The N545S and K717N substitution at the N-glycosylation sites of the S2 subunit of avian infectious bronchitis virus can significantly enhance viral pathogenicity.

The S2 subunit of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) is a heavily glycosylated protein that can impact various characteristics of the virus. It is currently known that N-glycosylation modifications are predominantly located on the S2 subunit. However, the exact role of their N-glycosylation modification remains undisclosed. To elucidate the function of these N-glycosylation sites, we identified 14 common sites distributed on the S2 subunit of the 5 genotypes of IBV in present study. Subsequently, we selected 7 sites to generate mutants and assessed their impact on viral virulence, replication ability, and antigenicity. Our finding revealed that only 2 substitutions, N545S and K717N, increased the viral replication titer and antigenicity, and ultimately the pathogenicity in chicks. To delve into the mechanisms underlying this increased pathogenicity, we discovered that K717N can change the structure of antigenic epitopes. The N545S substitution not only influenced antigenic epitope structure, but also enhanced the ability of the virus to enter CEKs during the early stages of viral replication. These results suggest that the enhanced viral pathogenicity associated with N545S and K717N substitutions is multifaceted, with acceleration of the viral membrane fusion process and alterations in epitope structure representing crucial factors in the capability of N-glycosylation modifications to boost viral virulence. These insights provide valuable guidance for the efficient development of live attenuated vaccines.

Helical Micropillar Processed by One-Step 3D Printing for Solar Thermal Conversion.

Solar thermal utilization has broad applications in a variety of fields. Currently, maximizing the photo-thermal conversion efficiency remains a research hotspot in this field. The exquisite plant structures in nature have greatly inspired human structural design across many domains. In this work, inspired by the photosynthesis of helical grass, a HM type solar absorber made in graphene-based composite sheets is used for solar thermal conversion. The unique design promoted more effective solar energy into thermal energy through multiple reflections and scattering of solar photons. Notably, the Helical Micropillar (HM) is fabricated using a one-step projection 3D printing process based on a special 3D helical beam. As a result, the solar absorber's absorbance value can reach 0.83 in the 400-2500 nm range, and the surface temperature increased by ≈128.3% relative to the original temperature. The temperature rise rate of the solar absorber reached 22.4 °C min-1, demonstrating the significant potential of the HM in practical applications of solar thermal energy collection and utilization.

Probing the microstructure and deformation mechanism of an FeCoCrNiAl0.5 high entropy alloy during nanoscratching: a combined atomistic and physical model study.

High entropy alloys (HEAs) exhibit superior mechanical properties. However, the nanoscratching properties and deformation behaviour of FeCoCrNiAl0.5 HEAs remain unknown at the nanoscale. Here, we investigate the effect of scratching depth on the microstructural and tribological characteristics of an FeCoCrNiAl0.5 HEA using molecular dynamics simulations combined with a physical model. The scratching force increases significantly as the scratching depth increases. In the lower part of the scratching region, there is a clear atomic movement process, with the load generated in the normal direction causing the atoms to shift downwards. Noticeable shear bands are formed in the subsurface area, and they are both small and narrow compared with the pure Ni. The plastic deformation mechanism of the compressed surface is mainly governed by the formation and expansion of stacking faults during the subsurface evolution process. The evolution process of screw dislocations is similar to that of edge dislocations. In addition, the high strength and deformation resistance of FeCoCrNiAl0.5 HEAs are further evaluated by establishing a microstructure-based physical model. The combined effect of the lattice distortion strengthening and dislocation strengthening promotes the high strength of the FeCoCrNiAl0.5 HEA, which is significantly better than the single strengthening mechanism of pure metals. These results accelerate the understanding of the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms of HEAs.

Balanced Unfolding Induced Tensor Nuclear Norms for High-Order Tensor Completion.

The recently proposed tensor tubal rank has been witnessed to obtain extraordinary success in real-world tensor data completion. However, existing works usually fix the transform orientation along the third mode and may fail to turn multidimensional low-tubal-rank structure into account. To alleviate these bottlenecks, we introduce two unfolding induced tensor nuclear norms (TNNs) for the tensor completion (TC) problem, which naturally extends tensor tubal rank to high-order data. Specifically, we show how multidimensional low-tubal-rank structure can be captured by utilizing a novel balanced unfolding strategy, upon which two TNNs, namely, overlapped TNN (OTNN) and latent TNN (LTNN), are developed. We also show the immediate relationship between the tubal rank of unfolding tensor and the existing tensor network (TN) rank, e.g., CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) rank, Tucker rank, and tensor ring (TR) rank, to demonstrate its efficiency and practicality. Two efficient TC models are then proposed with theoretical guarantees by analyzing a unified nonasymptotic upper bound. To solve optimization problems, we develop two alternating direction methods of multipliers (ADMM) based algorithms. The proposed models have been demonstrated to exhibit superior performance based on experimental findings involving synthetic and real-world tensors, including facial images, light field images, and video sequences.

Wide-Size Range and High Robustness Self-Assembly Micropillars for Capturing Microspheres.

Capillary force driven self-assembly micropillars (CFSA-MP) holds immense promise for the manipulation and capture of cells/tiny objects, which has great demands of wide size range and high robustness. Here, we propose a novel method to fabricate size-adjustable and highly robust CFSA-MP that can achieve wide size range and high stability to capture microspheres. First, we fabricate a microholes template with an adjustable aspect ratio using the spatial-temporal shaping femtosecond laser double-pulse Bessel beam-assisted chemical etching technique, and then the micropillars with adjustable aspect ratio are demolded by polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). We fully demonstrated the advantages of the Bessel optical field by using the spatial-temporal shaping femtosecond laser double-pulse Bessel beams to broaden the height range of the micropillars, which in turn expands the size range of the captured microspheres, and finally achieving a wide range of capturing microspheres with a diameter of 5-410 µm. Based on the inverted mold technology, the PDMS micropillars have ultrahigh mechanical robustness, which greatly improves the durability. CFSA-MP has the ability to capture tiny objects with wide range and high stability, which indicates great potential applications in the fields of chemistry, biomedicine, and microfluidics.

A Novel Tensor Ring Sparsity Measurement for Image Completion.

As a promising data analysis technique, sparse modeling has gained widespread traction in the field of image processing, particularly for image recovery. The matrix rank, served as a measure of data sparsity, quantifies the sparsity within the Kronecker basis representation of a given piece of data in the matrix format. Nevertheless, in practical scenarios, much of the data are intrinsically multi-dimensional, and thus, using a matrix format for data representation will inevitably yield sub-optimal outcomes. Tensor decomposition (TD), as a high-order generalization of matrix decomposition, has been widely used to analyze multi-dimensional data. In a direct generalization to the matrix rank, low-rank tensor modeling has been developed for multi-dimensional data analysis and achieved great success. Despite its efficacy, the connection between TD rank and the sparsity of the tensor data is not direct. In this work, we introduce a novel tensor ring sparsity measurement (TRSM) for measuring the sparsity of the tensor. This metric relies on the tensor ring (TR) Kronecker basis representation of the tensor, providing a unified interpretation akin to matrix sparsity measurements, wherein the Kronecker basis serves as the foundational representation component. Moreover, TRSM can be efficiently computed by the product of the ranks of the mode-2 unfolded TR-cores. To enhance the practical performance of TRSM, the folded-concave penalty of the minimax concave penalty is introduced as a nonconvex relaxation. Lastly, we extend the TRSM to the tensor completion problem and use the alternating direction method of the multipliers scheme to solve it. Experiments on image and video data completion demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Fructus choerospondiatis: A comprehensive review of its traditional uses, chemical composition, pharmacological activities, and clinical studies.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Fructus Choerospondiatis is the dried and mature fruit of Choerospondias axillaris (Roxb.) Burtt et Hill. It has been used for a long time in Tibetan and Mongolian medicine, first recorded in the ancient Tibetan medicine book "Medicine Diagnosis of the King of the Moon" in the early 8th century. Fructus Choerospondiatis shows multiple pharmacological activities, especially in treating cardiovascular diseases. AIM OF THIS REVIEW: This paper reviews the progress in research on the botanical characteristics, traditional uses, chemical constituents, pharmacological activity, clinical studies, and quality control of Fructus Choerospondiatis. This review aims to summarize current research and provide a reference for further development and utilization of Fructus Choerospondiatis resources. METHOD: The sources for this review include the Pharmacopeia of the People's Republic of China (2020), theses, and peer-reviewed papers (in both English and Chinese). Theses and papers were downloaded from electronic databases including Web of Science, PubMed, SciFinder, Scholar, Springer, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure.The search terms used were "Choerospondias axillaris", "C. axillaris", "Choerospondias axillaris (Roxb.) Burtt et Hill", "Fructus choerospondiatis", "Guangzao", "Lapsi", and "Lupsi". RESULTS: Fructus Choerospondiatis contains polyphenols, organic acids, amino acids, fatty acids, polysaccharides, and other chemical components. These ingredients contribute to its diverse pharmacological activities such as antioxidant activity, protection against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury, anti-myocardial fibrosis, heart rhythm regulation, anti-tumor, liver protection, and immunity enhancement. It also affects the central nervous system, with the ability to repair damaged nerve cells. CONCLUSION: Fructus Choerospondiatis, with its various chemical compositions and pharmacological activities, is a promising medicinal resource. However, it remains under-researched, particularly in pharmacodynamic material basis and quality control. These areas require further exploration by researchers in the future.

Predicting the orbital angular momentum of atmospheric turbulence for OAM-based free-space optical communication.

Spatial modes of light are susceptible to distortion, particularly by the presence of turbulence in atmospheric free-space links. The scattering of one mode to another disrupts the orthogonality among distinct orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes, leading to modal crosstalk between multiple channels. To enhance the performance of OAM-multiplexed free-space optical (FSO) communication, a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based turbulent OAM approach is proposed for compensating turbulence, with a specific focus on predicting the OAM of turbulence itself. An operator approach is utilized to extract the OAM component of atmospheric turbulence and the CNN is trained to predict the turbulent OAM coefficients. By employing the proposed network, the received power of the OAM-based FSO link can be improved by more than 10 dB under weak to strong turbulence conditions. Compared to Zernike modes, the turbulent OAM modes characterize most of the turbulence information using only a small number of orders. After compensation, when the strong turbulence strength D/r0 = 4, the received power of the transmitted beams with turbulent OAM improves by 4 dB over that with Zernike. Additionally, the crosstalk of multiplexed channels with turbulent OAM is reduced by 10 dB over that with Zernike under varying turbulence conditions.

Generation and free-space transmission characterization of bottle vortex beam.

Vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) with the doughnut-shaped intensity distribution can be employed in free-space optical (FSO) communication links to circumvent obstructions. However, the size of the receiver aperture is proportional to the size of obstructions, which seriously constrains the application of OAM beams in this scenario. In this paper, we propose a method to generate bottle vortex beams (BVBs) with a parabolic trajectory by manipulating the radial phase distribution of conventional OAM beams. Meanwhile, the trajectory of BVBs generated are highly compatible with the predesigned trajectory by using this method. Moreover, we evaluate the free-space transmission performance of BVBs under atmospheric turbulence and limited receiving aperture. The results show that BVBs have better OAM FSO communication link performance compared with conventional OAM beams and Bessel beams. In addition, the performance of the BVBs circumventing obstructions is further investigated. The simulation results show that when setting the atmospheric turbulence strength D/r0 = 2 and the obstruction size of 40 mm, the average received optical power of the BVBs captured by a limited receiving aperture diameter (d = 40 mm) is improved about 7 dB and 3 dB compared to conventional OAM beams and Bessel beams, respectively.

Zeaamine, a new amine from roots of Zea mays and its cytotoxic activity against CT26 and SW480 cell lines.

A new amine, zeaamine (1), along with nine known compounds (2-10), were isolated from the roots of Zea mays. Among these, compound 2 was first isolated from this plant, and compound 3 was first isolated from the roots. In the current investigation, the cytotoxicity against CT26 and SW480 cells of the compounds were evaluated. Zeaamine (1) exhibited moderately affected CT26 and SW480 cells with IC50 values of 17.91 and 10.21 µM.

Biotransformation of Ursonic Acid by Aspergillus ochraceus and Aspergillus oryzae to Discover Anti-Neuroinflammatory Derivatives.

Biotransformation of ursonic acid (1) by two fungal strains Aspergillus ochraceus CGMCC 3.5324 and Aspergillus oryzae CGMCC 3.407 yielded thirteen new compounds (4, 5, 7-10, and 13-19), along with five recognized ones. The structural details of new compounds were determined through spectroscopic examination (NMR, IR, and HR-MS) and X-ray crystallography. Various modifications, including hydroxylation, epoxidation, lactonization, oxygen introduction, and transmethylation, were identified on the ursane core. Additionally, the anti-neuroinflammatory efficacy of these derivatives was assessed on BV-2 cells affected by lipopolysaccharides. It was observed that certain methoxylated and epoxylated derivatives (10, 16, and 19) showcased enhanced suppressive capabilities, boasting IC50 values of 8.2, 6.9, and 5.3 µM. Such ursonic acid derivatives might emerge as potential primary molecules in addressing neurodegenerative diseases.

Direct prediction and compensation of atmospheric turbulence for free-space integer and fractional order OAM multiplexed transmission links.

Atmospheric turbulence has an adverse impact on orbital angular momentum (OAM) beam transmission, resulting in power fluctuations and mode crosstalk. These challenges are particularly pronounced in OAM multiplexing links. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a novel network architecture that integrates convolutional layers and residual structures to address the issue of turbulence phase compensation. By harnessing the local feature learning capability of convolutional layers and the information-preserving function of residual structures, we aim to mitigate the adverse effects of network depth on information loss. By employing the proposed network, we compensate the turbulence phase directly using the received intensity distributions for free space multiplexed integer and fractional order OAM links, respectively. The obtained results show that the received optical power can be improved for more than 10 dB for integer order OAM multiplexed FSO links under weak to strong turbulence conditions, while 9 dB for fractional-order OAM multiplexed FSO links. Moreover, mode crosstalk can be reduced for about 10 dB under 4 OAM modes multiplexed links under turbulence strength D/r0=5. The proposed deep learning based atmospheric turbulence compensation method can predict phase screens rapidly and accurately, thus enhancing the dependability of future OAM multiplexing technology.

High-speed spatial light modulation enabling 25-Gbit/s twisted light encoding/decoding and 260-m security free-space data transmission.

Spatial domain of light beam is an important degree of freedom to be extensively explored. As a set of spatial domains, twisted lights have some natural properties such as orthogonality and security, providing great potentials in optical communications especially for data encoding/decoding. However, the speed of traditional spatial light modulators has always been criticized. Here we present a hundred-meter security free-space data transmission based on high-speed spatial light modulation by exploiting temporal-to-spatial domain mapping. We demonstrate 25-Gbit/s twisted light encoding/decoding and 260-m security free-space data transmission in the experiment. The encoding/decoding link will lead to 3-dB improvement in bit error rate (BER) performance compared with a single channel in theory and ∼1-dB optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalty at the forward error correction (FEC) threshold of 3.8e-3 in practice. The experiment results also show favorable security performance of the proposed encoding/decoding link system.

Two New Alkaloids from Roots of Zea mays and Their Cytotoxic Activity against Hep3B and SW480 Cells.

Two undescribed alkaloids, along with seven known compounds, were isolated from the roots of Zea mays (RM). Their chemical structures were elucidated based on extensive analyses of HR-ESI-MS, 1D and 2D NMR, and CD spectra. Two new alkaloids exhibited moderate inhibition of Hep3B (IC50 values of 11.7±2.4 and 14.2±3.6 µM) and SW480 cells (IC50 values of 33.4±8.2 and 47.3±5.8 µM) compared to that of the positive control compound, Oxaliplatin, IC50 value of 8.4±1.7 and 45.8±5.6 µM, respectively.

Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad.: A Promising Pharmaceutical Resource for Multiple Diseases.

Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad. (Cucurbitaceae) is widely distributed in the desert areas of the world. The fruit bodies of C. colocynthis are recognized for their wide range of nutraceutical potential, as well as medicinal and pharmaceutical uses. The plant has been reported for various uses, such as asthma, bronchitis, cancer, colic, common cold, cough, diabetes, dysentery, and jaundice. The fruit has been extensively studied for its biological activities, which include insecticide, antitumor, and antidiabetic effects. Numerous bioactive compounds have been reported in its fruit bodies, such as essential oils, fatty acids, glycosides, alkaloids, and flavonoids. Of these, flavonoids or caffeic acid derivatives are the constituents associated with the inhibition of fungal or bacterial growth, whereas eudesmane sesquiterpenes or sesquiterpene lactones are most active against insects, mites, and nematodes. In this review, the scientific evidence for the biological activity of C. colocynthis against insecticide, cytotoxic, and antidiabetic effects is summarized.

α-Glucosidase inhibitors from the husks of rice Oryza sativa L.

Rice husk is one of the most plentiful agriculture by-products in rice producing areas, which harbors a substantial proportion of biological metabolites, however, it has not been well studied. As an attempt to utilize it as a productive manner, phytochemical investigation on rice husk has performed and led to the isolation of three undescribed (1, 2, and 7), along with twelve known components (3-6, and 8-15). Those chemical structures were elucidated based on massive spectroscopic methods. Among them, compounds 4, 6-8, and 10-13 have been shown to act as α-glucosidase inhibitors. Notably, the most active compounds, 10/11, demonstrated comparable α-glucosidase inhibitory effect (IC50 = 1.83 ± 0.11 µg/mL) to that of 1-deoxynojirimycin (IC50 = 1.02 ± 0.16 µg/mL). For the molecular docking simulation studies, compounds 10/11 showed relative binding interactions with α-glucosidase enzyme (PDB ID: 3A4A) that similar to those reference inhibitors. Additionally, the crude extract of O. sativa demonstrated better α-glucosidase inhibitory effect to that of isolated components, with the IC50 value at 1.25 ± 0.07 µg/mL.

Cadmium accumulation in brown rice (Oryza sativa L.) depends on environmental factors and nutrient transport: A three-year field study.

Cadmium (Cd) accumulation in brown rice is a complex process in agroecosystems and is influenced by multiple factors, such as climate, soil properties, and nutrient transport. However, during the Cd transport process (soil-root-straw-brown rice), it remains unclear how Cd concentration in brown rice (BCd) is causal relationship to environmental factors and nutrient transport. The differences in precipitation, soil properties, nutrient transport, and Cd transport were studied through a three-year fixed-point field trial and linked them to the standard of Cd and nutrient absorption and transport processes. The results showed that the available Cd concentration (ACd), and BCd in 2020 were lower than those in 2019 and 2021, but monthly precipitation (MP) was higher in 2020 than in 2019 and 2021. The MP and niche metrics were significantly negatively associated with ACd and BCd. However, the relationship between the form and location of different nutrient elements and Cd in roots, Cd in straws, and BCd also varied during the transport of nutrient elements and Cd from soil to root to straw to brown rice. Structural equation modelling analysis showed that nitrogen (N 15.5 %), phosphorus (P 14.1 %), silicon (Si 4.2 %), and iron (Fe 7.6 %) transport were more closely related to BCd than to potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and manganese (Mn). The increase in MP significantly inhibited the increase in BCd, whereas the MP led to a decrease in BCd by affecting the transport of N and Fe. Among them, Si, Fe, and BCd had indirect causal relationships, whereas N, P, and BCd had direct causal relationships. Particularly, P is a crucial nutrient in reducing BCd in the Cd transport process. Our results highlight a strong causal relationship between environmental factors and nutrient transport and BCd, and provide a theoretical basis for fertiliser application in Cd-contaminated agroecosystems.

Turbulence-resistant high-capacity free-space optical communications using OAM mode group multiplexing.

Twisted light carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), which features a helical phase front, has shown its potential applications in diverse areas, especially in free-space optical (FSO) communications. Multiple orthogonal OAM beams can be utilized to enable high-capacity FSO communication systems. However, for practical OAM-based FSO communication links, atmospheric turbulence will cause serious power fluctuations and inter-model crosstalk between the multiplexed OAM channels, impairing link performance. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel OAM mode-group multiplexing (OAM-MGM) scheme with transmitter mode diversity to increase system reliability under turbulence. Without adding extra system complexity, an FSO system transmitting two OAM groups with a total of 144 Gbit/s discrete multi-tone (DMT) signal is demonstrated under turbulence strength D/r0 of 1, 2, and 4. In our experiments, the proposed OAM-MGM scheme helps to achieve bit-error-rate (BER) mostly less than 3.8 × 10-3 under turbulence strength D/r0 of 1 and 2 with a total transmitted power of 10 dBm. Compared with the conventional OAM mode multiplexed system, the system interruption probability decreases from 28% to 4% under moderate turbulence strength D/r0 of 2.

Shaping the transmission trajectory of vortex beam by controlling its radial phase.

Vortex beam carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), which features a helical phase front, has shown its potential applications in diverse areas, especially in free-space optical (FSO) communications. However, when generating vortex beams, the radial phase distribution is usually disregarded in previous reports. In this paper, by controlling the radial phase distribution, we propose a method for the generation of vortex beams with arbitrary convex trajectories. By using this method, we successfully generate vortex beams with different predesigned trajectories with high accuracy. Moreover, we also demonstrate the transmission of the radial phase-controlled vortex beams in FSO links for different scenarios in simulation. Firstly, we generate vortex beams with different OAM states (l=+1, + 3, and +6), which have the same ring diameter at the receiver side. Secondly, we generate three vortex beams (l=+3) with the same ring diameter at different transmission distances (z = 100 m, 200 m, and 300 m). Finally, by carefully controlling the radial phase of the vortex beam, we generate vortex beams that can almost keep the same ring diameter for a long distance. The proposed method for shaping the transmission trajectory of vortex beams may pave the way for more applications in OAM-based FSO communications.

Radix Isatidis polysaccharide (RIP) resists the infection of QX-type infectious bronchitis virus via the MDA5/TLR3/IRF7 signaling pathway.

Although vaccines play a major role in the prevention of infectious bronchitis (IB), Anti-IB drugs still have great potential in poultry production. Radix Isatidis polysaccharide (RIP) is a crude extract of Banlangen with antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, and multiple immunomodulatory functions. The aim of this study was to explore the innate immune mechanisms responsible for RIP-mediated alleviation of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV)-induced kidney lesions in chickens. Specific-pathogen-free (SPF) chicken and chicken embryo kidney (CEK) cells cultures were pretreated with RIP and then infected with the QX-type IBV strain, Sczy3. Morbidity, mortality, and tissue mean lesion scores were calculated for IBV-infected chickens, and the viral loads, inflammatory factor gene mRNA expression levels, and innate immune pathway gene mRNA expression levels in infected chickens and CEK cell cultures were determined. The results show that RIP could alleviate IBV-induced kidney damage, decrease CEK cells susceptibility to IBV infection, and reduce viral loads. Additionally, RIP reduced the mRNA expression levels of the inflammatory factors IL-6, IL-8, and IL-1ß by decreasing the mRNA expression level of NF-κB. Conversely, the expression levels of MDA5, TLR3, STING, Myd88, IRF7, and IFN-ß were increased, indicating that RIP conferred resistance to QX-type IBV infection via the MDA5, TLR3, IRF7 signaling pathway. These results provide a reference for both further research into the antiviral mechanisms of RIP and the development of preventative and therapeutic drugs for IB.