Explore the vast range of titles available.

Existing multi-style image generation methods face critical challenges: insufficient content-style decoupling, high computational costs for high-resolution generation, and structural distortion during style transfer. To address these, we propose the Dual-Conditional Lightweight Style Diffusion Model (DCLSDM), a novel approach enhancing content-style decoupling via a dual-conditional control mechanism. This mechanism independently manages content structure and style expression, enabling better control in style transfer. Experimental results on WikiArt and Summer2Winter Yosemite datasets show DCLSDM outperforms comparative models in SSIM, LPIPS, and FID, with significant improvements in inference time, memory usage, and parameter scale–making it suitable for resource-constrained scenarios. It offers an efficient, controllable solution for multi-style image generation, with potential in content creation and digital art production.

Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China and a globally significant wetland, is intricately connected to the hydrological dynamics of the Yangtze River via a complex river‐lake exchange system. This system generates to unique seasonal fluctuations, forming a distinctive seasonal lake system, which influences hydrological and hydrodynamic processes across floodplains. Recent years have witnessed significant alterations in the hydrological patterns of the Yangtze River, notably in water levels, thereby impacting the nutrient dynamics such as nitrogen transformation at the sediment‐water interface of Poyang Lake. This study establishes a coupled model integrating hydrodynamics and nitrogen transformation to elucidate the impacts of the hydrological regime of Yangtze River on nitrogen transformation in Poyang Lake after the operation of Three Gorges Dam. Findings reveal spatiotemporal variations in both hydraulics and nitrogen transformation within the seasonal lake system. Notably, the recharge rate between surface water and groundwater experiences a substantial shift, surpassing 60%. Furthermore, the nitrification rate at the sediment‐water interface escalates by 28.5%, and the denitrification rate increases by 21.3% owing to pronounced alterations in the hydrological regime. However, this intensified transformation does not translate to enhanced efficiency, as the nitrogen transformation efficiency declines to 72.3% of its original rate. This research provides a theoretical framework for understanding the ecological and environmental impacts of human interventions on Poyang Lake and highlights the implications for managing other floodplains and seasonal lakes globally, such as lakes on floodplains of Amazon River and Mekong River, which face similar challenges in hydrological dynamics and ecosystem health. Key Points Seasonal lake system hydraulics and nitrogen transforms with temporal and spatial patterns of change The hydrological regime of Yangtze River has seriously affected the exchange process at the surface water‐groundwater interface The nitrogen removal efficiency decreased to 72.3% of the original due to the change of hydrological regimes of Yangtze River

Benthic biolayers with abundant microbial activity below the sediment‐water interface significantly contribute to stream metabolism and bioclogging processes. Most research has focused on the lotic phase of intermittent streams, with limited attention to the impact of temperature on bioclogging in static pool‐aquifer systems. In this study, we combined column experiments with temperature‐dependent models of reactions, microbial growth, and bioclogging to investigate the thermal controls on clogging‐declogging processes within and below the benthic biolayer. Warmer temperatures (40°C) significantly alleviated bioclogging, resulting in a 12.8% reduction in porosity compared to the 30°C group. This declogging is primarily driven by two mechanisms: (a) increased temperatures inhibit microbial growth, compressing the spatial range of the benthic biolayer and limiting the vertical extent of the clogging layer induced by biofilm; (b) biogas formation and release are stimulated by higher temperatures, as evidenced by the denser gas voids observed in sediment profiles. Intense gas release may open up clogged layers and alter the microtopography at the bed surface. The model further indicated that the thickness of the benthic biolayer and clogging layer linearly decreases with temperature under mesotrophic and eutrophic conditions, while its impact in oligotrophic conditions is negligible. Therefore, temperature is a crucial factor regulating surface‐subsurface interactions and should be considered in water resource management in dry regions. These results are relevant in the context of climate change, where warmer temperatures expected in isolated pools are likely to make them greenhouse gas emission hotspots from intermittent streams in the future.

The influence of elevated surface water temperature in disconnected pools of intermittent rivers on microbial metabolism within the benthic biolayer and underlying sediments remains unclear. This study investigates sediment metabolism under pool temperatures of 20°C, 30°C, and 40°C, focusing on biofilm growth, bioclogging, and reaction rates. Column‐scale tracer tests using sodium chloride and resazurin, coupled with subsurface transport modeling, quantified respiration rates over 77 days. At 20°C, pronounced bioclogging caused flow instability, fragmenting the resazurin plume into finger‐like channels and increasing its metabolic rate 12.7‐fold by day 29. Paradoxically, elevated temperatures reduced bioclogging, constrained microbial metabolism, and altered reaction‐transport dynamics. Instead of maintaining a fixed state, Damköhler numbers (Da) shifted dynamically, transitioning from reaction‐limited (Da < 1) to transport‐limited (Da > 1) conditions during biofilm development, with these shifts dampened at higher temperatures. These findings challenge assumptions that warmer conditions always enhance respiration and CO2 fluxes in river ecosystems.

Motorized fluorescence microscopy combined with high-throughput microfluidic chips is a powerful method to obtain information about different biological processes in cell biology studies. Generally, to observe different strains under different environments, high-throughput microfluidic chips require complex preparatory work. In this study, we designed a novel and easily operated high-throughput microfluidic system to observe 96 different GFP-tagged yeast strains in one switchable culture condition or 24 different GFP-tagged yeast strains in four parallel switchable culture conditions. A multi-pipette is the only additional equipment required for high-throughput patterning of cells in the chip. Only eight connections are needed to control 96 conditions. Using these devices, the proteomic dynamics of the yeast stress response pathway were carefully studied based on single-cell data. A new method to characterize the proteomic dynamics using a single cell’s data is proposed and compared to previous methods, and the new technique should be useful for studying underlying control networks. Our method provides an easy and systematic way to study signaling pathways at the single-cell level.

Massive technological advances enabled high-throughput measurements of proteomic changes in biological processes. However, retrieving biological insights from large-scale protein dynamics data remains a challenging task. Here we used the mating differentiation in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model and developed integrated experimental and computational approaches to analyze the proteomic dynamics during the process of cell fate determination. When exposed to a high dose of mating pheromone, the yeast cell undergoes growth arrest and forms a shmoo-like morphology; however, at intermediate doses, chemotropic elongated growth is initialized. To understand the gene regulatory networks that control this differentiation switch, we employed a high-throughput microfluidic imaging system that allows real-time and simultaneous measurements of cell growth and protein expression. Using kinetic modeling of protein dynamics, we classified the stimulus-dependent changes in protein abundance into two sources: global changes due to physiological alterations and gene-specific changes. A quantitative framework was proposed to decouple gene-specific regulatory modes from the growth-dependent global modulation of protein abundance. Based on the temporal patterns of gene-specific regulation, we established the network architectures underlying distinct cell fates using a reverse engineering method and uncovered the dose-dependent rewiring of gene regulatory network during mating differentiation. Furthermore, our results suggested a potential crosstalk between the pheromone response pathway and the target of rapamycin (TOR)-regulated ribosomal biogenesis pathway, which might underlie a cell differentiation switch in yeast mating response. In summary, our modeling approach addresses the distinct impacts of the global and gene-specific regulation on the control of protein dynamics and provides new insights into the mechanisms of cell fate determination. We anticipate that our integrated experimental and modeling strategies could be widely applicable to other biological systems.

Colloid particle size plays an important role in contaminant adsorption and clogging in the hyporheic zone, but it remains unclear how the particle size changes during the transport of colloids. This study investigated the variation of the particle size of colloids in the overlying water and the effects of settlement and hyporheic exchange via laboratory experiments and numerical simulations with two main factors settlement and hyporheic exchange being considered. The results show that the particle size distribution varies when colloids transport in hyporheic zone, and both settlement and hyporheic exchange are involved in the exchange of colloids between stream and streambed. Large-sized particles are mainly controlled by settlement and advection and thus their concentration in the overlying water decreases more quickly; but small-sized particles are mainly controlled by hyporheic exchange and thus their concentration decreases more slowly, and some particles can be resuspended. The increase of retention coefficient and settling velocity will accelerate the transfer of colloids into the streambed. This study may provide important insights into the variation of the particle size of colloids in the overlying water and the effects of settlement and hyporheic exchange. Highlights The distribution of colloidal particle size varies during the transport process in hyporheic zone. Larger sized colloidal particles are affected by settlement more when transport in hyporheic zone, while smaller sized are affected by both hyporheic exchange and settlement. The increase of retention coefficient and settling velocity will accelerate the transfer of colloids into the streambed, and the effect of settling velocity is more sensitive than that of retention coefficient.

ObjectiveTo characterise the oral microbiome, gut microbiome and serum lipid profiles in patients with active COVID-19 and recovered patients; evaluate the potential of the microbiome as a non-invasive biomarker for COVID-19; and explore correlations between the microbiome and lipid profile.DesignWe collected and sequenced 392 tongue-coating samples, 172 faecal samples and 155 serum samples from Central China and East China. We characterised microbiome and lipid molecules, constructed microbial classifiers in discovery cohort and verified their diagnostic potential in 74 confirmed patients (CPs) from East China and 37 suspected patients (SPs) with IgG positivity.ResultsOral and faecal microbial diversity was significantly decreased in CPs versus healthy controls (HCs). Compared with HCs, butyric acid-producing bacteria were decreased and lipopolysaccharide-producing bacteria were increased in CPs in oral cavity. The classifiers based on 8 optimal oral microbial markers (7 faecal microbial markers) achieved good diagnostic efficiency in different cohorts. Importantly, diagnostic efficacy reached 87.24% in the cross-regional cohort. Moreover, the classifiers successfully diagnosed SPs with IgG antibody positivity as CPs, and diagnostic efficacy reached 92.11% (98.01% of faecal microbiome). Compared with CPs, 47 lipid molecules, including sphingomyelin (SM)(d40:4), SM(d38:5) and monoglyceride(33:5), were depleted, and 122 lipid molecules, including phosphatidylcholine(36:4p), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE)(16:0p/20:5) and diglyceride(20:1/18:2), were enriched in confirmed patients recovery.ConclusionThis study is the first to characterise the oral microbiome in COVID-19, and oral microbiomes and lipid alterations in recovered patients, to explore their correlations and to report the successful establishment and validation of a diagnostic model for COVID-19.

The optical microscope is customarily an instrument of substantial size and expense but limited performance. Here we report an integrated microscope that achieves optical performance beyond a commercial microscope with a 5×, NA 0.1 objective but only at 0.15 cm 3 and 0.5 g, whose size is five orders of magnitude smaller than that of a conventional microscope. To achieve this, a progressive optimization pipeline is proposed which systematically optimizes both aspherical lenses and diffractive optical elements with over 30 times memory reduction compared to the end-to-end optimization. By designing a simulation-supervision deep neural network for spatially varying deconvolution during optical design, we accomplish over 10 times improvement in the depth-of-field compared to traditional microscopes with great generalization in a wide variety of samples. To show the unique advantages, the integrated microscope is equipped in a cell phone without any accessories for the application of portable diagnostics. We believe our method provides a new framework for the design of miniaturized high-performance imaging systems by integrating aspherical optics, computational optics, and deep learning. Traditional optical microscope, while bulky, often fails to deliver optimal performance. Here, the authors have engineered an integrated microscope of 0.15 cm 3 in volume and a weight of 0.5 g, which outperforms a commercial microscope and can be seamlessly integrated with a smartphone.

Cardiac ischemia–reperfusion (I/R) injury is a pathological process resulting in cardiomyocyte death. The present study aims to evaluate the role of the long noncoding RNA Cardiac Injury-Related Bclaf1-Inhibiting LncRNA (lncCIRBIL) on cardiac I/R injury and delineate its mechanism of action. The level of lncCIRBIL is reduced in I/R hearts. Cardiomyocyte-specific transgenic overexpression of lncCIRBIL reduces infarct area following I/R injury. Knockout of lncCIRBIL in mice exacerbates cardiac I/R injury. Qualitatively, the same results are observed in vitro. LncCIRBIL directly binds to BCL2-associated transcription factor 1 (Bclaf1), to inhibit its nuclear translocation. Cardiomyocyte-specific transgenic overexpression of Bclaf1 worsens, while partial knockout of Bclaf1 mitigates cardiac I/R injury. Meanwhile, partial knockout of Bclaf1 abrogates the detrimental effects of lncCIRBIL knockout on cardiac I/R injury. Collectively, the protective effect of lncCIRBIL on I/R injury is accomplished by inhibiting the nuclear translocation of Bclaf1. LncCIRBIL and Bclaf1 are potential therapeutic targets for ischemic cardiac disease. Cardiac ischemia–reperfusion (I/R) injury represents a key threat to human health. This study reveals that the long noncoding RNA lncRNA-CIRBIL is protective against I/R injury by inhibiting the nuclear translocation of Bclaf1.