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Myopathy encompasses a group of diseases characterized by abnormalities in both muscle function and structure. However, the underlying regulatory mechanisms of newly formed myofiber development remain poorly defined. No promising therapeutic approach has been developed, but numerous medication options are available to alleviate symptoms. Our previous studies demonstrated that adenosine kinase (ADK) is critical in regulating adenosine metabolism, pathological angiogenesis, pathological vascular remodeling, and vascular inflammatory diseases. Adenosine dynamically distributes between extracellular and intracellular, and adenosine concentration regulates ADK expression. However, the mechanism by which adenosine triggers an ADK-dependent intracellular signaling pathway to regulate skeletal muscle regeneration is not well defined. This study aimed to evaluate whether the adenosine-induced intracellular signaling pathway is involved in regulating myopathy, and how it regulates the development of newly formed myofibers. In this study, an intramuscular injection of cardiotoxin was used to induce a skeletal muscle injury model; satellite cells and C2C12 cells were employed. Whether adenosine regulates satellite cell activity, new myofiber formation and differentiation, as well as fusion of myofibers, were determined by H&E staining, BrdU incorporation assay, and spheroid sprouting assay. Interaction between ADK and PFKFB3 was evaluated by IF staining, PPI network analysis, molecular docking simulation, and CO-immunoprecipitation assay. The results demonstrated that adenosine dynamically distributes between extracellular and intracellular through concentrative nucleoside transports or equilibrative nucleoside transporters, and it rapidly induces an ADK-dependent intracellular signaling pathway, which interacts with PFKFB3-mediated glycolytic metabolism to promote satellite cell activity, new myofiber formation, differentiation, and fusion, and eventually enhances skeletal muscle regeneration after injury stress. The remarkable endogenous regeneration capacity of skeletal muscle, which is regulated by adenosine-triggered intracellular signaling, presents a promising therapeutic strategy for treating muscle trauma and muscular dystrophies.

The fusion of spectral–polarimetric information can improve the autonomous reconnaissance capability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in detecting artificial targets. However, the current spectral and polarization imaging systems typically suffer from low image sampling resolution, which can lead to the loss of target information. Most existing segmentation algorithms neglect the similarities and differences between multimodal features, resulting in reduced accuracy and robustness of the algorithms. To address these challenges, a real-time spectral–polarimetric segmentation algorithm for artificial targets based on an efficient attention fusion network, called ESPFNet (efficient spectral–polarimetric fusion network) is proposed. The network employs a coordination attention bimodal fusion (CABF) module and a complex atrous spatial pyramid pooling (CASPP) module to fuse and enhance low-level and high-level features at different scales from the spectral feature images and the polarization encoded images, effectively achieving the segmentation of artificial targets. Additionally, the introduction of the residual dense block (RDB) module refines feature extraction, further enhancing the network’s ability to classify pixels. In order to test the algorithm’s performance, a spectral–polarimetric image dataset of artificial targets, named SPIAO (spectral–polarimetric image of artificial objects) is constructed, which contains various camouflaged nets and camouflaged plates with different properties. The experimental results on the SPIAO dataset demonstrate that the proposed method accurately detects the artificial targets, achieving a mean intersection-over-union (MIoU) of 80.4%, a mean pixel accuracy (MPA) of 88.1%, and a detection rate of 27.5 frames per second, meeting the real-time requirement. The research has the potential to provide a new multimodal detection technique for enabling autonomous reconnaissance by UAVs in complex scenes.

Camouflaged people are extremely expert in actively concealing themselves by effectively utilizing cover and the surrounding environment. Despite advancements in optical detection capabilities through imaging systems, including spectral, polarization, and infrared technologies, there is still a lack of effective real-time method for accurately detecting small-size and high-efficient camouflaged people in complex real-world scenes. Here, this study proposes a snapshot multispectral image-based camouflaged detection model, multispectral YOLO (MS-YOLO), which utilizes the SPD-Conv and SimAM modules to effectively represent targets and suppress background interference by exploiting the spatial-spectral target information. Besides, the study constructs the first real-shot multispectral camouflaged people dataset (MSCPD), which encompasses diverse scenes, target scales, and attitudes. To minimize information redundancy, MS-YOLO selects an optimal subset of 12 bands with strong feature representation and minimal inter-band correlation as input. Through experiments on the MSCPD, MS-YOLO achieves a mean Average Precision of 94.31% and real-time detection at 65 frames per second, which confirms the effectiveness and efficiency of our method in detecting camouflaged people in various typical desert and forest scenes. Our approach offers valuable support to improve the perception capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles in detecting enemy forces and rescuing personnel in battlefield.

Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) are considered as promising thermal insulation materials applied in ultra-high temperature environments (> 2000 °C). However, the high thermal conductivity and high density limit their further development and application. Herein we adopt the strategies of introducing porous structure and high-entropy effect to solve the above problems. Thus porous high-entropy (Zr 0.25 Hf 0.25 Nb 0.25 Ti 0.25 )C ceramics were prepared. In order to obtain the uniform pore structure and high mechanical property, the camphene-based freeze-casting method was used in this study. The as-prepared porous samples exhibit high porosity of 92.01–73.57% and homogeneously interconnected pore structure with average pore size of 40.8–19.6 μm. Besides, this work realizes the aims of lightweight (0.65–2.15 g/cm 3 ) and low thermal conductivity (0.29–1.53 W/(m·K)). More importantly, porous samples still have the merit of high compressive strength (0.38–29.02 MPa) due to the even microstructure. The results show that highly porous high-entropy (Zr 0.25 Hf 0.25 Nb 0.25 Ti 0.25 )C with good overall properties can be an excellent candidate material for ultra-high temperature thermal insulation.

Pyruvate kinase M2 isoform （PKM2） catalyzes the last step of glycolysis and plays an important role in tumor cell proliferation. Recent studies have reported that PKM2 also regulates apoptosis. However, the mechanisms under- lying such a role of PKM2 remain elusive. Here we show that PKM2 translocates to mitochondria under oxidative stress. In the mitochondria, PKM2 interacts with and phosphorylates Bcl2 at threonine （T） 69. This phosphoryla- tion prevents the binding of Cul3-based E3 ligase to Bcl2 and subsequent degradation of Bcl2. A chaperone protein, HSP90al, is required for this function of PKM2. HSP90al＇s ATPase activity launches a conformational change of PKM2 and facilitates interaction between PKM2 and Bci2. Replacement of wild-type Bcl2 with phosphorylation-de- ficient Bcl2 T69A mutant sensitizes glioma cells to oxidative stress-induced apoptosis and impairs brain tumor for- mation in an orthotopic xenograft model. Notably, a peptide that is composed of the amino acid residues from 389 to 405 of PKM2, through which PKM2 binds to Bcl2, disrupts PKM2-BcI2 interaction, promotes Bcl2 degradation and impairs brain tumor growth. In addition, levels of Bcl2 T69 phosphorylation, conformation-altered PKM2 and Bcl2 protein correlate with one another in specimens of human glioblastoma patients. Moreover, levels of Bcl2 T69 phos- phorylation and conformation-altered PKM2 correlate with both grades and prognosis of glioma malignancy. Our findings uncover a novel mechanism through which mitochondrial PKM2 phosphorylates Bcl2 and inhibits apoptosis directly, highlight the essential role of PKM2 in ROS adaptation of cancer cells, and implicate HSP90-PKM2-Bcl2 axis as a potential target for therapeutic intervention in glioblastoma.

We investigate quantum state tomography（QST） for pure states and quantum process tomography（QPT） for unitary channels via adaptive measurements. For a quantum system with a d-dimensional Hilbert space, we first propose an adaptive protocol where only 2d. 1 measurement outcomes are used to accomplish the QST for all pure states. This idea is then extended to study QPT for unitary channels, where an adaptive unitary process tomography（AUPT） protocol of d2＋d.1measurement outcomes is constructed for any unitary channel. We experimentally implement the AUPT protocol in a 2-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system. We examine the performance of the AUPT protocol when applied to Hadamard gate, T gate（/8 phase gate）, and controlled-NOT gate,respectively, as these gates form the universal gate set for quantum information processing purpose. As a comparison, standard QPT is also implemented for each gate. Our experimental results show that the AUPT protocol that reconstructing unitary channels via adaptive measurements significantly reduce the number of experiments required by standard QPT without considerable loss of fidelity.

Grain shape and size both determine grain weight and therefore crop yield. However, the molecular mechanisms controlling grain shape and size are still largely unknown. Here, we isolated a rice mutant, beak-shaped grain1 （bsgl）, which produced beak-shaped grains of decreased width, thickness and weight with a loosely interlocked lemma and palea that were unable to close tightly. Starch granules were also irregularly packaged in the bsgl grains. Consistent with the lemma and palea shapes, the outer parenchyma cell layers of these bsgl tissues developed fewer cells with decreased size. Map-based cloning revealed that BSG1 encoded a DUF640 domain protein, TRIANGULAR HULL 1, of unknown function. Quantitative PCR and GUS fusion reporter assays showed that BSG1 was expressed mainly in the young panicle and elongating stem. The BSG1 mutation affected the expression of genes potentially involved in the cell cycle and GW2, an important regulator of grain size in rice. Our results suggest that BSG1 determines grain shape and size probably by modifying cell division and expansion in the grain hull.

Precisely modulating the Ru-O covalency in RuO x for enhanced stability in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis is highly desired. However, transition metals with d -valence electrons, which were doped into or alloyed with RuO x , are inherently susceptible to the influence of coordination environment, making it challenging to modulate the Ru-O covalency in a precise and continuous manner. Here, we first deduce that the introduction of lanthanide with gradually changing electronic configurations can continuously modulate the Ru-O covalency owing to the shielding effect of 5 s /5 p orbitals. Theoretical calculations confirm that the durability of Ln-RuO x following a volcanic trend as a function of Ru-O covalency. Among various Ln-RuO x , Er-RuO x is identified as the optimal catalyst and possesses a stability 35.5 times higher than that of RuO 2 . Particularly, the Er-RuO x -based device requires only 1.837 V to reach 3 A cm −2 and shows a long-term stability at 500 mA cm −2 for 100 h with a degradation rate of mere 37 μV h −1 . Lack of stability in RuO 2 -based catalysts at industrial currents impedes their use in green hydrogen production. Here, the authors show that incorporating lanthanide elements into RuO x shields against external factors, enabling fine-tuned Ru-O covalency for durable oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalysis.

Jiayang Li and colleagues report the positional cloning of the Ideal Plant Architecture (IPA1) QTL in rice. The gene OsSPL14 underlies the IPA1 locus and regulates plant architecture and enhances rice grain yield. Increasing crop yield is a major challenge for modern agriculture. The development of new plant types, which is known as ideal plant architecture (IPA), has been proposed as a means to enhance rice yield potential over that of existing high-yield varieties 1 , 2 . Here, we report the cloning and characterization of a semidominant quantitative trait locus, IPA1 ( Ideal Plant Architecture 1 ), which profoundly changes rice plant architecture and substantially enhances rice grain yield. The IPA1 quantitative trait locus encodes OsSPL14 (SOUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE 14) and is regulated by microRNA (miRNA) OsmiR156 in vivo . We demonstrate that a point mutation in OsSPL14 perturbs OsmiR156-directed regulation of OsSPL14 , generating an 'ideal' rice plant with a reduced tiller number, increased lodging resistance and enhanced grain yield. Our study suggests that OsSPL14 may help improve rice grain yield by facilitating the breeding of new elite rice varieties.