SSH3 promotes pancreatic cancer proliferation and migration by activating the notch signaling pathway.

Recent studies have indicated that the dual-specificity phosphatases (DUSP) family may play a role in the advancement of pancreatic cancer. Exploring the role of the DUSP family in pancreatic cancer development and discovering novel therapeutic targets are crucial for pancreatic cancer therapy. A critical subset of 20 genes exhibiting differential expression was identified, with particular emphasis on four key genes: DUSP10, PTP4A2, SSH3, and CDKN3 by multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis. These genes were integral to developing a novel risk model for PC, which has been independently validated as a prognostic factor for patients. To provide help for clinical treatment, we performed tumor immune analysis and predicted potential chemical drugs. Notably, our research unveiled elevated expression levels of SSH3 in human PC cells and tissues. Intriguingly, SSH3 expression correlates with the patient grade, staging, and T stage in PC. Additional studies reveal SSH3's role in enhancing PC cell proliferation and migration, intricately linked to the activation of the Notch signaling pathway. These insights provide a deeper understanding of PC pathophysiology and pave the way for novel therapeutic interventions.

A pyrimidine metabolism-related signature for prognostic and immunotherapeutic response prediction in hepatocellular carcinoma by integrating analyses.

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), with discouraging morbidity and mortality, ranks as one of the most prevalent tumors worldwide. Pyrimidine metabolism is a critical process that regulates DNA and RNA synthesis in cells. It is imperative to investigate the significance of pyrimidine metabolism in liver cancer. METHODS: Transcriptome and clinical data were downloaded from the TCGA database and the GEO database. The genes related to pyrimidine metabolism were sourced from the MSigDB. The pyrimidine metabolism-related signature (PMRS) was constructed through Cox regression and Lasso regression and then verified in the external validation set from the ICGC database. Functional enrichment, immune infiltration analysis, drug sensitivity, and Immunophenoscore (IPS) were further implemented to predict the response to immunotherapy. The role of PMRS in the malignant phenotype of hepatocellular carcinoma was explored by conducting a series of in vitro experiments. RESULTS: Our study developed a four-genes PMRS which demonstrates a substantial correlation with the prognosis of HCC patients, serving as an independent predictor in clinical practice. The result of risk-stratified analysis yielded evidence that low-risk patients experienced more favorable clinical outcomes. The nomogram exhibited remarkable prognostic predictive value. The subsequent results revealed that low-risk patients manifested a more promising response to immunotherapy. Moreover, the results of cell experiments demonstrated that the downregulation of DCK markedly inhibited the malignant phenotype of hepatocellular carcinoma. CONCLUSIONS: Our pyrimidine metabolism-centered prognostic signature accurately predicts overall survival, immune status, and treatment response in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients, offering innovative insights for precise diagnosis, personalized treatment, and improved prognosis.

Spatial patterns and drivers of ecosystem multifunctionality in China: Arid vs. humid regions.

Ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) refers to an ecosystem's capacity to simultaneously uphold multiple ecological functions or services. In terrestrial ecosystems, the potential patterns and processes of EMF remain largely unexplored, limiting our comprehension of how ecosystems react to various driving factors. We collected environmental, soil and plant nutrient data, investigate the spatial distribution characteristics of EMF in China's terrestrial ecosystems, differentiating between arid and humid regions and examining the underlying drivers. Our findings reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of EMF across China's terrestrial ecosystems, with pronounced variations between arid and humid regions. In arid regions, the EMF index predominantly falls within the range of -1 to 1, including approximately 66.8 % of the total area, while in humid regions, the EMF index primarily falls within the range of 0 to 2, covering around 55.2 % of the total area. Climate, soil, and vegetation factors account for 61.4 % and 51.9 % of the total EMF variation in arid and humid regions, respectively. Notably, climate emerges as the dominant factor governing EMF variation in arid regions, whereas soil physicochemical properties take precedence in humid regions. Specifically, mean annual temperature (MAT) emerges as the primary factor influencing EMF variation in arid regions, while the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and soil biodiversity index (SBI) play pivotal roles in regulating EMF variation in humid regions. Indeed, climate can exert both direct and indirect influences on EMF. In summary, our study not only compared the disparities in the spatial distribution of EMF in arid and humid regions but also unveiled the distinct controlling factors that govern EMF changes in these different regions. Our research has contributed novel insights for evaluating the drivers responsible for mediating EMF in diverse ecosystems, shedding light on the adaptability and response mechanisms of ecosystems under varying environmental conditions.

Soil organic carbon fractions in China: Spatial distribution, drivers, and future changes.

Soil is the world's largest terrestrial carbon pool and plays an important role in the global carbon cycle, which may be greatly affected by global change. Recently, research frameworks have indicated that division of soil organic carbon (SOC) into two forms particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) can help us better understand SOC cycle. However, there is a lack of the use of meta-analysis combined with machine learning models to explore the spatial distribution of SOC fractions at large scales. Based on 356 studies conducted in Chinese terrestrial ecosystems, we performed a meta-analysis of extracted data and measured data combined with machine learning models to reveal the spatial distribution of soil POC density (POCD) and MAOC density (MAOCD) and the main drivers of variations in POCD and MAOCD. Our study demonstrated that POCD and MAOCD in China's soil were 3.24 and 2.61 kg m-2, with stocks of 31.10 and 25.06 Pg, respectively. Climate, soil, and vegetation properties together explained 44.9 % and 27.2 % of the variation in POCD and MAOCD, respectively. Climate was more important than other variables in controlling the changes in POCD, with mean annual temperature being specifically the main driver. Soil, however, was more important than other variables in controlling changes in MAOCD, with soil clay content being the main driver. Compared to the other climate scenarios, the rate of change in POCD and MAOCD was higher with a 1.5 °C increase in temperature. In the future, we should pay more attention to the impact of climate change on POCD, which provides a theoretical basis for achieving the "dual-carbon" target. Our study contributes to the understanding of the potential mechanisms of the changes in SOC fractions under global change and provides useful information for future prediction models to simulate the impacts of global change.

Identification and screening of key traffic violations: based on the perspective of expressing driver's accident risk.

Drawing on the core idea of Propensity Score Matching, this study proposes a new concept named Historical Traffic Violation Propensity to describe the driver's historical traffic violations, and combines the new concept with an improved mutual information-based feature selection algorithm to construct a method for screening key traffic violations from the perspective of expressing driver's accident risk. The validation analysis based on the real data collected in Shenzhen demonstrated that drivers' state of Historical Traffic Violation Propensity on 19 key traffic violations screened have a stronger predictive ability of their subsequent accidents compared to the level in existing research. The positive state of Historical Traffic Violation Propensity on 'Drinking', 'Parking in dangerous areas', 'Wrong use of turn lights', 'Violating prohibited and restricted traffic regulations', and 'Disobeying prohibition sign' will increase the probability of a driver's subsequent accident by more than 1.7 times. The research provides directions to more efficiently and accurately capture the driver's accident risk through historical traffic violations, which is valuable for identifying high-risk drivers as well as the key psychological or physical risk factors that manifest in daily driving activities and lead to subsequent accidents.

A comprehensive analysis of the prognostic and immunotherapeutic characteristics of KIFC1 in pan-cancer and its role in the malignant phenotype of pancreatic cancer.

BACKGROUND: Kinesin family member C1 (KIFC1) is an essential member of the motor protein family, which is critically involved in various cellular events, such as mitosis, meiosis, and macromolecular transport, but also in carcinogenesis, malignant progression, and tumor recurrence. METHODS: The analysis determined the relationship between KIFC1 expression, prognosis significance, immune characteristics landscape, and genetic alterations in pan-cancer with the data extracted from web-based platforms and databases, including but not limited to UCSC, NCBI, GEPIA2, HPA, cBioPortal, SangerBox, UALCAN, GEO and TCGA. Additionally, the expression of KIFC1 in pancreatic cancer tumor tissues and adjacent normal tissues was evaluated through immunohistochemistry. In vitro Edu, colony formation, wound healing, and Transwell assay were done to elucidate the biological functions of KIFC1 in pancreatic cancer cells. RESULTS: The analysis revealed that KIFC1 is upregulated in most cancers, and its increased expression is significantly associated with reduced overall survival and disease-free survival in multiple cancer types. Additionally, strong correlations between KIFC1 expression and tumor immunotherapy were observed across various malignancies. Through univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses using TCGA data, KIFC1 was identified as an independent predictor of prognosis in pancreatic cancer cases. Furthermore, cellular experiments demonstrated that knockdown of KIFC1 resulted in the suppression of cell proliferation, migration, and invasive ability. CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicated that KIFC1 harbors the potential to be a prognostic and immunotherapeutic biomarker of tumors, and it can have an impact on the metastasis and the cell cycle of pancreatic cancer cells.

Binocular full-color holographic three-dimensional near eye display using a single SLM.

A binocular full-color holographic three-dimensional near eye display system using a single spatial light modulator (SLM) is proposed. In the display system, the frequency spectrum shifting operation and color spectrum shifting operation are adopted to realize the frequency division multiplexing (FDM) and frequency superposition multiplexing (FSM) by manipulating the frequency spectrums of each color- and view-channel sub-holograms. The FDM combined with polarization multiplexing will be used to implement binocular display using a single SLM, and the FSM working with a bandpass filter for each view-channel will be used to achieve full-color display from single frame hologram. The optical analysis and experiments with 3D color objects confirm the feasibility of the proposed system in the practical application.

A work-life conflict perspective on telework.

Telework has been promoted for decades as one of the traffic demand management policies to alleviate congestion during peak periods and reduce work-related trips, along with other benefits. However, less clear is the role played by life stages (i.e., gender, marital status and parenthood) on telework behavior. This study investigated to which extent telework frequency associated with life stages, and how these associations could be explained based on the work-life conflict perspective. Representative data were obtained from German Microcensus 2010 (N = 188,081 participants). The outcome variable was measured as ordered telework participation levels (i.e., never, infrequently and frequently). After testing for multicollinearity, a zero-inflated ordered probit regression model was applied to assess the associations between telework and family-life stages, while adjusting for individual, household, job-related and environmental characteristics. Results suggest that life stages associate with telework behavior in a complex way. Three patterns have been distinguished. Specifically, irrespective of gender and marital status, parents are less likely to telework compared to those without children. Regarding individuals without children, single individuals are more likely to telework than married ones, and males more likely than females. In contrast, for individuals with children, the partnered parents are more likely to telework than single parents, and females more likely than males. Our findings suggest that as the most important feature in family-life stages, children play a vital role in telework behavior. It not only increases both work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, but also triggers housework re-division within couples and aggravates gender differences. Policies that support formal childcare resources could relieve the family-to-work conflict and encourage people to work at home.

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Invasive plants can inhibit the survival and reproduction of native species through alle-lopathy. It is not clear whether the native plants, especially the mosses in the ground layer, inf-luence the invasive plants. In this study, we examined the effects of two native moss species, Brachythecium plumosum and Plagiomnium venustum, on two malignant invasive plants, Echinochloa crusgalli and Daucus carota. The effects of mosses on seed germination and seedling growth of both invasive species were determined based on the clump structure and allelopathy of the mosses. The germination rate, germination potential and germination index of the two invasive species were significantly inhibited when seeds fallen on or into the moss clump, with an order of inhibition effect: above moss clump>below moss clump>no moss. Radicle length and radicle/plumule of D. Carota were significantly affected when seeds fallen into the moss clump. Moss water extracts significantly reduced germination rate, germination potential, and germination index of the two invasive plants, with these effects being concentration-dependent. To some extent, moss water extracts increased the plumule length, radicle length and radicle/plumule of D. Carota seedlings, but without effect on E. crusgalli. Both mosses showed inhibitory effects on seed germination and seedling growth of two invasive plants, with higher sensitivity of E. crusgalli than D. Carota. Along with the increases in concentration of water extract, stronger inhibitory effects were found. Therefore, mosses could partially inhibit seed germination and seedling growth of invasive plants.

Two-Step Synthesis of CuS/C@PANI Nanocomposite as Advanced Electrode Materials for Supercapacitor Applications.

In this study, the dense cloud-like structured CuS nanoparticles were successfully prepared using a simple two-step hydrothermal method. The experimental temperature was the most important factor that affected the microstructure and surface functions of CuS/C. Therefore, the CuS/C electrodes were synthesized at different temperatures (80 °C, 120 °C, and 160 °C). Subsequently, their crystallographic phase and morphologies as well as the structure of the as-prepared electrodes were analyzed in detail. The electrode prepared at 120 °C (CuS/C-120) was determined to have a perfect microstructure, high specific capacitance, and good rate performance. To further improve the electrochemical performance of this electrode, it was combined with polyaniline (PANI) to obtain a CuS/C-120@PANI electrode via the cyclic voltammetric electrodeposition method. The CuS/C-120@PANI electrode exhibits a specific capacitance of 425.53 Fg-1 at a current density of 1 Ag-1 and a good cycling stability of 89.86% after 3000 cycles. The perfect architecture of CuS/C-120@PANI maximizes the synergistic effect between its different components and provides abundant electrochemically reactive sites, promoting the diffusion and transfer of electrolyte ions during the electrochemical reaction processes. Detailed analysis shows that the CuS/C-120@PANI electrode has great potential for use in high-performance energy storage devices.

Enhanced biological removal of NOχ from flue gas in a biofilter by Fe(II)Cit/Fe(II)EDTA absorption.

A mixed absorbent had been proposed to enhance the chemical absorption-biological reduction process for NO(x) removal from flue gas. The mole ratio of the absorbent of Fe(II)Cit to Fe(II)EDTA was selected to be 3. After the biofilm was formed adequately, some influential factors, such as the concentration of NO, O(2), SO(2) and EBRT were investigated. During the long-term running, the system could keep on a steady NO removal efficiency (up to 90%) and had a flexibility in the sudden changes of operating conditions when the simulated flue gas contained 100-500 ppm NO, 100-800 ppm SO(2), 1-5% (v/v) O(2), and 15% (v/v) CO(2). However, high NO concentration (>800 ppm) and relative short EBRT (<100s) had significant negative effect on NO removal. The results indicate that the new system by using mixed-absorbent can reduce operating costs in comparison with the single Fe(II)EDTA system and possesses great potential for scale-up to industrial applications.