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In recent years, biomarkers have been integrated into the diagnostic process and have become increasingly indispensable for obtaining knowledge of the neurodegenerative processes in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in human blood have been reported to participate in a variety of neurodegenerative activities. Here, a single-cell RNA sequencing analysis of PBMCs from 4 AD patients (2 in the early stage, 2 in the late stage) and 2 normal controls was performed to explore the differential cell subpopulations in PBMCs of AD patients. A significant decrease in B cells was detected in the blood of AD patients. Furthermore, we further examined PBMCs from 43 AD patients and 41 normal subjects by fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS), and combined with correlation analysis, we found that the reduction in B cells was closely correlated with the patients’ Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scores. To confirm the role of B cells in AD progression, functional experiments were performed in early-stage AD mice in which fibrous plaques were beginning to appear; the results demonstrated that B cell depletion in the early stage of AD markedly accelerated and aggravated cognitive dysfunction and augmented the Aβ burden in AD mice. Importantly, the experiments revealed 18 genes that were specifically upregulated and 7 genes that were specifically downregulated in B cells as the disease progressed, and several of these genes exhibited close correlation with AD. These findings identified possible B cell-based AD severity, which are anticipated to be conducive to the clinical identification of AD progression. Alzheimer’s disease: A new biomarker for disease progression? Molecular tests built around analyzing B cells, a specialized type of immune cell, could aid in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Liu-Lin Xiong from the Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, China, and coworkers used single-cell RNA sequencing to profile gene activity in individual peripheral blood mononuclear cells from people with and without Alzheimer’s disease. They discovered that people with Alzheimer’s, especially those with more advanced disease, had lower levels of circulating B cells than healthy subjects. Twenty-five specific genes in the B cells were expressed at significantly higher or lower levels as the disease progressed. The researchers found similar results regarding B cells and Alzheimer’s progression in mouse models, and showed that massive depletion of B cells in the early onset was associated with accelerated cognitive decline and increased accumulation of sticky brain plaques.

The expression changes of baculovirus inhibitor of apoptosis repeat‐containing protein5 in brain glioma after administration of Scutellarin was detected. To explore the effort of scutellarin on anti‐glioma by downregulating BIRC5.The effect of scutellarin on tumour growth and animal survival was detected by administering scutellarin to nude mice subcutaneous tumour formation and SD rats in situ tumour formation models. A significantly different gene BIRC5 was found by using the combination of TCGA databases and network pharmacology. And then qPCR was performed to detect the expression of BIRC5 in glioma tissues, cells and normal brain tissues and glial cells. CCK‐8 was used to detect the IC50 of scutellarin on glioma cells. The wound healing assay, flow cytometry and MTT test were used to detect the effect of scutellarin on the apoptosis and proliferation of glioma cells. The expression of BIRC5 in glioma tissues was significantly higher than that in normal brain tissues. Scutellarin can significantly reduce tumour growth and improve animal's survival. After scutellarin was administered, the expression of BIRC5 in U251 cells was significantly reduced. And after same time, apoptosis increased and cell proliferation was inhibited. This original research showed that scutellarin can promote the apoptosis of glioma cells and inhibit the proliferation by downregulating the expression of BIRC5.

Electrochemical C-N coupling of CO 2 with nitrogenous sources (e.g., N 2 , NO 3 − ) provides a promising method for urea production, whereas the current electrochemical methods are limited by low conversion efficiency or reliance on fossil fuel-derived NO 3 − feedstock. Here, we develop a plasma-electrocatalytic route for urea synthesis from ambient air and CO 2 , which starts with plasma-assisted air activation to generate reactive NO x − (92.1% NO 2 − ), followed by electrocatalytic co-reduction of CO 2  + NO x − to urea. By using a single-atom Ru 1 /CuO x catalyst in double chamber membrane electrode assembly, we achieve a urea yield rate of 106.9 mmol h −1  g cat −1 and a Faradaic efficiency of 86.7%. This plasma-electrocatalytic route demonstrates a paradigm-shifting strategy for revolutionizing urea synthesis, making a great leap toward decarbonized nitrogen economy. Current urea synthesis methods are challenged by low C-N coupling efficiency or reliance on fossil fuel-derived NH 3 /NO 3 − . Here, the authors report plasma-electrocatalytic synthesis of urea from air and CO 2 , which enables a high-efficiency C-N coupling and circumvents fossil fuel dependency.

In this paper, we focus on the general free scalar–tensor gravity with three free coupling functions, which in the near-field region looks like general relativity (GR) plus a fifth force of Yukawa-type induced by the scalar field. We show that the fifth force is always attractive in the theory. We investigate the effects of the attractive fifth force and calculate in detail the fifth force-induced orbital precession rate δ ω / ω and the parameterized post-Newtonian parameters γ and β , all of which depend on the fifth force parameters and the interaction distance. It turns out that, due to the attractive fifth force, δ ω / ω is always greater than zero, γ is always less than one, β is greater than one at large distances, and additionally this class of theories is ruled out as an alternative theory to dark matter. We place stringent constraints on the fifth force parameters by combining the lunar laser ranging (LLR), Cassini, and Mercury precession experiments, and derive the upper bounds on the strength ratio of the fifth force to gravitational force at different scales from the LLR observation. We find that the Mercury constraint is not competitive with the LLR and Cassini constraints and the LLR observation imposes much more stringent bounds on the strength ratio on large scales than on small scales. Our results show that this theory is sufficiently close to GR for a small enough fifth force strength and can reduce to GR with a minimally coupled scalar field in the absence of fifth force.

A bstract In this paper, we study the next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) QCD corrections for the process e + e − → J/ψ + J/ψ at the B factories. By including the NNLO corrections, the cross section turns negative due to the poor convergence of perturbative expansion. Consequently, to obtain a reasonable estimation for the cross section, the square of the amplitude up to NNLO is used. In addition, the contributions from the bottom quark and the light-by-light part, which are usually neglected, are also included. The final cross section is obtained as 1.76 − 1.66 + 2.42 fb at a center-of-mass energy of s = 10 . 58 GeV. Our result for total cross section and differential cross section could be compared with precise experimental measurement in future at the B factories.

As development progresses over time and changes in the environment take place, carbon finance development has become a very interesting research topic for many scholars worldwide. This paper proposes a hybrid MCDM method that combines the distance solutions of the TOPSIS and VIKOR methods. The contribution of this paper combines TOPSIS and VIKOR, incorporating AISM models to obtain the development ranking of Chinese carbon finance pilot cities as related to the Chinese carbon finance development pilot provinces and cities. The conclusion notes that Guangdong and Beijing are the most preferred investment locations for carbon investors. In addition, technological innovation, financial sector development, and an active ETS market can effectively drive the level of local carbon finance. Additionally, the MCDM methodology in this paper provides new ideas in environmental and economic development assessment.

The mode-locked microcomb offers a unique and compact solution for photonics applications, ranging from the optical communications, the optical clock, optical ranging, the precision spectroscopy, novel quantum light source, to photonic artificial intelligence. However, the photonic micro-structures are suffering from the perturbations arising from environment thermal noises and also laser-induced nonlinear effects, leading to the frequency instability of the generated comb. Here, a universal mechanism for fully stabilizing the microcomb is proposed and experimentally verified. By incorporating two global tuning approaches and the autonomous thermal locking mechanism, the pump laser frequency and repetition rate of the microcomb can be controlled independently in real-time without interrupting the microcomb generation. The high stability and controllability of the microcomb frequency enables its application in wavelength measurement with a precision of about 1 kHz. The approach for the full control of comb frequency could be applied in various microcomb platforms, and improve their performances in timing, spectroscopy, and sensing. Microcombs are vulnerable to the environmental perturbations. Here, the authors propose a universal mechanism to fully control the microcombs. Based this reconfigurable microsoliton, a wavemeter with a precision of kHz is demonstrated.

Glycosylation is currently considered to be an important hallmark of cancer. However, the characterization of glycosylation-related gene sets has not been comprehensively analyzed in glioma, and the relationship between glycosylation-related genes and glioma prognosis has not been elucidated. Here, we firstly found that the glycosylation-related differentially expressed genes in glioma patients were engaged in biological functions related to glioma progression revealed by enrichment analysis. Then seven glycosylation genes ( BGN , C1GALT1C1L , GALNT13 , SDC1 , SERPINA1 , SPTBN5 and TUBA1C ) associated with glioma prognosis were screened out by consensus clustering, principal component analysis, Lasso regression, and univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis using the TCGA-GTEx database. A glycosylation-related prognostic signature was developed and validated using CGGA database data with significantly accurate prediction on glioma prognosis, which showed better capacity to predict the prognosis of glioma patients than clinicopathological factors do. GSEA enrichment analysis based on the risk score further revealed that patients in the high-risk group were involved in immune-related pathways such as cytokine signaling, inflammatory responses, and immune regulation, as well as glycan synthesis and metabolic function. Immuno-correlation analysis revealed that a variety of immune cell infiltrations, such as Macrophage, activated dendritic cell, Regulatory T cell (Treg), and Natural killer cell, were increased in the high-risk group. Moreover, functional experiments were performed to evaluate the roles of risk genes in the cell viability and cell number of glioma U87 and U251 cells, which demonstrated that silencing BGN , SDC1 , SERPINA1 , TUBA1C , C1GALT1C1L and SPTBN5 could inhibit the growth and viability of glioma cells. These findings strengthened the prognostic potentials of our predictive signature in glioma. In conclusion, this prognostic model composed of 7 glycosylation-related genes distinguishes well the high-risk glioma patients, which might potentially serve as caner biomarkers for disease diagnosis and treatment.

HighlightsThe MoS2 nanosheets served as co-catalyst could reduce Fe3+ ions with lower Fenton reaction activity into the highly reactive Fe2+ ions, thereby boosting the production of hydroxyl radical (•OH) for high efficiency chemodynamic therapy (CDT).The photothermal effect of MoS2 nanosheets motivated by second near-infrared light could further improve the treatment effectiveness by synergetic photothermal-enhanced CDT and photothermal therapy.In spite of the tumor microenvironments responsive cancer therapy based on Fenton reaction (i.e., chemodynamic therapy, CDT) has been attracted more attentions in recent years, the limited Fenton reaction efficiency is the important obstacle to further application in clinic. Herein, we synthesized novel FeO/MoS2 nanocomposites modified by bovine serum albumin (FeO/MoS2-BSA) with boosted Fenton reaction efficiency by the synergistic effect of co-catalyze and photothermal effect of MoS2 nanosheets triggered by the second near-infrared (NIR II) light. In the tumor microenvironments, the MoS2 nanosheets not only can accelerate the conversion of Fe3+ ions to Fe2+ ions by Mo4+ ions on their surface to improve Fenton reaction efficiency, but also endow FeO/MoS2-BSA with good photothermal performances for photothermal-enhanced CDT and photothermal therapy (PTT). Consequently, benefiting from the synergetic-enhanced CDT/PTT, the tumors are eradicated completely in vivo. This work provides innovative synergistic strategy for constructing nanocomposites for highly efficient CDT.

Previous studies have largely overlooked cellular differential alterations across differentially affected brain regions in both disease mechanisms and therapeutic development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aimed to compare the differential cellular and transcriptional changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and entorhinal cortex (EC) of AD patients through an integrated single-cell transcriptomic analysis. We integrated three single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets comprising PFC and EC samples from AD patients and age-matched healthy controls. A total of 124,658 nuclei and 31 cell clusters were obtained and classified into eight major cell types, with EC exhibiting much more pronounced transcriptional alterations than PFC. Through network analysis, we pinpointed hub regulatory genes that form interconnected networks driving AD pathogenesis, findings validated by RT-qPCR showing more pronounced expression changes in EC versus PFC of AD mice. Moreover, dysregulation of the LINC01099-associated regulatory networks in the PFC and EC, showing correlation with AD progression, may present new therapeutic targets for AD. Together, these results suggest that effective AD biomarkers and therapeutic strategies may require simultaneous, precise targeting of specific cell populations across multiple brain regions.