latter correlation were restricted to incongruent trials and the correlation was enhanced significantly by rTMS. This observation supports the view that high-frequency rTMS over the left DLPFC can not only recruit more neural resources from the prefrontal cortex by inducing an electrophysiologically excitatory effect but also enhance efficiency of resources to deploy for conflict resolution during multiple stages of cognitive control processing in healthy young people.

Receptor-interacting protein kinase-3 (RIPK3), a critical regulator of necroptosis and inflammation, has been implicated in modulating viral infections by either promoting host defense or facilitating viral replication. In this study, it was found that porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) infection selectively induced RIPK3 phosphorylation in PK-15 cells without activating its canonical downstream effector MLKL. This indicated that the virus exploits RIPK3 in a necroptosis-independent manner. Inhibition of RIPK3 phosphorylation using GSK872 or RIPK3 knockdown significantly reduced viral replication, as evidenced by viral DNA levels in PK-15 cells, with a concomitant reduction in Rep protein expression. Through functional screening of viral proteins, we found that only ORF3 triggered RIPK3 phosphorylation, while capsid (Cap) and replication-associated (Rep) proteins did not. Both PCV2 infection and ORF3 could induce autophagy. RIPK3 knockdown suppressed PCV2-induced autophagy, and subsequently knockdown of the autophagy-related protein ATG7 resulted in the reduction of PCV2 replication. These findings indicated that PCV2 employed its ORF3 protein to hijack RIPK3 phosphorylation-dependent autophagy, thereby creating a promoted viral replication environment. ‌In conclusion‌, this study demonstrated that PCV2 manipulated host cell machinery through its ORF3 protein, which hijacked RIPK3 phosphorylation to activate autophagy—a mechanism distinct from RIPK3’s classical necroptosis function. This ORF3-RIPK3 phosphorylation-autophagy axis represented a novel therapeutic target for PCV2 control.

Genome-wide association studies have identified numerous variants associated with human complex traits, most of which reside in the non-coding regions, but biological mechanisms remain unclear. However, assigning function to the non-coding elements is still challenging. Here we apply Activity-by-Contact (ABC) model to evaluate enhancer-gene regulation effect by integrating multi-omics data and identified 544,849 connections across 20 cancer types. ABC model outperforms previous approaches in linking regulatory variants to target genes. Furthermore, we identify over 30,000 enhancer-gene connections in colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues. By integrating large-scale population cohorts (23,813 cases and 29,973 controls) and multipronged functional assays, we demonstrate an ABC regulatory variant rs4810856 associated with CRC risk (Odds Ratio = 1.11, 95%CI = 1.05–1.16, P  = 4.02 × 10 −5 ) by acting as an allele-specific enhancer to distally facilitate PREX1 , CSE1L and STAU1 expression, which synergistically activate p-AKT signaling. Our study provides comprehensive regulation maps and illuminates a single variant regulating multiple genes, providing insights into cancer etiology. Here, the authors apply the Activity-by-Contact (ABC) model to infer enhancer-gene regulation and the effect of associated variants across multiple cancer types, integrating genetic and multi-omics data. Then, they explore the mechanisms associated with ABC regulatory variants in colorectal cancer.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is characterized by a pronounced lymphopenia that is associated with immune suppression. However, the mechanisms leading to lymphopenia remain unclear. In this study, the number of total CD4+, CD8+ T cells, B cells, and NK cells in the peripheral blood were dramatically reduced in C57BL/6 mice infected with foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) serotype O, and it was noted that mice with severe clinical symptoms had expressively lower lymphocyte counts than mice with mild or without clinical symptoms, indicating that lymphopenia was associated with disease severity. A further analysis revealed that lymphocyte apoptosis and trafficking occurred after FMDV infection. In addition, coinhibitory molecules were upregulated in the expression of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from FMDV-infected mice, including CTLA-4, LAG-3, 2B4, and TIGIT. Interestingly, the elevated IL-10 in the serum was correlated with the appearance of lymphopenia during FMDV infection but not IL-6, IL-2, IL-17, IL-18, IL-1β, TNF-α, IFN-α/β, TGF-β, and CXCL1. Knocking out IL-10 (IL-10-/-) mice or blocking IL-10/IL-10R signaling in vivo was able to prevent lymphopenia via downregulating apoptosis, trafficking, and the coinhibitory expression of lymphocytes in the peripheral blood, which contribute to enhance the survival of mice infected with FMDV. Our findings support that blocking IL-10/IL-10R signaling may represent a novel therapeutic approach for FMD.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a multifaced disease characterized by the acute onset of hypoxemia, worsened pulmonary compliance, and noncardiogenic pulmonary edema. Despite over five decades of research, specific treatments for established ARDS are still lacking. MSC-based therapies have the advantage of targeting nearly all pathophysiological components of ARDS by means of a variety of secreted trophic factors, exerting anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, immunomodulatory, antiapoptotic, and proangiogenic effects, resulting in significant structural and functional recovery following ARDS in various preclinical models. However, the therapeutic efficacy of transplanted MSCs is limited by their poor engraftment and low survival rate in the injured tissues, major barriers to clinical translation. Accordingly, several strategies have been explored to improve MSC retention in the lung and enhance the innate properties of MSCs in preclinical models of ARDS. To provide a comprehensive and updated view, we summarize a large body of experimental evidence for a variety of strategies directed towards strengthening the therapeutic potential of MSCs in ARDS.