Probabilistic bits (p-bits), non-deterministic classical bits fluctuating between two digital states, constitute a core element in probabilistic computing. This adeptly addresses computationally complex problems, offering some of the envisioned capabilities of quantum computers while mitigating their major challenges such as shielding, cooling, and scalability. A recent study demonstrated the successful integer factorization using nanoscale magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)-based p-bits. However, their stochasticity originates from the superparamagnetic properties of nanoscale MTJs, rendering p-bits sensitive to the temperature and the dimensions of the device. Here, we demonstrate reliable p-bits based on stochastic spin-orbit torque (SOT) switching in micrometer-sized magnetic trilayers. In a Fe/Ti/CoFeB structure, two spin currents with orthogonal spin polarizations are generated from the Fe/Ti bilayer, and their magnitude and sign determine SOT switching polarity of the top perpendicular CoFeB layer. This enables systematic control of the probability of having a 'UP' magnetization state of the CoFeB by either an external magnetic field or applied current for SOT switching. Furthermore, by harnessing the generated p-bit streams, we effectively demonstrate invertible AND gate operations and stochastic neural networks with improved energy and area efficiency, thus highlighting the potential utility of our p-bits in device applications.
In patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, co-occurring chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL) is not uncommon. Given the often subtle histopathologic features, this diagnosis may go unrecognized by the pathologist. This study aims to investigate the high rate of co-occurrence of CLL/SLL and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and to illustrate the combination of clinical and histopathologic findings in these patients. A retrospective single-institution review was conducted of 3524 pathologic diagnoses of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, from which 24 patients with concurrent diagnoses of CLL/SLL were identified. Squamous cell carcinomas for these 24 patients were restaged, and the histopathologic and immunohistochemical profiles were assessed. Concurrent cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma was identified in 21 out of 24 patients, with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma in the remaining 3. Nine patients had nodal metastases. Fine-needle aspiration biopsy was performed in 15 out of 24 patients and rendered the diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma in 9 patients and CLL/SLL in 6 patients. Co-occurring CLL/SLL is easily missed in biopsies and neck dissections performed for the diagnosis and management of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. Awareness of the pertinent morphologic features should prompt additional immunohistochemical studies that can lead to a definitive diagnosis.
Microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) colorectal cancer cells depend on the Werner syndrome helicase (WRN) to resolve cruciform DNA structures that arise from expanded TA-dinucleotide repeats. Loss of WRN induces replication stress and double-strand breaks (DSBs), a vulnerability that can be recapitulated by the selective WRN inhibitor HRO761 in MSI cancer cells. To uncover the mechanisms governing sensitivity to WRN inhibition, we conducted genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens in colorectal cancer cell lines treated with or without HRO761. These screens identified SMARCAL1 as a key modulator of WRN dependency. Depletion of SMARCAL1 rendered cells resistant to WRN inhibition, and rescue of this effect required the ATPase/translocase activity of SMARCAL1. Mechanistically, SMARCAL1 antagonized WRN and supported cruciform DNA structures, thereby enhancing cellular reliance on WRN. In addition, the MRE11-RAD50-NBS1 (MRN) complex, rather than MUS81 or ERCC1/XPF, was the principal mediator of cruciform DNA processing following WRN inhibition. Acute disruption of the MRN complex conferred profound resistance to WRN inhibition, whereas ATM deficiency produced a more modest resistant phenotype. Further genetic and pharmacological epistasis analyses demonstrated that the MRN complex regulates WRN inhibitor sensitivity through both ATM-dependent signaling and MRE11 nuclease-dependent functions. Importantly, the key resistance mechanisms identified in this study were independently validated using a structurally distinct clinical-stage WRN inhibitor VVD-214. Collectively, these findings identify the SMARCAL1-MRN-ATM axis as a critical regulator of WRN dependency and provide mechanistic insight into resistance to WRN-targeted therapy.
Triclosan is an antibiotic frequently used to selectively isolate Pseudomonas aeruginosa from environmental and animal samples. Here, we report that while nine tested P. aeruginosa strains were indeed triclosan-resistant when grown on Luria Bertani (Lennox) broth agar supplemented with triclosan, all nine exhibited decreased CFU by plating following pre-exposure to phosphate-buffer saline (PBS). Compared to growth on lysogeny broth agar in the absence of PBS incubation, PBS pre-exposure was associated with mean CFU reductions ranging from ∼25% (clinical isolate PABL048) to ∼80% (laboratory strain PA14). The potential for triclosan agar to cause significant errors in experiments designed to quantify P. aeruginosa numbers was demonstrated using a mouse model of P. aeruginosa gastrointestinal carriage. In this experiment, P. aeruginosa carriage was underestimated by up to 20-fold when fecal samples were processed using PBS. These findings suggest that triclosan should be used with caution to quantify P. aeruginosa numbers in protocols that utilize PBS.
Social psychology presents itself as liberal, yet its dominant narratives-obedience, cruelty, conformity, and bias-reflect a persistently pessimistic portrayal of human nature. Here I argue that this pattern is structurally produced. A two-level framework distinguishes the content level, in which pessimistic narratives circulate, from the structural level, in which incentive regimes in academic publishing, media, and pedagogy systematically select and stabilize that content. Two mechanisms are identified. A market-selection mechanism explains why attention economies favor dramatic, morally arousing findings. An institutional-stabilization mechanism explains why pessimistic narratives prove especially durable: They participate in the constitutive logic of the "psy-complex," in which psychological expertise gains authority by rendering human conduct legible as a problem requiring expert correction. Findings that portray ordinary people as biased, obedient, or morally fragile are apt to generate the remediation apparatus on which the field's social legitimacy depends. Archival evidence shows that classic studies were staged and selectively framed to produce pessimistic morals. The replication crisis retroactively identified much of this content as incentive-compatible rather than epistemically robust. Reform efforts (e.g., registered reports, open data, equity-oriented partnerships) can address the market-selection side; changing the institutional-stabilization dynamic requires reflexive attention to whose interests a deficit-focused discipline serves.
Philadelphia chromosome (Ph)-positive T-lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is exceptionally rare. Distinguishing de novo Ph-positive T-ALL from T-lymphoid blast-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (BP-CML) can be highly challenging, yet this distinction has important therapeutic and prognostic implications. We report a pediatric patient initially diagnosed with de novo Ph-positive T-ALL who subsequently developed CML following treatment discontinuation. A 14-year-old boy presented with fever, leukocytosis, and generalized lymphadenopathy. Bone marrow examination revealed 81% blasts, and flow cytometric immunophenotyping confirmed T-ALL (cytoplasmic CD3+ CD5+ CD7++). Conventional cytogenetic analysis revealed a karyotype of 49,XY,-7,+8,t(9;22)(q34;q11.2),+15,+19,+mar[3], and real-time quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction detected a b3a2 BCR::ABL1 fusion transcript. A diagnosis of de novo Ph-positive T-ALL was rendered, and the patient achieved complete remission following induction chemotherapy with VICP (vincristine, idarubicin, cyclophosphamide, prednisone) plus imatinib. The patient declined both allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and escalation to a second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). After self-discontinuing imatinib without medical advice for approximately 18 months, he developed CML. This case highlights the diagnostic challenge of distinguishing de novo Ph-positive T-ALL from T-lymphoid BP-CML at initial presentation, particularly in pediatric patients. Accurate classification is essential because it has important implications for therapeutic decision-making and long-term management in the TKI era. The subsequent development of CML following TKI discontinuation strongly supports that the initial presentation represented lymphoid BP-CML rather than de novo Ph-positive T-ALL. This observation further underscores the importance of sustained TKI therapy and adherence in preventing disease recurrence and optimizing long-term clinical outcomes.
Nephrogenic adenoma (NA) is a benign epithelial lesion of the genitourinary tract resulting from the reimplantation and proliferation of exfoliated renal tubular cells at sites of urothelial injury. It most commonly arises in the bladder, while involvement of the renal pelvis is exceedingly rare. Bilateral multifocal presentation with atypical histologic features has not been previously reported. A 50-year-old male with a history of bladder stone lithotripsy presented with painless gross hematuria and lumbodorsal aching of nine months' duration. Preoperative workup included three urine cytology examinations, which showed atypical cells suspicious for malignancy, and an outside hospital biopsy of the left renal pelvis. Review of the biopsy at our institution revealed no definitive malignant components (the specimen contained renal parenchyma, fibromuscular tissue, and scant urothelium with chronic inflammation), rendering the diagnosis indeterminate. Ultrasonography revealed bilateral multiple renal calculi and multiple solid masses in the bilateral renal collecting systems, suggestive of bilateral renal pelvic carcinoma. Given the bilateral disease and diagnostic uncertainty, the patient underwent staged percutaneous nephroscopic tumor resections. The right-sided lesion showed NA with focal atypia (CK7+, PAX8+, P504S+, CK20-, GATA-3-, Ki-67 ~10%). Two months later, the patient was readmitted for left-sided lesions. Non-contrast computed tomography (CT) demonstrated multiple nodular and strip-like lesions at the left renal pelvis and ureteropelvic junction, with the largest measuring 14 × 8 mm, accompanied by mild dilatation of the left pelvicalyceal system. Left percutaneous nephroscopic tumor resection was performed, and pathology confirmed atypical NA (PAX8+, EMA+, TFE3+, focal CK7/CK20/P504S/CAIX+, Ki-67 ~10%, p53 patchy ~80%). Specimens were fragmented, precluding margin assessment, though no macroscopic residual tumor was observed intraoperatively. Follow-up at 10 months showed no recurrence or metastasis. This is the first report of bilateral multifocal NA arising in the renal pelvis with atypical histologic features and an elevated Ki-67 proliferation index. This case expands the known morphological spectrum of NA and highlights important diagnostic challenges. Urologists and pathologists should be aware of this rare entity to avoid misdiagnosis as bilateral renal pelvic carcinoma and subsequent overtreatment.
Conformational chirality is widespread in principle, yet often inaccessible in practice because rapid stereochemical averaging can preclude both enantiomeric resolution and chiroptical characterization. Here we show that a stereolabile pillar[5]arene-based macrocycle, though dynamically racemic in solution, undergoes spontaneous resolution upon crystallization to form a conglomerate. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction shows that individual crystals contain one of the two enantiomeric conformers, while solid-state electronic and vibrational circular dichroism, supported by density functional theory calculations, establish their absolute configurations. Notably, this handedness is also expressed in distinguishable hemihedral facets, enabling manual sorting by external morphology. The same conglomerate packing motif can be retained across related solvomorphs, while a chiral guest can bias crystallization toward a single-handed form. These results establish a direct link among molecular structure, solid-state chiroptical response, crystal morphology, and absolute configuration within a dynamically racemic system, and illustrate how crystallization can render otherwise averaged conformational chirality structurally, spectroscopically, and even visually legible.
Coordinated load transfer across knee joint compartments underpins lifelong joint function, yet dysregulated mechanics are also widely implicated in the etiology of osteoarthritis (OA). How physiological loads are accommodated in the healthy joint and how regionalized architectural alterations reconfigure joint-level mechanics to promote OA, however, remain unresolved. Here, we integrate in situ mechanical loading of murine tibial epiphyses with phase-contrast synchrotron X-ray computed tomography and digital volume correlation to quantify three-dimensional, compartment-specific load-bearing behavior in intact healthy (CBA) and OA-prone (STR/Ort) knee joints. We find that raised focal strain concentrations emerge within the subchondral plate and precede histological cartilage degeneration in STR/Ort joints at 10 weeks of age. In contrast, these strain concentrations are absent in both young and aging CBA mice, where mechanical strain is preferentially transmitted to locations distant from the articular surface. Finite element modeling further reveals that strain localization in STR/Ort joints is governed by region-specific microstructural incongruities. Together, these findings demonstrate that epiphyseal microarchitecture preserves mechanical homeostasis during healthy aging, whereas spatial disorganization of subchondral microarchitecture renders the epiphysis susceptible to load-induced failure. Collectively, this work identifies mechano-architectural misalignment within the mineralized phase of the tibial epiphysis as an early mechanical promoter of OA emergence.
Glaucoma, an ocular neurodegenerative condition, is the second leading cause of permanent loss of vision globally. It is characterized by progressive retinal ganglion cell (RCG) loss, optic nerve-head damage, irreversible visual field loss, and sometimes, increase in intraocular pressure (IOP). Existing therapeutic strategies target elevated IOP, the only modifiable risk factor for the disease, and fail to address the co-current neurodegeneration in the posterior segment of the eye. This demonstrates a huge gap in effective glaucoma therapy and highlights the need for multitargeting treatments that simultaneously reduce IOP in the anterior segment and mitigate neurodegeneration in the posterior segment of the eye. There is evidence that gasotransmitters such as nitric oxide (NO) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) could be beneficial in the treatment of glaucoma due to their ability to reduce IOP and mitigate neurodegeneration in the mammalian eye; while the second gasotransmitter, carbon monoxide (CO) can relax trabecular meshwork, enhance ocular perfusion and mitigate retinal neuronal apoptosis. Since current glaucoma therapies focus on IOP reduction, the multi-targeting nature of these gasotransmitters renders them as viable drug candidates to shift glaucoma therapy from IOP-targeting to multiple targeting therapeutic agents with improved patient outcomes. This review provides an overview of the "unmet" need in glaucoma therapy, summarizes current knowledge on the physiology of gasotransmitters and discusses their potential role as multitargeting therapeutic agents in glaucoma.
Intravenous thrombolysis with alteplase remains the standard reperfusion strategy for acute ischemic stroke (AIS), yet many patients still experience unfavorable outcomes despite timely treatment, underscoring the need for reliable multimodal prognostic markers. To identify independent clinical, laboratory, and neuroimaging predictors of unfavorable 3-month functional outcome in anterior circulation AIS treated with alteplase, and to develop, internally validate, and benchmark an integrated multivariable model in accordance with TRIPOD. This prospective single-center cohort study enrolled 268 consecutive patients with anterior circulation AIS receiving intravenous alteplase within 4.5 h of symptom onset (March 2022-February 2025). Three-month outcome was assessed by the modified Rankin Scale (mRS 0-2 favorable; 3-6 unfavorable) using validated structured instruments administered by blinded raters. Multivariable logistic regression was performed, and the final model was internally validated by 1,000-replicate bootstrap with optimism correction and shrinkage, evaluated by decision curve analysis (DCA), rendered into a nomogram, and benchmarked head-to-head against three previously published reference models using the DeLong test. Of 268 patients, 99 (36.9%) experienced unfavorable outcomes. Seven independent predictors were identified: early neurological deterioration (adjusted OR 3.45, 95% CI 2.01-5.92), large infarction exceeding one-third of the middle cerebral artery territory (OR 2.78, 1.58-4.89), baseline NIHSS (OR 1.14 per point, 1.07-1.22), poor Tan collateral score (OR 2.31, 1.34-3.98), low clot burden score (OR 2.15, 1.28-3.61), elevated D-dimer (OR 2.19, 1.29-3.72), and elevated CRP (OR 1.87, 1.11-3.15). The model achieved an apparent AUC of 0.847 (95% CI 0.801-0.893) and an optimism-corrected AUC of 0.831 (0.785-0.877) on bootstrap validation, with satisfactory calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow P = 0.394). DCA showed positive net benefit across threshold probabilities of 0.15-0.75, and the model exceeded the recalibrated Hu, Ping, and Lv models. A multimodal panel integrating clinical, inflammatory, coagulation, and neuroimaging parameters independently predicts unfavorable 3-month outcome following intravenous thrombolysis in anterior circulation AIS. The findings are hypothesis-generating pending external validation in independent multicenter cohorts.
Worldwide, children from less affluent backgrounds suffer from more stressful life events and greater distress compared with those from wealthier backgrounds. Despite these stark disparities, how a sufferer's wealth status influences perceptions of their distress is an understudied yet important question. The present research explored early intuitions regarding the connection between wealth and psychological pain in 4- to 9-year-old children. In Study 1 (N = 122), children saw two gender-matched White children who varied in their wealth status but experienced identical stressful events. Children perceived the low-wealth individuals as more distressed than their affluent counterparts, and this tendency increased as children grew older. Study 2 (N = 120, preregistered) extended this to judgments of Black individuals' psychological pain. Children's tendency to attribute greater distress to the less wealthy was predicted by their belief that the less wealthy have less control over their lives. Study 3 (N = 144, preregistered) provided a causal test of this mechanism. Information about an individual's control in life rendered their wealth status irrelevant, such that children perceived the less wealthy as experiencing more distress only when the less wealthy had lower control in life. Across all three studies, children's wealth-based pain perceptions prompted greater sympathy and increased support for individuals with less wealth compared with those with more wealth. These findings advance our understanding of the early beliefs children hold about wealth status and psychological pain, revealing its development, underlying mechanism, and potential impact on subsequent social support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products - cell therapies, gene therapies, and tissue-engineered products - are beginning to deliver on the promise of curative medicine: CAR-T therapies double survival in chemotherapy-refractory lymphomas, gene therapies reverse the natural history of spinal muscular atrophy and hemoglobinopathies, and Pluripotent Stem Cell (PSC)-derived islet transplantation renders type 1 diabetic patients insulin-independent. Yet the trajectory from proof-of-concept to equitable, scalable deployment is consistently impeded not only by unresolved biology but also by engineering, manufacturing, logistical, regulatory, and economic bottlenecks that the bioengineering community has not engaged with at the required scale. In this Perspective, grounded in clinical experience across hematological malignancies, monogenic diseases, and metabolic disorders, we identify five rate-limiting bottlenecks where bioengineering intervention is urgently needed and uniquely tractable: scalable and adaptive biomanufacturing; real-time in-process quality control; precise targeted delivery; biomaterial and scaffold engineering for cellular engraftment and immune protection; and data-driven patient stratification constrained by health equity. We argue that the evolving regulatory landscape in Europe - including the European Biotech Act framework and ICH Quality by Design principles - creates structural incentives for engineering-led solutions, and that economic sustainability requires bioengineering to drive down production costs and enable the off-the-shelf transition. We call on the bioengineering community to engage with ATMP translation not as technical support to clinical medicine, but as a constitutive partner shaping its pace, cost, and equity.
We present an isothermal global Buckley-Leverett framework for multicomponent, multiphase flow in porous and fractured media that retains the interpretability of classical Buckley-Leverett while incorporating essential physics: equation-of-state-based phase behavior, multicomponent Maxwell-Stefan diffusion, dynamic capillarity, stress-sensitive permeability, and non-Darcy fracture flow. The formulation yields a single global-pressure equation driving the total Darcy flux and an exact fractional-flow decomposition of phase velocities with buoyancy and capillary drifts; inertial effects enter as per-phase damping that renormalizes mobilities. Crucially, the combination of Maxwell-Stefan diffusion and dynamic capillarity renders transport pseudoparabolic, resolving the loss of strict hyperbolicity that plagues three-phase Buckley-Leverett and ensuring a well-posed initial-value problem. In practice, each time step solves the scalar global-pressure equation, reconstructs phase fluxes via the split, and advances strictly conservative component balances; axisymmetric (cylindrical) forms for radial injection with vertical buoyancy are provided. The model reduces exactly to classical Buckley-Leverett when added physics are disabled, making it a practical backbone for carbon storage, geothermal exchange, and contaminant transport in fractured, compositionally complex reservoirs.
Stereotactic arrhythmia radioablation (STAR) represents an emerging non-invasive treatment for therapy-refractory ventricular tachycardia. Yet, planning remains challenged by multimodal cardiac imaging integration, electroanatomical mapping (EAM) transfer, and cardiorespiratory motion effects on dose delivery. Current radiotherapy (RT) planning systems offer mainly static visualization and limited access to intramural myocardial structures, hindering communication between cardiology and radiation oncology teams. We present a novel extended reality (XR) simulator designed to dynamically visualize STAR-relevant imaging and planning data. The system integrates diastolic cardiac CT, respiratory-binned 4DCT, anatomical segmentations, EAM data, and phase-recomputed RT dose distributions within an XR environment. Cardiac structures are propagated across respiratory phases using deformable registration, while dose distributions are recomputed on each respiratory-binned CT, enabling phase-specific inspection of dose conformality for both planning target volumes (PTVs) and cardiac target volumes (CardTVs). The resulting time-resolved volumetric dataset is rendered in XR, allowing clinicians to explore cardiac motion, visualize intramural dose deposition, and jointly assess target and organ-at-risk dynamics. This supports qualitative evaluation of dose-motion interplay and interdisciplinary interpretation of intramural targets. The system was tested on three STAR patients enrolled in the RAVENTA trial. Motion analysis revealed PTV centroid displacement amplitudes over the breathing cycle of up to 17.5, 10.2, and 8.9 mm for patients 1, 2, and 3, respectively, with conformity number variations of 0.38, 0.34, and 0.19. Expert evaluation showed positive perceived utility for target-anatomy-dose understanding, motion interpretation, and multidisciplinary communication. This proof-of-concept demonstrates the feasibility and potential clinical value of XR-based motion-aware dose visualization for STAR planning.
In many real-time measurement and monitoring systems, the quality of acquired signals is often severely degraded by complex environmental noise sources with non-stationary properties, rendering analysis, important feature extraction, and decision-making unreliable. This study proposes a multi-stage adaptive denoising architecture based on the least mean square (LMS) algorithm, in which the number of filter stages and the step size are automatically adjusted according to error statistics, the remaining correlation between the residual and the reference signal, and the real-time signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the signal. The stopping mechanism is determined by a two-tailed Fisher-z correlation test, with effective sample size correction in the presence of autocorrelation and modulation based on SNR, to ensure the stability of the adaptive system against non-stationary noise. The filter is evaluated on simulated signal datasets and real-world measured data. Compared with the conventional LMS filter configuration under the tested simulated conditions, the proposed architecture reduces mean squared error (MSE) by 38-82% and mean absolute error (MAE) by 15-45%, while improving both SNR and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). The execution time of the proposed method is approximately 3.5-4 times lower than that of the fixed-threshold method under the tested settings. These results indicate that the proposed method can improve the trade-off between denoising performance and computational efficiency, showing potential for low-latency implementation on resource-constrained devices.
Scintillators serve as crucial core materials in high-energy radiation sensors. Molecule-based scintillators, one of the important kind of scintillators, have demonstrated outstanding advantages, such as high water-oxygen stability, low cost, and low toxicity. However, limited exciton utilization and luminescence efficiency have an impact on the radioluminescence properties of materials, severely limiting the development of molecule-based scintillators. In this work, the first thermally stimulated delayed phosphorescence (TSDP) molecule-based scintillator (Au(TFPP)3) was reported. Spin-allowed reverse internal conversion (RIC) of triplet excitons occurs in the TSDP process, leading to efficient utilization of thermally sensitive triplet excitons and overcoming the significant temperature effect of scintillators. As a result, Au(TFPP)3 not only has an ultrahigh photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) exceeding 99% but also has an excellent light yield (LY) as high as 99475 ± 275 photons MeV-1. More importantly, all these luminescence properties are temperature independent over a very wide range from 100 to 370 K. The super-bright and temperature-inert characteristics render Au(TFPP)3 highly suitable for ionising radiation detection, and Au(TFPP)3 has been effectively applied in low-dose x-ray variable-temperature imaging and α/β particle detection.
Ca0.95Sr0.05ScBO4 phosphor co-doped with Bi3+ and Sm3+ was successfully synthesized using the conventional high-temperature solid-state method. The Phase Structure was analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), and luminescent properties were investigated through excitation and emission spectroscopy, fluorescence lifetime measurements, and thermal stability analysis. XRD analysis indicates that the Primary crystal structure of the phosphor is CaScBO4. The doping of appropriate amounts of Sr2+, Bi3+and Sm3+ ions has not changed the Primary crystal structure of the phosphor. XPS analysis confirmed that Bi3+and Sm3+ ions successfully doping into the matrix material. Energy transfer from Bi3+ to Sm3+ occurs within the phosphor, energy transfer efficiency is 15.452%. When the temperature was raised from 298 K to 473 K, the relative intensity of the emission peak at 473 K decreased to 49.937% of that at room temperature, This indicates that the phosphor possesses relatively stable thermal stability. Studies on the temperature-sensitive properties of the samples reveal a marked difference in the luminescence thermal quenching trends between Sm3+ and Bi3+. The FIR between the two increases with rising temperature. Rendering it suitable for temperature characteristics. Within the temperature range of 298-473 K, both SR and SA exhibit a trend of first increasing and then decreasing with the rise of temperature. At 448 K, it achieves a maximum relative sensitivity of 0.233% K-1. Upon calculation, its activation energy is determined to be 0.333 eV. These results demonstrate the superior temperature stability of this phosphor sample.
17α-estradiol (17α-E2) extends median lifespan and improves metabolic homeostasis in male mice through estrogen receptor α (ERα)-dependent mechanisms, but female mice are largely unresponsive unless ovariectomized or subjected to chronic high-fat feeding. Whether the gradual hormonal transition of natural reproductive aging similarly unmasks female responsiveness to 17α-E2 remains unknown. We tested whether 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD)-induced depletion of the ovarian reserve would render female mice responsive to 17α-E2 by treating wild-type (WT) and ERα knockout (ERαKO) littermates with VCD followed by 16 weeks of 17α-E2 administration. VCD-induced estropause was confirmed by elevated FSH, anestrus, and reduced ovarian size, but did not adversely affect metabolic phenotypes in WT mice. 17α-E2 treatment elicited modest improvements in adiposity and glucose tolerance, suppressed circulating IL-1β and IL-6, and reversed estropause-induced uterine atrophy in WT mice, but failed to rescue endometrial fibrosis. All 17α-E2-mediated effects were absent in ERαKO mice. These findings demonstrate that estropause does not unmask broad female responsiveness to 17α-E2 and indicate that the sex-specific actions of 17α-E2 extend beyond competitive receptor occupancy by endogenous 17β-E2.
Freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs) facilitate the mobilization of colloid-bound cadmium (Cd) in mid- to high-latitude soils, thereby increasing the environmental risks of Cd. However, the contribution of different soil aggregate size fractions to colloidal Cd mobilization remains poorly understood, which hinders the development of targeted remediation strategies. Using asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation and 111Cd isotope tracing, this study demonstrated that 83-89% of colloidal Cd released during FTCs was bound to 100 nm-1 μm organo-clinochlore composite colloids, with 64.1%, 33.2%, and 2.7% of this Cd fraction originating from macroaggregates, microaggregates, and the fine fraction, respectively. Microcomputed tomography showed that macroaggregates contained more abundant and larger pores and pore throats, with pore-throat numbers 6.8 and 41.5 times higher than those in microaggregates and the fine fraction, respectively. Such porous structures enable freezable water inside macroaggregates to freeze readily during FTCs, whereas fine fractions mainly store bound water with depressed freezing points that barely freeze. This stark discrepancy renders macroaggregates susceptible to FTC-induced disruption and further amplifies colloidal Cd release. These findings highlight that limiting colloidal Cd release from macroaggregates is critical for reducing Cd environmental risk and stabilizing Cd in cold-region soils, particularly during the FTC period.