Multimodal spatial transcriptomic characterization of mouse kidney injury and repair.

The transition from acute kidney injury to chronic kidney disease is characterized by significant changes in the cellular composition and molecular interactions within the kidney. Utilizing high-resolution Xenium and whole transcriptome Visium spatial transcriptomics platforms, we analyze over a million cells on 12 male mouse kidneys across six stages of renal injury and repair. We define and validate 20 major kidney cell populations and delineate distinct cellular neighborhoods through this multimodal spatial analysis.

Coverage optimization of wireless sensor network utilizing an improved CS with multi-strategies.

Coverage optimization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is critical due to two key challenges: (1) high deployment costs arising from redundant sensor placement to compensate for blind zones, and (2) ineffective coverage caused by uneven node distribution or environmental obstacles. Cuckoo Search (CS), as a type of Swarm Intelligence (SI) algorithm, has garnered significant attention from researchers due to its strong global search capability enabled by the Lévy flight mechanism. This makes it well-suited for solving such complex optimization problems.

Recovery of zinc from blast furnace dust via ultrasonic-enhanced crotonic acid leaching: Leaching kinetics and mechanism.

Blast furnace dust (BFD) represents a significant processing residue in the steel manufacturing. The clean and efficient utilization of BFD could not only alleviate zinc resource shortage but also hold great significance for the resource recycling of steel enterprises. This study investigated the behavior and kinetics of zinc leaching from BFD with crotonic acid as a novel reagent under ultrasonic conditions.

Water-Hydroxyl Wetting Monolayer Predicted and Realized on a Hydrophobic Metal Surface.

Water adsorption on metal surfaces is ubiquitous in broad natural and technological settings. However, elucidating this phenomenon is often challenging due to difficulties in accurately determining the morphology and understanding the chemistry of adsorbed water networks. Here, we report a significant discovery of the water-hydroxyl (HO-OH) wetting monolayer, which has long been deemed possible only on hydrophilic metal surfaces, now realized on an archetypal hydrophobic metal surface, Ag(111).

[Enriched environment reduces pyramidal neuron excitability in the anterior cingulate cortex to alleviate restraint stress-induced anxiety-like behaviors in mice].

Objectives: To investigate the mechanism by which the pyramidal neurons of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) modulate the effects of enriched environment (EE) for relieving anxiety-like behaviors in mice.

Methods: C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into control group, restraint stress (RS) group, and RS+EE group (=8). The mice in the latter two groups were subjected to RS for 2 h daily for 3 days, and those in RS+EE group were housed in an EE during modeling.

Strain Soliton Activated Gliding for Length Invariant Friction.

In the prevailing paradigm of tribology, a long filament in a bundle is asymptotically confined by friction, which rises and theoretically diverges with the filament length. Here, we provide an analytical solution that the stress at the trailing end can nonlinearly penetrate into the bulk region to neatly form strain solitons, which then propagate with no energy cost to activate the gliding motion of the slider and, thus, a length invariant friction. Such a motion is demonstrated by coarse-grained simulations in carbon nanotubes under both quasi-static and dynamic loading conditions.

New MgSiO_{4}H_{2} Phases as Potential Primary Water Carriers into the Deep Earth.

Dense hydrous magnesium silicate MgSiO_{4}H_{2} is widely regarded as a primary water carrier into the deep Earth. However, the stability fields of MgSiO_{4}H_{2} based on the prevailing structure model are narrower than experimental results at relevant pressure and temperature (P-T) conditions, casting doubts about this prominent mineral as a water carrier into the great depths of the Earth. Here, we report on an advanced structure search that identifies two new crystal structures, denoted as α- and β-MgSiO_{4}H_{2}, that are stable over unprecedentedly wide P-T conditions of 17-68 GPa and up to 1860 K, covering the entire experimentally determined range.

Efferent pathways from the suprachiasmatic nucleus to the horizontal limbs of diagonal band promote NREM sleep during the dark phase in mice.

The regulation of circadian rhythms and the sleep-wake states involves in multiple neural circuits. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is a circadian pacemaker that controls the rhythmic oscillation of mammalian behaviors. The basal forebrain (BF) is a critical brain region of sleep-wake regulation, which is the downstream of the SCN.

Intrinsic Self-Healable, Corrosion-Resistant Silicone Coating Based on Quadruple Hydrogen-Bonded Supramolecular Polymer.

Corrosion-resistant coatings with self-healing capabilities are still a great challenge for metal protection. In this study, a corrosion-resistant coating with intrinsic self-healing capabilities was developed by compounding hydroxy-terminated silicone oil (HTSO) with 2-ureido-4[1]-pyrimidone (UPy) derivatives. The smooth surface of the coating was shown by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and good smoothness was also exhibited in the cross-section, which indicated that the coating is very homogeneous from the top to the bottom.

Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses of three different gargles in the treatment of chronic periodontitis.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the economics of three different gargles in the treatment of chronic periodontitis.

Methods: A total of 108 patients with periodontitis received one of the following three gargles: xipayi, compound chlorhexidine, or Kangfuxin gargle. The basic information of the patients, the costs of the gargles, the periodontal indexes before and after treatment, and the scores of the 3-level version of the EuroQol Five Dimensions Questionnaire were collected.

depletion induces inflammation and apoptosis in injured renal proximal tubule epithelial cells.

In the aftermath of acute kidney injury (AKI), surviving proximal tubule epithelia repopulate injured tubules to promote repair. However, a portion of cells fail to repair [termed failed-repair proximal tubule cells (FR-PTCs)] and exert ongoing proinflammatory and profibrotic effects. To better understand the molecular drivers of the FR-PTC state, we reanalyzed a mouse ischemia-reperfusion injury single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) atlas to identify Traf2 and Nck interacting kinase () to be exclusively expressed in FR-PTCs but not in healthy or acutely injured proximal tubules after AKI (2 and 6 wk) in mice.

Analysis of public opinion on employment issues using a combined approach: a case study in China.

To analyze the public opinion related to the employment situation, a combined approach is proposed to study the valuable ideas from social media. Firstly, the popularity of public opinion was analyzed according to the time series from a statistical point of view. Secondly, the feature extraction was carried out on the public opinion information, and the thematic analysis of the employment environment was carried out based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model.

Biological evaluation of 9-thioansamitocin P3.

Highly cytotoxic maytansine derivatives are widely used in targeted tumor delivery. Structure-activity studies published earlier suggested the C9 carbinol to be a key element necessary to retain the potency. However, in 1984 a patent was published by Takeda in which the synthesis of 9-thioansamitocyn (AP3SH) was described and its activity in xenograft models was shown.

Dexmedetomidine modulates neuronal activity of horizontal limbs of diagonal band via α2 adrenergic receptor in mice.

Background And Objectives: Dexmedetomidine (DEX) is widely used in clinical sedation which has little effect on cardiopulmonary inhibition, however the mechanism remains to be elucidated. The basal forebrain (BF) is a key nucleus that controls sleep-wake cycle. The horizontal limbs of diagonal bundle (HDB) is one subregions of the BF.

Observation of non-superconducting phase changes in nitrogen doped lutetium hydrides.

The recent report of near-ambient superconductivity and associated color changes in pressurized nitrogen doped lutetium hydride has triggered worldwide interest and raised major questions about the nature and underlying physics of these latest claims. Here we report synthesis and characterization of high-purity nitrogen doped lutetium hydride LuHN. We find that pressure conditions have notable effects on Lu-N and Lu-NH chemical bonding and the color changes likely stem from pressure-induced electron redistribution of nitrogen/vacancies and interaction with the LuH framework.

Bamboo-like dual-phase nanostructured copper composite strengthened by amorphous boron framework.

Grain boundary engineering is a versatile tool for strengthening materials by tuning the composition and bonding structure at the interface of neighboring crystallites, and this method holds special significance for materials composed of small nanograins where the ultimate strength is dominated by grain boundary instead of dislocation motion. Here, we report a large strengthening of a nanocolumnar copper film that comprises columnar nanograins embedded in a bamboo-like boron framework synthesized by magnetron sputtering co-deposition, reaching the high nanoindentation hardness of 10.8 GPa among copper alloys.

Core Electron Count as a Versatile and Accurate New Descriptor for Sorting Mechanical Properties of Diverse Transition Metal Compounds.

Transition-metal light-element compounds show superb mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties, and accurate descriptors are important to sorting targeted properties among this vast class of materials. Valence electron concentration (VEC) can track broad trends of mechanical properties, but this widely used descriptor suffers low accuracy with sorted data strongly scattered along trendlines, necessitating an improved sorting strategy. Here, elastic parameters from first-principles calculations are examined for 81 ternary transition-metal nitrides (TMN) in cubic structure and 81 ternary transition-metal diborides (TMB ) in hexagonal structure and identify core electron count (CEC) of the solvent atoms as a new descriptor.

A viable mechanism to form boron-bearing diamonds in deep Earth.

Boron is considered extremely depleted inside Earth's mantle. It is therefore a great challenge to elucidate the prevalence of boron impurity seen in sublithospheric diamonds, especially in identifying the boron source and the mechanism for its incorporation into these enigmatic diamonds. Here, we unveil a pathway for the crystallization of boron-bearing diamonds via redox reactions of carbonates and borides at pressure-temperature conditions relevant to the Earth's lower mantle.

Adjuvant DNA vaccine pNMM promotes enhanced specific immunity and anti-tumor effects.

DNA vaccines containing only antigenic components have limited efficacy and may fail to induce effective immune responses. Consequently, adjuvant molecules are often added to enhance immunogenicity. In this study, we generated a tumor vaccine using a plasmid encoding NMM (NY-ESO-1/MAGE-A3/MUC1) target antigens and immune-associated molecules.

Evidence for an emergent anomalous metallic state in compressed titanium.

The anomalous metallic state (AMS) emerging from a quantum superconductor-to-metal transition is a subject of great current interest since this exotic quantum state exhibits unconventional transport properties that challenge the core physics principles of Fermi liquid theory. As the AMS concept is historically derived from disordered two-dimensional (2D) systems, related studies have predominately concentrated on 2D materials. The AMS behaviors in three-dimensional (3D) systems have been rarely reported to date, which raises intriguing questions on the fundamental nature of pertinent physics.

Mechanism Regulating Self-Intercalation in Layered Materials.

Recent experimental breakthrough demonstrated a powerful synthesis approach for intercalating the van der Waals gap of layered materials to achieve property modulation, thereby opening an avenue for exploring new physics and devising novel applications, but the mechanism governing intercalant assembly patterns and properties remains unclear. Based on extensive structural search and energetics analysis by calculations, we reveal a Sabatier-like principle that dictates spatial arrangement of self-intercalated atoms in transition metal dichalcogenides. We further construct a robust descriptor quantifying that strong intercalant-host interactions favor a monodispersing phase of intercalated atoms that may exhibit ferromagnetism, while weak interactions lead to a trimer phase with attenuated or quenched magnetism, which further evolves into tetramer and hexagonal phases at increasing intercalant density.

Solving Strength-Toughness Dilemma in Superhard Transition-Metal Diborides via a Distinct Chemically Tuned Solid Solution Approach.

Solid solution strengthening enhances hardness of metals by introducing solute atoms to create local distortions in base crystal lattice, which impedes dislocation motion and plastic deformation, leading to increased strength but reduced ductility and toughness. In sharp contrast, superhard materials comprising covalent bonds exhibit high strength but low toughness via a distinct mechanism dictated by brittle bond deformation, showcasing another prominent scenario of classic strength-toughness tradeoff dilemma. Solving this less explored and understood problem presents a formidable challenge that requires a viable strategy of tuning main load-bearing bonds in these strong but brittle materials to achieve concurrent enhancement of the peak stress and related strain range.

Enhancing the Properties of Water-Soluble Copolymer Nanocomposites by Controlling the Layer Silicate Load and Exfoliated Nanolayers Adsorbed on Polymer Chains.

Novel polymer nanocomposites of methacryloyloxy ethyl dimethyl hexadecyl ammonium bromide-modified montmorillonite (O-MMt) with acrylamide/sodium -styrene sulfonate/methacryloyloxy ethyl dimethyl hexadecyl ammonium bromide (ASD/O-MMt) were synthesized via in situ polymerization. The molecular structures of the synthesized materials were confirmed using Fourier-transform infrared and H-nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. X-ray diffractometry and transmission electron microscopy revealed well-exfoliated and dispersed nanolayers in the polymer matrix, and scanning electron microscopy images revealed that the well-exfoliated nanolayers were strongly adsorbed on the polymer chains.