Explore the vast range of titles available.

Objective Sleep disorders and functional dependence are common in maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients but often go unnoticed. Despite their high prevalence, the association between sleep quality and functional dependence in patients undergoing MHD remains underexplored. Methods The cross-sectional study evaluated patients undergoing MHD at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University from June to December 2023. Physical function was assessed using the Katz and Lawton–Brody scales. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to evaluate sleep quality. Binary logistic regression was conduct to explore the relationship between sleep quality and the risk of functional dependence. The dose–response relationship was observed using restricted cubic splines (RCS). Subgroup analyses and mediation analysis were conducted as sensitivity analyses. Results This study evaluated 103 patients (mean age: 58.7 ± 12.5 years; 63.1% male), the prevalence of functional dependence was 46.6%. Patients who are dependent had significantly higher ages, catheter use, diabetes prevalence, pulse pressure, and PSQI scores, and lower serum albumin ( P  < 0.05). A higher PSQI scores was associated with a higher prevalence of functional dependence (odds ratio [OR] = 14.28, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.45–83.17;  P  = 0.003). Restricted cubic splines (RCS) analysis indicated a nonlinear relationship between PSQI scores and functional dependence. Subgroup analysis identified a significant interaction between PSQI and age ( P  = 0.003), but no significant mediating effects of age or albumin was observed ( P  > 0.05). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve demonstrated good predictive accuracy (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.719, 95% CI 0.623–0.815;  P  < 0.001). Conclusion Poor sleep quality is independently associated with functional dependence in patients undergoing MHD, characterized by a nonlinear dose–response relationship. Age and albumin do not mediate this association.

Research on the molecular basis of dominant male sterility in rice and its application in sterile lines is significantly underdeveloped. This article aims to utilize dominant nuclear male sterile lines, which were created through the ectopic expression of in the genetic background of rice, for the purpose of heterosis utilization. At the same time, we conducted a study on the spatiotemporal expression characteristics of , performed transcriptome analysis, and implemented yeast two-hybrid experiments to elucidate its molecular regulatory mechanisms in mediating dominant nuclear male sterility in rice. The results confirm the successful construction of a dominant nuclear male-sterile (NMS) vector system (p5126-ZmMs7-DsRed) using the exogenous male-sterile gene . This system comprises three modules: first, a dominant nuclear male-sterile (NMS) functional module driven by p5126, designed to achieve the dominant nuclear male-sterile trait; second, a fluorescence-based selection module driven by the endosperm-specific promoter LTP2, which facilitates the expression of the red fluorescent protein gene ; and finally, a herbicide resistance screening module driven by the constitutive CaMV35S promoter, enabling the expression of the selectable marker gene. The system has successfully developed a practical dominant male-sterile rice line characterized by complete pollen sterility, stable fertility, and straightforward visual seed selection, with no adverse effects on plant growth. In the hybrid offspring, approximately 50% of the seeds are genetically modified fluorescent seeds, while the remaining seeds are non-genetically modified and non-fluorescent. Transgenic plants Pro5126: GUS and ProZmMs7: GUS do not exhibit expression in roots, stems, leaves, or glumes. It is proposed that p5126 may enhance the expression of the gene, which could lead to the up-regulation of the rice pollen fertility gene , as well as the down-regulation of and the leafy glume sterile genes and . Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the proteins encoded by these three fertility genes interact with the protein encoded by . This study provides new insights into the molecular regulatory network governing male reproductive development in rice and offers a theoretical foundation and technical support for the development of novel male-sterile germplasm resources.

The m5C RNA methylation regulators are closely related to tumor proliferation, occurrence, and metastasis. This study aimed to investigate the gene expression, clinicopathological characteristics, and prognostic value of m5C regulators in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and their correlation with the tumor immune microenvironment (TIM). The TNBC data, Luminal BC data and HER2 positive BC data set were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus, and 11 m5C RNA methylation regulators were analyzed. Univariate Cox regression and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression models were used to develop a prognostic risk signature. The UALCAN and cBioportal databases were used to analyze the gene characteristics and gene alteration frequency of prognosis-related m5C RNA methylation regulators. Gene set enrichment analysis was used to analyze cellular pathways enriched by prognostic factors. The Tumor Immune Single Cell Hub (TISCH) and Timer online databases were used to explore the relationship between prognosis-related genes and the TIM. Most of the 11 m5C RNA methylation regulators were differentially expressed in TNBC and normal samples. The prognostic risk signature showed good reliability and an independent prognostic value. Prognosis-related gene mutations were mainly amplified. Concurrently, the NOP2/Sun domain family member 2 ( ) upregulation was closely related to spliceosome, RNA degradation, cell cycle signaling pathways, and RNA polymerase. Meanwhile, downregulation was related to extracellular matrix receptor interaction, metabolism, and cell adhesion. Analysis of the TISCH and Timer databases showed that prognosis-related genes affected the TIM, and the subtypes of immune-infiltrating cells differed between and . Regulatory factors of m5C RNA methylation can predict the clinical prognostic risk of TNBC patients and affect tumor development and the TIM. Thus, they have the potential to be a novel prognostic marker of TNBC, providing clues for understanding the RNA epigenetic modification of TNBC.

The generation and analysis of fine surface topography are critical for landing site selection at the lunar south pole. The Shape from Shading (SFS) technique can theoretically reconstruct a pixel-level resolution topographic model. However, traditional SFS methods fail to effectively balance fine-detail terrain reconstruction with mitigation of the effects of image noise. To address this issue, an improved multi-image SFS method with adaptive smoothness and brightness weighting (MI-AW-SFS) is developed for more reliable and pixel-wise 3D reconstruction, which utilizes multiple imagery and the corresponding low-resolution digital elevation model (DEM). The proposed method effectively restores fine details and accurate crater depths using an adaptive smoothness weight for each pixel based on the illumination direction gradient derived from image intensity and varying brightness weight that accounts for variations in image azimuth angles and original resolutions. Experiments were conducted using multiple Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Narrow Angle Camera images of two potential landing areas located at the lunar south pole to validate the performance of the proposed method. Compared to the traditional single-image SFS and multi-image SFS methods, the MI-AW-SFS DEMs effectively capture intricate topographic details with reliable elevation, and comparisons with adjusted Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter laser points demonstrate that the MI-AW-SFS DEMs maintain overall topographic accuracy. The high-resolution surface slope and roughness maps generated from the MI-AW-SFS DEMs enable finer-scale topographic analysis. The experiment results indicate that the improved method can provide a robust solution for high-resolution lunar topographic reconstruction at the lunar south pole.

In the past decade, a vast amount of strategies, methods, and algorithms have been developed to explore the semantic interpretation of 3D point clouds for extracting desirable information. To assess the performance of the developed algorithms or methods, public standard benchmark datasets should invariably be introduced and used, which serve as an indicator and ruler in the evaluation and comparison. In this work, we introduce and present large-scale Mobile LiDAR point clouds acquired at the city campus of the Technical University of Munich, which have been manually annotated and can be used for the evaluation of related algorithms and methods for semantic point cloud interpretation. We created three datasets from a measurement campaign conducted in April 2016, including a benchmark dataset for semantic labeling, test data for instance segmentation, and test data for annotated single 360 ° laser scans. These datasets cover an urban area of approximately 1 km long roadways and include more than 40 million annotated points with eight classes of objects labeled. Moreover, experiments were carried out with results from several baseline methods compared and analyzed, revealing the quality of this dataset and its effectiveness when using it for performance evaluation.

The semantic labeling of the urban area is an essential but challenging task for a wide variety of applications such as mapping, navigation, and monitoring. The rapid advance in Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems provides this task with a possible solution using 3D point clouds, which are accessible, affordable, accurate, and applicable. Among all types of platforms, the airborne platform with LiDAR can serve as an efficient and effective tool for large-scale 3D mapping in the urban area. Against this background, a large number of algorithms and methods have been developed to fully explore the potential of 3D point clouds. However, the creation of publicly accessible large-scale annotated datasets, which are critical for assessing the performance of the developed algorithms and methods, is still at an early age. In this work, we present a large-scale aerial LiDAR point cloud dataset acquired in a highly-dense and complex urban area for the evaluation of semantic labeling methods. This dataset covers an urban area with highly-dense buildings of approximately 1 km2 and includes more than three million points with five classes of objects labeled. Moreover, experiments are carried out with the results from several baseline methods, demonstrating the feasibility and capability of the dataset serving as a benchmark for assessing semantic labeling methods.

Ice-cemented regolith exists on Mars and could significantly influence surface mechanical behavior, affecting drilling, mobility, and sample acquisition strategies. For example, the China’s upcoming Tianwen-3 Mars mission aims to return Martian regolith samples, making an understanding of their geotechnical behavior critical, particularly for ice-cemented landing sites. This study develops the Tongji University Martian Regolith Simulant (TJ-MRS01) as a geotechnically representative engineering analogue. By systematically adjusting the particle size distribution and bulk density, the developed simulant achieves a bulk density of 1.60 g/cm 3 , an internal friction angle of 37.12°, and a cohesion of 1.17 kPa, aligning well with the geotechnical characteristics observed in situ. Subsequently, triaxial compression tests under subzero temperature were conducted to evaluate the mechanical strength of ice-cemented simulant samples with water contents of 5 wt.%, 10 wt.%, and 15 wt.%, respectively. The results show that the cohesion increases significantly, from 0.01 MPa to 0.7 MPa with increasing water content, while the internal friction angle increases slightly from 51.67° to 53.85°. This suggests that the cemented ice significantly strengthens the inter-particle bonding forces and modifies the shear failure mechanism. Under constant water content, increasing confining pressure leads to more pronounced radial deformation and enhanced dilatancy. In addition, the influence of particle size distribution and relative density on the mechanical strength was also examined. The investigation into the shear strength of ice-cemented regolith could support future engineering designs and mission planning in icy Martian environments. Graphical Abstract

The evaluation of clustering effects has been an important issue for a long time. How to effectively evaluate the clustering results of clustering algorithms is the key to the problem. The clustering effect evaluation is generally divided into internal clustering effect evaluation and external clustering effect evaluation. This paper focuses on the internal clustering effect evaluation, and proposes an improved index based on the Silhouette index and the Calinski-Harabasz index: Peak Weight Index (PWI). PWI combines the characteristics of Silhouette index and Calinski-Harabasz index, and takes the peak value of the two indexes as the impact point and gives appropriate weight within a certain range. Silhouette index and Calinski-Harabasz index will help improve the fluctuation of clustering results in the data set. Through the simulation experiments on four self-built influence data sets and two real data sets, it will prove that the PWI has excellent evaluation of clustering results.

Background β-galactosidase (BGAL), which is an important cell wall-degrading enzyme, participates in various biological processes, but its effects on pollen tube growth (PTG) remain unclear. Results We identified 12 PbrBGAL genes (named PbrBGAL1 – 12 ) in the pear ( Pyrus bretschneideri ) genome. PbrBGAL members, containing three conserved domains and two enzyme active sites, were grouped into six subclasses. They were distributed in seven chromosomes, with dispersed duplication revealed as the main replication event. PbrBGAL genes contained 1 to 24 exons and 0 to 23 introns, with exon/intron structure mostly conserved within each subclass except for subclass E. Analyses of tissue-specific expression indicated that only PbrBGAL6 was highly expressed specifically in anther and pollen, with decreasing expression levels during PTG. The effective inhibition of PbrBGAL6 expression using antisense oligodeoxynucleotide technology dramatically decreased BGAL enzymatic activity, promoted PTG and increased cytoplasmic leakage and tip widths. Furthermore, suppressing PbrBGAL6 transcription decreased the apical total and methylated pectin contents in pollen tubes by significantly increasing transcription of PbrPME11 , PbrPG14 , PbrPG20 , PbrPG21 and PbrPG24 . Conclusions We identified 12 PbrBGAL genes in the pear genome, of which PbrBGAL6 precisely modulates the apical pectin content to mediate pear PTG through its effects on PbrPME11 and PbrPGs expression. This study provides direct evidence of the involvement of BGAL in the regulation of polar PTG.

Biochar amendment and halophyte intercropping are viable strategies for alleviating soil degradation in greenhouse systems, specifically the secondary salinization and autotoxicity induced by continuous cropping. Nevertheless, the potential synergistic effects of combining these practices remain poorly understood. This study investigated their synergistic effects on soil properties, microbial communities, and cucumber performance. A pot experiment was conducted with the following treatments: soil without amendment (CK), biochar (B), Paspalum vaginatum intercropping (S), and biochar combined with Paspalum vaginatum intercropping. The results showed that BS treatment led to the highest increases in soil organic carbon content, pH, total nitrogen content, available phosphorus content, and available potassium content compared to CK (p<0.05). Concurrently, BS significantly reduced available nitrogen, electrical conductivity, Na + , SO 4 2- , and Cl - levels, while total phosphorus remained unaffected. Cucumber yield increased significantly by 11.50% and 27.12% under B and BS treatments, respectively, whereas S showed no significant effect. BS also achieved the highest fruit quality enhancement, followed by B and S. Notably, B and S treatments displayed the highest and lowest K + , Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ accumulation, respectively, whereas the BS treatment led to K + and Ca 2+ concentrations that were significantly lower than those in the B treatment. Soil bacterial diversity was significantly enhanced under BS. The PLS-PM identified the alleviation of soil salinity and acidity, along with improved nutrient availability, as the primary drivers for enhanced crop performance, with soil bacterial diversity playing a secondary yet significant role. These findings suggest that biochar combined with intercropping (BS) effectively mitigates continuous cropping obstacles in greenhouse systems by synergistically improving soil health and microbial ecology.