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The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic severely affected the disease management of patients with chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This study aimed to assess the effect of telemedicine management of diabetes in obese and overweight young and middle-aged patients with T2DM during the COVID-19 pandemic. A single-center randomized control study was conducted in 120 obese or overweight (body mass index [BMI] [greater than or equal to] 24 kg/m.sup.2) young and middle-aged patients (aged 18-55 years) with T2DM. Patients were randomly assigned to the intervention (telemedicine) or control (conventional outpatient clinic appointment) group. After baseline assessment, they were home isolated for 21 days, received diet and exercise guidance, underwent glucose monitoring, and followed up for 6 months. Glucose monitoring and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) scores were evaluated at 22 days and at the end of 3 and 6 months. Ninety-nine patients completed the 6-month follow-up (intervention group: n = 52; control group: n = 47). On day 22, the fasting blood glucose (FBG) level of the intervention group was lower than that of the control group (p < 0.05), and the control group's SDS increased significantly compared with the baseline value (p < 0.05). At the end of 3 months, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and FBG levels in the intervention group decreased significantly compared with those in the control group (p < 0.01). At the end of 6 months, the intervention group showed a significant decrease in postprandial blood glucose, triglyceride, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels as well as waist-to-hip ratio compared with the control group (p < 0.05); moreover, the intervention group showed lower SDS scores than the baseline value (p < 0.05). Further, the intervention group showed a significant reduction in BMI compared with the control group at the end of 3 and 6 months (p < 0.01). Telemedicine is a beneficial strategy for achieving remotely supervised blood glucose regulation, weight loss, and depression relief in patients with T2DM.

Liquid crystalline elastomers are regarded as a kind of desirable soft actuator material for soft robotics and other high-tech areas. The isotropization temperature (T i ) plays an important role as it determines the actuation temperature and other properties, which in turn has a great effect on their applications. In the past, the common physical methods (e.g. annealing) to tune T i is not applicable to tune the actuation temperature. The new T i obtained by annealing immediately goes back to the old one once it is heated to a temperature above T i, while actuation needs a temperature higher than T i . For a fully cross-linked LCE material, once it is synthesized, the actuation temperature is fixed. Accordingly, the actuation temperature can not be tuned unless the chemical structure is changed, which usually needs to start from the very beginning of the molecular design and material synthesis. Here, we found that different T i achieved by annealing can be preserved by reversible reactions of dynamic covalent bonds in covalently adaptable LC networks including LC vitrimers. Thus, a variety of soft actuators with different actuation temperatures can be obtained from the same fully cross-linked LCE material. As the tuning of T i is also reversible, the same actuator can be adjusted for applications with different actuation temperature requirements. Such tuning will also expand the application of LCEs. Isotropization temperature determines the temperature at which Liquid Crystals Elastomer (LCE) material actuates. Here, the authors give a general strategy based on dynamic covalent bonds for tuning the isotropization temperature for LCEs.

As a crucial period of development, adolescence builds the foundation of how a person would become. Peer relationship is considered to be a vital part of adolescents’ interpersonal relationships, which naturally contributes to shaping a psychological well-being for them. This review primarily pays attention to the role played by peer relationship. Peer relationship serves as a shaping factor of adolescents’ behaviors as adolescents tend to mirror how their peers behave. Meanwhile, peer relationship can work with adult support, such as teacher relationships and parental relationships, and thus benefit adolescents’ psychological well-being in a further way. Moreover, gender difference should not be neglected when discussing the role played by peer relationship in the psychological well-being of adolescents. In respect of the influence of stressful life events, girls’ peer relationship quality is more affected than boys’ is. Concerns about this review may be that not enough studies on the field of adolescents’ psychological well-being are reviewed and different results may thus not be considered. For future research, the role of peer relationship in other age groups’ psychological well-being (middle-aged and elderly) can be studied.

Arabidopsis thaliana cryptochrome 2 (CRY2) mediates light control of flowering time. CIB1 (CRY2-interacting bHLH 1) specifically interacts with CRY2 in response to blue light to activate the transcription of FT (Flowering Locus T). In vitro, CIB1 binds to the canonical E-box (CACGTG, also referred to as G-box) with much higher affinity than its interaction with non-canonical E-box (CANNTG) DNA sequences. However, in vivo, CIB1 binds to the chromatin region of the FT promoter, which only contains the non-canonical E-box sequences. Here, we show that CRY2 also interacts with at least CIB5, in response to blue light, but not in darkness or in response to other wavelengths of light. Our genetic analysis demonstrates that CIB1, CIB2, CIB4, and CIB5 act redundantly to activate the transcription of FT and that they are positive regulators of CRY2 mediated flowering. More importantly, CIB1 and other CIBs proteins form heterodimers, and some of the heterodimers have a higher binding affinity than the CIB homodimers to the non-canonical E-box in the in vitro DNA-binding assays. This result explains why in vitro CIB1 and other CIBs bind to the canonical E-box (G-box) with a higher affinity, whereas they are all associated with the non-canonical E-boxes at the FT promoter in vivo. Consistent with the hypothesis that different CIB proteins play similar roles in the CRY2-midiated blue light signaling, the expression of CIB proteins is regulated specifically by blue light. Our study demonstrates that CIBs function redundantly in regulating CRY2-dependent flowering, and that different CIBs form heterodimers to interact with the non-canonical E-box DNA in vivo.

Background Metabolic syndrome (MS) comprises a set of conditions that are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Numerous epidemiological studies on MS have been conducted, but there has not been a systematic analysis of the prevalence of MS in the Chinese population. Therefore, the aim of this study was to estimate the pooled prevalence of MS among subjects in Mainland China. Methods We performed a systematic review by searching both English and Chinese literature databases. Random or fixed effects models were used to summarize the prevalence of MS according to statistical tests for heterogeneity. Subgroup, sensitivity, and meta-regression analyses were performed to address heterogeneity. Publication bias was evaluated using Egger’s test. Results Thirty-five papers were included in the meta-analysis, with a total population of 226,653 Chinese subjects. Among subjects aged 15 years and older, the pooled prevalence was 24.5 % (95 % CI: 22.0–26.9 %). By sex, the prevalences were 19.2 % (95 % CI: 16.9–21.6 %) in males and 27.0 % (95 % CI: 23.5–30.5 %) in females. The pooled prevalence of MS increased with age (15–39 years: 13.9 %; 40–59 years: 26.4 %; and ≥60 years: 32.4 %). Individuals living in urban areas (24.9 %, 95 % CI: 18.5–31.3 %) were more likely to suffer from MS than those living in rural areas (19.2 %, 95 % CI: 14.8–23.7 %). Hypertension was the most prevalent component of MS in males (52.8 %), while the most prevalent component of MS for females was central obesity (46.1 %). Conclusions Our systematic review suggested a high prevalence of MS among subjects in Mainland China, indicating that MS is a serious public health problem. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the prevention and control of MS.

Liquid crystal networks (LCN) have attracted surging interest as extraordinary energy-dissipation materials owning to their unique dissipation mechanism based on the re-orientation of mesogens. However, how to integrate high Young’s modulus, good dissipation efficiency and wide effective damping temperature range in energy-dissipation LCN remains a challenge. Here, we report a strategy to resolve this challenge by fabricating robust energy-dissipation liquid crystal semi-interpenetrating polymer network (LC-semi-IPN) consisting crystalline LC polymers (c-LCP). LC-semi-IPN demonstrates a superior synergistic performance in both mechanical and energy-dissipation properties, surpassing all currently reported LCNs. The crystallinity of c-LCP endows LC-semi-IPN with a substantial leap in Young’s modulus (1800% higher than single network). The chain reptation of c-LCP also promotes an enhanced dissipation efficiency of LC-semi-IPN by 200%. Moreover, its effective damping temperature reaches up to 130 °C, which is the widest reported for LCNs. By leveraging its exceptional synergistic performance, LC-semi-IPN can be further utilized as a functional architected structure with exceptional energy-dissipation density and deformation-resistance. The design of liquid crystal networks as energy dissipation materials achieving simultaneously good mechanical and energy dissipation properties is challenging. Here, the authors fabricate energy-dissipation liquid crystal semi-interpenetrating polymer networks consisting liquid crystalline polymers with synergistic properties.

Substantially enhancing carbon mitigation ambition is a crucial step towards achieving the Paris climate goal. Yet this attempt is hampered by poor knowledge on the potential cost and benefit of emission mitigation for each emitter. Here we use a global economic model to assess the mitigation costs for 27 major emitting countries and regions, and further contrast the costs against the potential benefits of mitigation valued as avoided social cost of carbon and the mitigation ambition of each region. We find a strong negative spatial correlation between cost and benefit of mitigating each ton of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, the relative suitability of carbon mitigation, defined as the ratio of normalized benefit to normalized cost, also shows a considerable geographical mismatch with the mitigation ambition of emitters indicated in their first submitted nationally determined contributions. Our work provides important information to improve concerted climate action and formulate more efficient carbon mitigation strategies. New study finds geographical mismatch in cross-regional ranking between cost and benefit of carbon mitigation, as well as spatial mismatch between relative suitability of mitigation and mitigation ambition of emitters.

Despite considerable research efforts on photoelectrochemical water splitting over the past decades, practical application faces challenges by the absence of efficient, stable, and scalable photoelectrodes. Herein, we report a metal-halide perovskite-based photoanode for photoelectrochemical water oxidation. With a planar structure using mesoporous carbon as a hole-conducting layer, the precious metal-free FAPbBr 3 photovoltaic device achieves 9.2% solar-to-electrical power conversion efficiency and 1.4 V open-circuit voltage. The photovoltaic architecture successfully applies to build a monolithic photoanode with the FAPbBr 3 absorber, carbon/graphite conductive protection layers, and NiFe catalyst layers for water oxidation. The photoanode delivers ultralow onset potential below 0 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode and high applied bias photon-to-current efficiency of 8.5%. Stable operation exceeding 100 h under solar illumination by applying ultraviolet-filter protection. The photothermal investigation verifies the performance boost in perovskite photoanode by photothermal effect. This study is significant in guiding the development of photovoltaic material-based photoelectrodes for solar fuel applications. Lead halide perovskites excel in optical and electronic properties, drawing significant attention in solar fuel studies. Here, the authors report a stable FAPbBr 3 photoanode optimized for water oxidation to achieve a low onset potential and high applied bias photon-to-current efficiency.

Deep learning techniques are increasingly applied to point cloud semantic segmentation, where single-modal point cloud often suffers from accuracy-limiting confusion phenomena. Moreover, some networks with image and LiDAR data lack an efficient fusion mechanism, and the occlusion of images may do harm to the segmentation accuracy of a point cloud. To overcome the above issues, we propose the integration of multi-modal data to enhance network performance, addressing the shortcomings of existing feature-fusion strategies that neglect crucial information and struggle with matching modal features effectively. This paper introduces the Multi-View Guided Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation Model (MVG-Net), which extracts multi-scale and multi-level features and contextual data from urban aerial images and LiDAR, and then employs a multi-view image feature-aggregation module to capture highly correlated texture information with the spatial and channel attentions of point-wise image features. Additionally, it incorporates a fusion module that uses image features to instruct point cloud features for stressing key information. We present a new dataset, WK2020, which combines multi-view oblique aerial images with LiDAR point cloud to validate segmentation efficacy. Our method demonstrates superior performance, especially in building segmentation, achieving an F1 score of 94.6% on the Vaihingen Dataset—the highest among the methods evaluated. Furthermore, MVG-Net surpasses other networks tested on the WK2020 Dataset. Compared to backbone network for single point modality, our model achieves overall accuracy improvement of 5.08%, average F1 score advancement of 6.87%, and mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) betterment of 7.9%.

Rice (Oryza sativa), the staple food for almost half of the world's population, prefers ammonium (NH4 +) as the major nitrogen resource, and while NH4 + has profound effects on rice growth and yields, the underlying regulatory mechanisms remain largely unknown. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a class of steroidal hormones playing key roles in plant growth and development. In this study, we show that NH4 + promotes BR biosynthesis through miR444 to regulate rice root growth. miR444 targeted five homologous MADS-box transcription repressors potentially forming homologous or heterogeneous complexes in rice. miR444 positively regulated BR biosynthesis through its MADS-box targets, which directly repress the transcription of BR-deficient dwarf 1 (OsBRD1), a key BR biosynthetic gene. NH4 + induced the miR444-OsBRD1 signaling cascade in roots, thereby increasing the amount of BRs, whose biosynthesis and signaling were required for NH4 +-dependent root elongation inhibition. Consistently, miR444-overexpressing rice roots were hypersensitive to NH4 + depending on BR biosynthesis, and overexpression of miR444's target, OsMADS57, resulted in rice hyposensitivity to NH4 + in root elongation, which was associated with a reduction of BR content. In summary, our findings reveal a cross talk mechanism between NH4 + and BR in which NH4 + activates miR444-OsBRD1, an undescribed BR biosynthesis-promoting signaling cascade, to increase BR content, inhibiting root elongation in rice.