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Purpose Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is characterized by lymph-node metastasis (LNM), which affects recurrence and prognosis. This study analyzed PTC LNM by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data and bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to find diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. Methods ScRNA-seq data were clustered and malignant cells were identified. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in malignant cells of scRNA-seq and bulk RNA-seq, respectively. PTC LNM diagnostic model was constructed based on intersecting DEGs using glmnet package. Next, PTC samples from 66 patients were used to validate the two most significant genes in the diagnostic model, S100A2 and type 2 deiodinase (DIO2) by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and immunohistochemical (IHC). Further, the inhibitory effect of DIO2 on PTC cells was verified by cell biology behavior, western blot, cell cycle analysis, 5-ethynyl-2′-deoxyuridine (EdU) assay, and xenograft tumors. Results Heterogeneity of PTC LNM was demonstrated by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Gene Ontology (GO) analysis. A total of 19 differential genes were used to construct the diagnostic model. S100A2 and DIO2 differ significantly at the RNA ( p  < 0.01) and protein level in LNM patient tissues ( p  < 0.001). And differed in PTC tissues with different pathologic typing ( p  < 0.001). Further, EdU ( p  < 0.001) and cell biology behavior revealed that PTC cells overexpressed DIO2 had reduced proliferative capacity. Cell cycle proteins were reduced and cells are more likely to be stuck in G2/M phase ( p  < 0.001). Conclusions This study explored the heterogeneity of PTC LNM using scRNA-seq. By combining with bulk RNA-seq data, diagnostic markers were explored and the model was established. Clinical diagnostic efficacy of S100A2 and DIO2 was validated and the treatment potential of DIO2 was discovered.

Electromagnetically induced transparency is a type of quantum interference that induces near-zero reflection and near-perfect transmission. As a classical analogy, metal nanostructure plasmonic ‘molecules’ produce plasmon-induced transparency conventionally. Herein, an electromagnetically induced transparency interaction is demonstrated in silicon nanosphere oligomers, wherein the strong magnetic resonance couples with the electric gap mode effectively to markedly suppress reflection. As a result, a narrow-band transparency window created at visible wavelengths, called magnetically induced transparency, is easily realized in nearly touching silicon nanospheres, exhibiting low dependence on the number of spheres and aggregate states compared with plasmon induced transparency. A hybridization mechanism between magnetic and electric modes is proposed to pursue the physical origin, which is crucial to build all-dielectric metamaterials. Remarkably, magnetic induced transparency effect exhibiting near-zero reflection and near-perfect transmission causes light to propagate with no extra phase change. This makes silicon nanosphere oligomers promising as a unit cell in epsilon-near-zero metamaterials. A weak and narrow electric dipole has limited the use of silicon nanospheres in nanophotonic applications requiring strong interaction between electric and magnetic modes. Here, Yan et al. demonstrate effective coupling between the magnetic resonance and the electric gap mode in nearly touching silicon nanospheres.

In this paper, we investigate the opportunities provided by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for significant scientific advances in the study of Solar System bodies and rings using stellar occultations. The strengths and weaknesses of the stellar occultation technique are evaluated in light of JWST's unique capabilities. We identify several possible JWST occultation events by minor bodies and rings and evaluate their potential scientific value. These predictions depend critically on accurate a priori knowledge of the orbit of JWST near the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2). We also explore the possibility of serendipitous stellar occultations by very small minor bodies as a byproduct of other JWST observing programs. Finally, to optimize the potential scientific return of stellar occultation observations, we identify several characteristics of JWST's orbit and instrumentation that should be taken into account during JWST's development.

Introduction: Oxyntomodulin (OXM) is a gut hormone released from intestinal L cell. Synthetic OXM and its analog reduce food intake and body weight in both rodents and human beings by being administered intravenously. However, people find intravenous administration difficult because of its side effects and inconvenience. The aim of this study is to develop a novel oral delivery system for OXM and its analog using genetically engineered Bifidobacterium as the carrier. Methods: An OXM gene expression vector pBBADs-OXM for the Bifidobacterium genus was constructed. Human OXM sequence was fused with extracellular exo-xylanase (XynF) signal peptide (Xs) from Bifidobacterium longum under the control of the pBAD promoter. B. longum NCC2705 was transformed with the recombinant plasmid pBBADs-OXM by electroporation, and the transformed B. longum was selected using MRS plates containing 60 μg ml−1 ampicillin. The OXM expression in vitro was identified by western blot and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assay after L-arabinose induction. Overweight BALB/c mice were treated with B. longum transformed with OXM after 0.2% L-arabinose induction every day for 4 weeks to investigate the effects of OXM-transformed B. longum on food intake and body weight by oral administration. The B. longum transformed with the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene was used as negative control; orlistat, a gastrointestinal lipase inhibitor, was used as positive control; Normal saline (NS, 0.9% saline) was used as blank control. The food intakes of each group were measured every day, and body weights were measured once a week. Normal BALB/c (2 months old) mice were treated with OXM-transformed B. longum after induction by intragastric administration every day for 6 days to reveal the mechanism of transformed B. longum, with OXM exerting its biological function by oral administration. Plasma OXM, plasma ghrelin and the OXM of intestinal contents were detected by the ELISA method. Plasma glucose and triglyceride levels were analyzed using the Automatic Biochemistry Analyzer. Results: Transformed B. longum with OXM was selected and identified without biological and morphological alteration. An approximately 4–5 kDa OXM peptide was detected in both the supernatant and the cell pellet of transformed B. longum after L-arabinose induction in vitro. The food intake, body weight and blood triglyceride level of overweight mice treated with OXM-transformed B. longum were all significantly reduced compared with that of the GFP negative control group and NS control group (P<0.01). Interestingly, the plasma triglyceride level of the GFP group was significantly decreased compared with that of the NS control group (P<0.01). The OXM level in the intestinal contents of the OXM group was significantly increased compared with that of the GFP negative control group and the NS group (P<0.05). The plasma ghrelin level of the OXM group was significantly decreased compared with that of the GFP and NS groups (P<0.01). Unexpectedly, the ghrelin level of the GFP group was significantly increased compared with that of the NS control group (P<0.01). Conclusion: A novel oral delivery system of Bifidobacterium for human OXM has been successfully established. The expression of recombinant OXM can be detected in the supernatant and cell pellet of transformed B. longum. OXM-transformed B. longum reduces food intake, body weight and plasma lipid level in overweight mice by oral administration.

Centrifugal air compressors have attracted considerable attention due to their outstanding advantages over other compressors, such as the high-power density, the high efficiency, and the low noise. This paper presents the design of a high-speed permanent magnet synchronous motor (HSPMSM) to meet the requirements of centrifugal air compressors, with a rated power of 20 kW and a speed of 250,000 rpm. The rotor adopts a radial surface-mounted structure, using N30UH-grade neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) material as its permanent magnets and protected by a carbon fiber sleeve. The stator features a parallel tooth trapezoidal slot structure and a single-layer distributed winding design, which effectively improves the motor’s electrical performance. For cooling, we used a water-cooling method with a casing featuring a spiral water channel structure, enhancing the motor’s heat dissipation. After the design was completed, the motor model was created using Motor-CAD software and finite element analysis was conducted on it. Simulation results show that the designed HSPMSM performs well and fully meets the design requirements of a centrifugal air compressor.

As global environmental pollution and energy shortages become increasingly severe, the development of the electric vehicle industry has received significant attention from all sectors of society. Researching and manufacturing green, environmentally friendly electric vehicles will be the primary trend in the current automotive industry. The drive motor, as a core component of electric vehicles, is particularly critical in its selection and design. Permanent magnet synchronous motors have high efficiency, wide speed range, and excellent field weakening capabilities, making them the preferred choice for drive motors. This paper aims to design a permanent magnet synchronous motor for electric vehicles with a rated power of 48kW and a rated speed of 10,000 rpm. Initially, the motor’s performance requirements are defined, including determining the main dimensions of the motor, selecting stator slot types, choosing slot-pole combination, designing the rotor structure, and selecting permanent magnet materials. Then, finite element analysis is performed on the designed motor using Motor-CAD. The analysis results show that the structural design of the motor is relatively reasonable and basically meets the performance requirements of automotive drive motors.

Despite their potential and promising advantages over classical planar arrays, conformal arrays also present many challenges to the antenna designer, including varying element normal due to curvature, serious cross-polarisation effect, limited operational bandwidth and so on. A uniform method for the element polarised pattern transformation of arbitrary 3D conformal arrays is presented based on Euler rotation. A space-timepolarisation filter structure is proposed for the pattern synthesis of conformal array, in which the finite impulse response filters assigned to every element are used to acquire the frequency-invariant array pattern and the element polarisation diversity in array global coordinates is used to depress the cross-polarisation level. The optimal weight vector is obtained by alternating projection method. The alternating projection method is a powerful and attractive method for the pattern synthesis in that it requires relatively smaller amount of computation burden and a wide variety of desirable constraints can be freely implemented in a visible way, which is usually impossible for other optimisation method.

Aims:Positive serum antinuclear antibody (ANA) is present in a number of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of ANA in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) and to elucidate its clinical implications in virological and histological characteristics of CHC infection.Methods:A total of 614 CHC patients were enrolled in this prospective, hospital-based study. The serum levels of aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase and ANA, and HCV genotype, HCV RNA level, and histological activity index scores for liver histopathology, were determined.Results:The prevalence of positive ANA (titre >1:40) was 35.0%. Women had a significantly higher prevalence than men (41.2 vs 31.0%; p = 0.012). Patients positive for ANA were significantly older (mean (SD), 53.7 (10.5) vs 49.7 (11.3) years; p<0.001) and had higher mean (SD) alanine aminotransferase levels (186.9 (178.8) vs 155.50 (113.5) IU/l; p<0.001) and lower mean (SD) HCV RNA levels (5.2 (0.9) vs 5.4 (1.0) log IU/ml; p = 0.048) than those without ANA. Among 447 patients undergoing liver biopsy, those positive for ANA had a significantly higher mean (SD) fibrosis score (2.0 (1.3) vs 1.5 (1.1); p<0.001) and a higher frequency of F3–4 (69/187, 36.9% vs 50/260, 19.2%; p<0.001) than those negative for ANA. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that advanced fibrosis, lower HCV RNA levels and age were significant factors related to positive ANA.Conclusion:ANA is associated with a more advanced liver fibrosis and lower serum HCV RNA level in patients with CHC.

We present an efficient numerical scheme for solving three-point boundary value problems of nonlinear fractional differential equation. The main idea of this method is to establish a favorable reproducing kernel space that satisfies the complex boundary conditions. Based on the properties of the new reproducing kernel space, the approximate solution is obtained by searching least value techniques. Moreover, uniformly convergence and error estimation are provided for our method. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the performance of the method and to confirm the theoretical results.

The PTEN/MMAC1/TEP (PTEN) tumor suppressor gene at 10q23.3 is mutated in multiple types of sporadic tumors including breast cancers and also in the germline of patients with the Cowden's breast cancer predisposition syndrome. The PTEN gene encodes a multifunctional phosphatase capable of dephosphorylating the same sites in membrane phosphatidylinositols phosphorylated by phosphatidylinositol 3'-kinase (PI3K). We demonstrate herein that loss of PTEN function in breast cancer cells results in an increase in basal levels of phosphorylation of multiple components of the P13K signaling cascade as well as an increase in duration of ligand-induced signaling through the P13K cascade. These alterations are reversed by wild-type but not phosphatase inactive PTEN. In the presence of high concentrations of serum, enforced expression of PTEN induces a predominant G1 arrest consistent with the capacity of PTEN to evoke increases in the expression of the p27Kip1 cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor. In the presence of low concentrations of serum, enforced PTEN expression results in a marked increase in cellular apoptosis, a finding which is consistent with the capacity of PTEN to alter the phosphorylation, and presumably function, of the AKT, BAD, p70S6 kinase and GSK3 alpha apoptosis regulators. Under anchorage-independent conditions, PTEN also induces anoikis, a form of apoptosis that occurs when cells are dissociated from the extracellular matrix, which is enhanced in conjunction with low serum culture conditions. Together, these data suggest that PTEN effects on the PI3K signaling cascade are influenced by the cell stimulatory context, and that depending on the exposure to growth factors and other exogenous stimuli such as integrin ligation, PTEN can induce cell cycle arrest, apoptosis or anoikis in breast cancer cells.