In response to the prevailing trend of an aging society and the increasing requirements of rehabilitation, this paper presents an approach involving brain-machine interaction (BMI) for a single-degree-of-freedom (1-DOF) sit-to-stand transfer robot. Based on a 1-DOF rehabilitation robot, three experiment paradigms involving motor imagery (MI), action observation of motor imagery (AO-MI) and motor execution are designed using both electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG). To enhance motion intention recognition accuracy, a Gumbel-ResNet-KANs decoding model is established. The Gumbel-ResNet-KANs model integrates the Gumbel-Softmax method with the ResNet-KANs network module and demonstrates strong decoding capability, as demonstrated by comparative tests in this paper. To validate the effect of robotic assistance, EEG and EMG coherence are analyzed to assess the impact of robotic assistance on rehabilitation from a neuromuscular perspective in both assisted and unassisted conditions. We assessed the effect of robotics on rehabilitation from an emotional perspective by analyzing the difference between the differential entropy of the right and left brain. The proposed study also reveals that the movement-related cortical potentials in AO-MI are beneficial for promoting the performance of BMI in sit-to-stand training, which provides a possible approach for the development of new types of robots for lower limb rehabilitation.

Mapping reviews (MRs) are crucial for identifying research gaps and enhancing evidence utilization. Despite their increasing use in health and social sciences, inconsistencies persist in both their conceptualization and reporting. This study aims to clarify the conceptual framework and gather reporting items from existing guidance and methodological studies. A comprehensive search was conducted across nine databases and 11 institutional websites, including documents up to January 2024. A total of 68 documents were included, addressing 24 MR terms and 55 definitions, with 39 documents discussing distinctions and overlaps among these terms. From the documents included, 28 reporting items were identified, covering all the steps of the process. Seven documents mentioned reporting on the title, four on the abstract, and 14 on the background. Ten methods-related items appeared in 56 documents, with the median number of documents supporting each item being 34 (interquartile range [IQR]: 27, 39). Four results-related items were mentioned in 18 documents (median: 14.5, IQR: 11.5, 16), and four discussion-related items appeared in 25 documents (median: 5.5, IQR: 3, 13). There was very little guidance about reporting conclusions, acknowledgments, author contributions, declarations of interest, and funding sources. This study proposes a draft 28-item reporting checklist for MRs and has identified terminologies and concepts used to describe MRs. These findings will first be used to inform a Delphi consensus process to develop reporting guidelines for MRs. Additionally, the checklist and definitions could be used to guide researchers in reporting high-quality MRs.

Sensory neuron membrane protein (SNMP) gene play a crucial role in insect chemosensory systems. However, the role of SNMP in the host searching behaviour of Rhopalosiphum padi (Hemiptera: Aphididae), a highly destructive pest of cereal crops, has not been clearly understood. Our previous research has shown that three wheat volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – (E)-2-hexenol, linalool, and octanal can attract R. padi, but the involvement of SNMP in the aphid’s olfactory response to these wheat VOCs has not to be elucidated. In this study, only one SNMP gene was cloned and characterised from R. padi. The results revealed that the SNMP belongs to the SNMP1 subfamily and was named RpadSNMP1. RpadSNMP11 was predominantly expressed in the antennae of the aphid, with significantly higher expression levels observed in winged forms, indicating that it is involved in olfactory responses of R. padi. RpadSNMP1 expression was significantly up-regulated following starvation, and the expression of this gene showed a decreasing trend after 24 h of aphid feeding. Functional analysis through RpadSNMP1 knockdown demonstrated a significant decrease in R. padi’s ability to search for host plants. The residence time of R. padi injected with dsRpadSNMP1 significantly shortened in response to (E)-2-hexenol, linalool and octanal according to the four-arm olfactometer, indicating the crucial role of RpadSNMP1 in mediating the aphid’s response to these wheat VOCs. Molecular docking suggested potential binding interactions between RpadSNMP1 and three wheat VOCs. Overall, these findings provided evidence for the involvement of RpadSNMP1 in host plant searching and lay a foundation for developing new methods to control this destructive pest.

The vitamin K (VK) levels vary greatly among different populations and in different regions. Currently, there is a lack of reference intervals for VK levels in healthy individuals, The aim of this study is to establish and validate the reference intervals of serum vitamin K1 (VK1) and vitamin K2 (VK2, specifically including menaquinone-4 (MK4) and menaquinone-7 (MK7)) levels in some healthy populations in Beijing. Serum VK1, MK4, and MK7 were firstly measured by high-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry in 434 subjects. The reference intervals for three indicators were established by calculating the data of 2.5 and 97.5 percentiles. Finally, preliminary clinical validation was conducted on 60 apparent healthy individuals undergoing physical examination. In the young, middle-aged, and elderly groups, the reference intervals of VK1 were 0.180 ng/mL ∼ 1.494 ng/mL, 0.247 ng/mL ∼ 1.446 ng/mL, and 0.167 ng/mL ∼ 1.445 ng/mL, respectively. The reference intervals of MK4 were 0.009 ng/mL ∼ 0.115 ng/mL, 0.002 ng/mL ∼ 0.103 ng/mL, and 0.003 ng/mL ∼ 0.106 ng/mL, respectively. The reference intervals of MK7 were 0.169 ng/mL ∼ 0.881 ng/mL, 0.238 ng/mL ∼ 0.936 ng/mL, and 0.213 ng/mL ∼ 1.012 ng/mL, respectively. The reference intervals had been validated by the samples of healthy individuals for physical examination. In conclusion, the reference intervals of VK established in this study with different age groups have certain clinical applicability, providing data support for further multicentre studies.

The ubiquitous marine radiocarbon reservoir effect (MRE) constrains the construction of reliable chronologies for marine sediments and the further comparison of paleoclimate records. Different reference values were suggested from various archives. However, it remains unclear how climate and MREs interact. Here we studied two pre-bomb corals from the Hainan Island and Xisha Island in the northern South China Sea (SCS), to examine the relationship between MRE and regional climate change. We find that the MRE from east of Hainan Island is mainly modulated by the Southern Asian Summer Monsoon-induced precipitation (with 11.4% contributed to seawater), rather than wind induced upwelling. In contrast, in the relatively open seawater of Xisha Island, the MRE is dominated by the East Asian Winter Monsoon, with relatively more negative (lower) ΔR values associated with high wind speeds, implying horizontal transport of seawater. The average SCS ΔR value relative to the Marine20 curve is –161±39 14C years. Our finding highlights the essential role of monsoon in regulating the MRE in the northern SCS, in particularly the tight bond between east Asian winter monsoon and regional MRE.

A compact, wideband, and high-gain circularly polarized array antenna is proposed based on substrate integrated gap waveguide (SIGW) using sequential rotational phase (SRP). The array antenna consists of four $2\times2$ corner-cutting corner patches and an SIGW-SRP feeding network. The SIGW-SRP feeding network is achieved by utilizing the spatial vector addition property to compensate for phase, aiming to improve the bandwidth and gain. Unlike the traditional SRP feeding network, the proposed feeding scheme is simpler and easier to fabricate, and each port can achieve more stable phase and bandwidth. In addition, benefiting from the surface wave suppression and in-phase reflection property of SIGW, the proposed array antenna has a stable radiation pattern and low cross-polarization covering wideband frequencies. The measured results indicate that the −10-dB impedance bandwidth ranges from 12.2 to 17.3 GHz (34.6%), the 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth ranges from 13.5 to 16.7 GHz (21.2%), and the peak gain is 16 dBic.

Coreference resolution is the task of identifying and clustering mentions that refer to the same entity in a document. Based on state-of-the-art deep learning approaches, end-to-end coreference resolution considers all spans as candidate mentions and tackles mention detection and coreference resolution simultaneously. Recently, researchers have attempted to incorporate document-level context using higher-order inference (HOI) to improve end-to-end coreference resolution. However, HOI methods have been shown to have marginal or even negative impact on coreference resolution. In this paper, we reveal the reasons for the negative impact of HOI coreference resolution. Contextualized representations (e.g., those produced by BERT) for building span embeddings have been shown to be highly anisotropic. We show that HOI actually increases and thus worsens the anisotropy of span embeddings and makes it difficult to distinguish between related but distinct entities (e.g., pilots and flight attendants). Instead of using HOI, we propose two methods, Less-Anisotropic Internal Representations (LAIR) and Data Augmentation with Document Synthesis and Mention Swap (DSMS), to learn less-anisotropic span embeddings for coreference resolution. LAIR uses a linear aggregation of the first layer and the topmost layer of contextualized embeddings. DSMS generates more diversified examples of related but distinct entities by synthesizing documents and by mention swapping. Our experiments show that less-anisotropic span embeddings improve the performance significantly (+2.8 F1 gain on the OntoNotes benchmark) reaching new state-of-the-art performance on the GAP dataset.

Human cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a zoonotic disorder triggered by the larval stage of Echinococcus granulosus (E. granulosus) and predominantly occurred in the liver and lungs. The M2 macrophage level is considerably elevated among the liver of patients with hepatic CE and performs an integral function in liver fibrosis. However, the mechanism of CE inducing polarisation of macrophage to an M2 phenotype is unknown. In this study, macrophage was treated with E. granulosus cyst fluid (EgCF) to explore the mechanism of macrophage polarisation. Consequently, the expression of the M2 macrophage and production of anti-inflammatory cytokines increased after 48 h treatment by EgCF. In addition, EgCF promoted polarisation of macrophage to an M2 phenotype by inhibiting the expression of transcriptional factor hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (HIF-1α), which increased the expression of glycolysis-associated genes, including hexokinase 2 (HK2) and pyruvate kinase 2 (PKM2). The HIF-1α agonist ML228 also inhibited the induction of macrophage to an M2 phenotype by EgCF in vitro. Our findings indicate that E. granulosus inhibits glycolysis by suppressing the expression of HIF-1α.

Rodents and shrews are major reservoirs of various pathogens that are related to zoonotic infectious diseases. The purpose of this study was to investigate co-infections of zoonotic pathogens in rodents and shrews trapped in four provinces of China. We sampled different rodent and shrew communities within and around human settlements in four provinces of China and characterised several important zoonotic viral, bacterial, and parasitic pathogens by PCR methods and phylogenetic analysis. A total of 864 rodents and shrews belonging to 24 and 13 species from RODENTIA and EULIPOTYPHLA orders were captured, respectively. For viral pathogens, two species of hantavirus (Hantaan orthohantavirus and Caobang orthohantavirus) were identified in 3.47% of rodents and shrews. The overall prevalence of Bartonella spp., Anaplasmataceae, Babesia spp., Leptospira spp., Spotted fever group Rickettsiae, Borrelia spp., and Coxiella burnetii were 31.25%, 8.91%, 4.17%, 3.94%, 3.59%, 3.47%, and 0.58%, respectively. Furthermore, the highest co-infection status of three pathogens was observed among Bartonella spp., Leptospira spp., and Anaplasmataceae with a co-infection rate of 0.46%. Our results suggested that species distribution and co-infections of zoonotic pathogens were prevalent in rodents and shrews, highlighting the necessity of active surveillance for zoonotic pathogens in wild mammals in wider regions.

The random distributed-feedback fiber laser (RFL) is a new approach to obtain a high-power stable supercontinuum (SC) source. To consider both structure simplification and high-power SC output, an innovative structure achieving a kilowatt-level SC output in a single-stage RFL with a half-open cavity is demonstrated in this paper. It consists of a fiber oscillator, a piece of long passive fiber and a broadband coupler, among which the broadband coupler acting as a feedback device is crucial in SC generation. When the system has no feedback, the backward output power is up to 298 W under the pump power of 1185 W. When the feedback is introduced before the pump laser, the backward power loss can be reduced and the pump can be fully utilized, which could promote forward output power and conversion efficiency significantly. Under the maximum pump power of 1847 W, a 1300 W SC with spectrum ranging from 887 to 1920 nm and SC conversion efficiency of 66% is obtained. To the best of our knowledge, it is the simplest structure used for high-power SC generation, and both the generated SC output power and the conversion efficiency are highest in the scheme of the half-opened RFL output SC.

The new mineral tennantite-(Ni), Cu6(Cu4Ni2)As4S13, has been discovered from the Luobusa Chromitite, Tibet, southwestern China. Tennantite-(Ni) occurs as anhedral grains ranging from 2 to 20 μm in size. In reflected light microscopy, tennantite-(Ni) is isotropic and appears yellow-greenish grey. Reflectance data for Commission on Ore Mineralogy wavelengths in air for tennantite-(Ni) are: 31.0 (470 nm), 29.6 (546 nm), 29.6 (589 nm) and 29.3 (650 nm). Electron microprobe analysis for holotype material gave the empirical formula (on basis of total cations = 16 apfu): M(2)Cu6 M(1)[Cu4.00(Ni0.97Cu0.53Fe0.50)Σ2.00]Σ6.00X(3)(As2.94Sb1.06)Σ4S12.77. Tennantite-(Ni) is cubic, with space group I$\bar{ 4}$3m (#217), a =10.2957(9) Å, V = 1091.4(3) Å3 and Z = 2. By using single-crystal X-ray diffraction, the crystal structure has been determined and refined to a final R1 = 0.0423 on the basis of 163 independent reflections [Fo > 4σ (Fo)]. The calculated seven strongest powder X-ray diffraction lines [d in Å (I) (hkl)] are: 2.972 (100) (222), 1.820 (83) (440), 2.574 (28) (400), 1.552 (18) (622), 3.640 (10) (220), 1.880 (10) (521) and 1.287 (7) (800). Tennantite-(Ni) is isostructural with other tetrahedrite-group minerals, and nickel is hosted at the tetrahedrally coordinated M(1) site, along with Cu and minor Fe. The mineral and its name have been approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA2021-018).

Trematodes of the genus Ogmocotyle are intestinal flukes that can infect a variety of definitive hosts, resulting in significant economic losses worldwide. However, there are few studies on molecular data of these trematodes. In this study, the mitochondrial (mt) genome of Ogmocotyle ailuri isolated from red panda (Ailurus fulgens) was determined and compared with those from Pronocephalata to investigate the mt genome content, genetic distance, gene rearrangements and phylogeny. The complete mt genome of O. ailuri is a typical closed circular molecule of 14 642 base pairs, comprising 12 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes and 2 non-coding regions. All genes are transcribed in the same direction. In addition, 23 intergenic spacers and 2 locations with gene overlaps were determined. Sequence identities and sliding window analysis indicated that cox1 is the most conserved gene among 12 PCGs in O. ailuri mt genome. The sequenced mt genomes of the 48 Plagiorchiida trematodes showed 5 types of gene arrangement based on all mt genome genes, with the gene arrangement of O. ailuri being type I. Phylogenetic analysis using concatenated amino acid sequences of 12 PCGs revealed that O. ailuri was closer to Ogmocotyle sikae than to Notocotylus intestinalis. These data enhance the Ogmocotyle mt genome database and provide molecular resources for further studies of Pronocephalata taxonomy, population genetics and systematics.

The Wood Snipe Gallinago nemoricola is one of the least known shorebird species, and its habitat associations are very poorly understood. Here we provide the first assessment of the habitat use of the Wood Snipe during the breeding season. Between May and July 2021 at a 4-km2 alpine meadow in Sichuan province, China, we conducted population surveys and behavioural observations to identify sites where breeding Wood Snipe occurred and foraged. We quantified the habitat characteristics and food resource availability of these sites and compared them with randomly selected “background” sites. Comparison between 34 occurrence sites and 25 background sites indicated that during the breeding season, Wood Snipes are not distributed evenly across alpine meadow habitats, but preferred habitats in the lower part (3,378–3,624 m) of the alpine meadow with intermediate levels of soil moisture. In addition, comparison between 17 foraging sites and 24 background sites showed that the Wood Snipe tended to forage at sites with higher soil fauna abundance. We found weak evidence for denser vegetation cover at its height and no evidence for other biotic habitat variables such as vegetation composition or other abiotic habitat variables such as slope, soil penetrability, or disturbance level to influence Wood Snipe habitat associations. Our results suggest that the actual distribution range of the Wood Snipe during the breeding season may be smaller than expected from the extent of apparently suitable habitat. We advise caution in evaluating the potential habitat availability and distribution of the Wood Snipe, and call for further research to better understand the ecology of this rare species to inform its conservation.

Few studies examined the association of energy, macronutrients and food consumption at dinner v. breakfast with hypercholesterolaemia. A total of 27 911 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2003–2016) were included in the cross-sectional study. Energy, macronutrients and food consumption at breakfast, dinner and the difference at dinner v. breakfast (Δratio) were calculated. Multiple logistic regression models and substitution effects of foods at dinner with breakfast were also performed. After adjustment for potential covariates, compared with the lowest quintile, participants in the highest quintile of Δratio in terms of energy had a higher risk of prevalent hypercholesterolaemia (ORΔratio of energy 1·16, 95 % CI (1·01, 1·33)) mainly due to Δratio of low-quality carbohydrates and plant protein (ORΔratio of low-quality carbohydrates 1·19; 95 % CI (1·05, 1·35)); ORΔratio of plant protein 1·13; 95 % CI (1·01, 1·28)). ΔAdded sugars and Δnuts were associated with hypercholesterolaemia (ORΔadded sugars 1·01; 95 % CI (1·00, 1·02)); ORΔnuts 1·08; 95 % CI (1·01, 1·16)). Furthermore, the substitution of added sugars, nuts and processed meat at dinner with breakfast could reduce the OR of hypercholesterolaemia. This study indicated that among US adults, overconsumption of energy, macronutrients including low-quality carbohydrates and plant protein at dinner than breakfast was significantly associated with a higher risk of prevalent hypercholesterolaemia. The replacing of added sugar, nuts and processed meat at dinner with breakfast reduced the risk of prevalent hypercholesterolaemia. This study emphasised the importance of meal timing in the prevention of hypercholesterolaemia.