共找到 20 条结果
Microbial self-healing concrete is an efficient and environmentally friendly technology for enhancing crack repair and durability. However, the initiation and the relationships for spore germination, revival of urease activity and bio-deposition remain unclear, particularly the time interval and synchronization among these processes. This leads to the difficulty in regulating the bio-deposition rate and affects the prediction of product distribution within the cracks. Therefore, to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the microbial self-healing concrete process, an urease-producing bacteria self-healing concrete process of Bacillus sphaericus LMG 22257 was systematically investigated. Results showed that the revival of urease activity was behind (approximately 5-24 h) spore germination, while the revival of urease activity occurred almost simultaneously with the bio-deposition process. The inhibitory effect of high alkalinity (pH 12) and low temperature (10°C) was potentially reversible. When environmental conditions were adjusted to the appropriate range (pH 9 or 28°C), the spores can rapidly regain their activity and restart the bio-deposition process (within 72 h). In contrast, an appropriate concentration of urea (75-900 mM) can significantly accelerate the spore germination. By regulating pH and urea concentration in the crack, the lag phase of spore germination could be shortened, thereby the self-healing efficiency could be enhanced. This discovery provides new regulatory insights and theoretical support for microbial self-healing concrete.
Human gut microbial communities capable of degrading mucin are taxonomically unique and have a range of physiologically relevant metabolic outputs. To determine the feasibility of reviving mucin-degrading fecal microbial communities after cryopreservation, we employed 16S rRNA gene sequencing to characterize revived communities. Microbial communities were generally stable but small donor-dependent shifts in diversity, composition, and taxonomy were observed following revival. The revivability of these microbial communities is valuable for studying mucin-degrading microbial communities.
Following the near-total destruction of mental health services during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979), psychiatry in Cambodia underwent a gradual and resource-constrained revival from the early 1990s onward. This article traces the history of psychiatry in Cambodia from its early institutional foundations in the colonial period, through its collapse during the Khmer Rouge genocide, to its re-establishment and progressive institutionalization in the post-conflict era. Drawing on historical archives, policy documents, and published literature, the paper describes three main phases of development: initial reconstruction and training (1992-2000), expansion of services and education (2001-2015), and recent efforts toward institutionalization and specialization (2015-present). Particular attention is given to the interaction between western psychiatric models and Cambodian cultural frameworks of distress rooted in Buddhism, animism, and community-based healing practices. The article highlights the central role of international collaboration, nongovernmental organizations, and emerging local leadership in shaping psychiatric services, while also documenting persistent challenges including workforce shortages, uneven geographic distribution of care, limited inpatient capacity, and enduring stigma. By situating psychiatry within Cambodia's broader sociocultural and historical context, this review contributes to a transcultural understanding of mental health system reconstruction in post-conflict settings. It also underscores the importance of culturally responsive, community-oriented approaches for sustainable development.
In March 2026, a two-days' international workshop entitled "Hox- and TALE transcription factors: From developmental regulatory networks to disease states" took place in the historical guest house of the University of Heidelberg. The workshop recalled previous workshops organized under the European COST action between 2008 and 2013 and explored new advances in Hox/TALE biology in the context of congenital conditions. Hox- and TALE-homeodomain (HD) family proteins are highly conserved developmental transcription factors (TFs) that were originally characterized as major instructors providing spatial-temporal coordinates along the antero-posterior axis in bilaterian embryos. Hox and TALE proteins are also known to play numerous additional functions during embryogenesis, as well as during the adult life. Not surprisingly, several diseases and congenital malformations result from the aberrant expression or function of Hox- and/or TALE-encoding genes in human. Disorders that are attributable to already known mutations in Hox- and TALE-genes are expected to manifest themselves overtly. However, other mutations or allelic variants affecting Hox- and TALE-genes, or genes that encode for proteins they associate with, may produce more subtle effects. A central question of the workshop was therefore to explore whether the existence of such mutations or variants can be predicted based on research findings in model organisms. Against this backdrop, the workshop revealed novel functional and molecular aspects of Hox and TALE in the context of different animal model systems and regulatory pathways. It also illustrated the power of most recent technologies associated with dedicated bioinformatics tools in deciphering Hox/TALE molecular complexity at an unprecedented level in vivo. Time was dedicated for stimulating discussions and the workshop was also a good opportunity to bring together seniors and more junior colleagues in the Hox/TALE field. Over these two days, the Hox/TALE community not only demonstrated its remarkable dynamism but also raised key questions that are sure to inspire exciting research for years to come.
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
Cell therapies for gastric disorders lack minimally invasive delivery platforms that preserve cell viability during storage and enable effective tissue penetration, owing to the high toughness and harsh environment of the gastric wall. Herein, we developed a mechanically reinforced, porous silk-based cryogenic microneedle (silk-cryoMN) platform for in situ cell delivery to the gastric wall. The optimized 1.5% (w/v) silk scaffolds exhibited interconnected pores (24.4 ± 7.9 μm, ~81% porosity), a compressive strength (422.8 ± 73.4 MPa), and a 3.4-fold increase in β-sheet content. The silk-cryoMNs showed greater thermal stability than H2O-cryoMNs, maintaining structural integrity for over 60 s at room temperature. With a cryopreservation medium containing 100 mM sucrose and 2% DMSO, post-thaw cell viability exceeded 80% after 11 days of freezing, and most cells were released within 1 h. Furthermore, ex vivo studies confirmed penetration of porcine gastric tissue to depths of 422-448 μm within 30 s. These results suggest that the platform may address several translational barriers, including tissue penetration, handling stability, and cell viability preservation. Further in vivo studies and long-term safety evaluations are needed before clinical translation can be considered.
The genus Dryophylax currently comprises 15 widely distributed South American species of snakes. Despite recent efforts to clarify the systematic status of the genus, several species remain taxonomically poorly defined. One example is Dryophylaxnattereri (Mikan 1820), regarded first as a junior synonym of Thamnodynastes strigilis (Thunberg 1787), and later as a junior synonym of Thamnodynastes pallidus (Linnaeus 1758). Despite several historical taxonomic studies addressing other congeners, D. nattereri has been often neglected, and no author has attempted to test species boundaries. Recently, several authors referred to this taxon as Dryophylax cf. nattereri, after it was resurrected without a proper taxonomic justification. Here, we demonstrate that D.nattereri is a valid species, based on morphological data gathered from a large series of individuals distributed throughout its known distribution. We designated a neotype for D.nattereri and provide a detailed description of the species diagnostic characters, with additional data on external morphological variation, skull osteology and hemipenial morphology.
We investigate the non-Markovian dynamics of quantum steering in a tripartite photonic system subject to dephasing noise. By developing a theoretical framework based on the single-photon dephasing model extended to three independent photons, we analyze the temporal evolution of steering measures SA-BC and SAB-C for two distinct classes of initial states: W-type entangled states and GHZ-type mixed entangled states. The system is studied under various environmental configurations, ranging from fully Markovian to fully non-Markovian regimes, with asymmetric distributions of memory effects across the three photons. Our results reveal that the dynamics of tripartite steering are highly sensitive to both the number of photons coupled to non-Markovian environments and the specific partition of the system being considered. For W-states, non-Markovian effects induce oscillatory behavior with death-revival cycles, where the intervals of sudden death and revival amplitudes depend critically on the distribution of memory effects. For GHZ-states, we observe multiple death-revival cycles in some configurations and prolonged preservation of steering without complete sudden death in others. Notably, we find that non-Markovian environments significantly influence the dynamics of quantum steering through information backflow effects, with their impact depending sensitively on the subsystem to which the environment is coupled and on the roles of the steering and steered parties. These findings demonstrate that non-Markovian effects can significantly influence the preservation and degradation of directional quantum correlations, with their impact depending strongly on the coupling configuration and the choice of steering and steered subsystems. This behavior provides useful insight into the control of quantum steering in photonic networks and related quantum information processing tasks.
While Flueggea virosa (Roxb. Ex Willd.) Royle root bark is traditionally used in several parts of East Africa for fertility regulation, its contraceptive potential has not been systematically investigated. Given the paucity of safe, reversible, non-hormonal contraceptives for women, this study evaluated a root bark fraction for sperm-disrupting, intravaginal contraceptive activity using functional assays and a rabbit proof-of-concept model. Following extraction and fractionation of authenticated root bark, the resulting extracts were evaluated for cytotoxicity in Vero cells and for disruption of human sperm functions by ascertaining immobilization, revival, viability, cervical mucus penetration and acrosin-related activity. Thereafter, chemical profiling of the most active fraction was performed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) for descriptive annotation. Moreover, in vivo contraceptive efficacy and short-term local safety (10 days) were determined after intravaginal administration of the fraction in rabbits by histological examination of cervicovaginal tissues. The methanolic fraction (KBLM) demonstrated the strongest activity, completely immobilizing sperm, abolishing sperm revival after washing, markedly reducing sperm viability, strongly inhibiting cervical mucus penetration and suppressing acrosin-related activity at 1.62 mg/mL. In a rabbit proof-of-concept experiment, a single intravaginal dose prevented pregnancy at all tested concentrations (3.9, 7.8, and 15.6 mg/mL). Besides, repeated intravaginal exposure for 10 days revealed absent-to-mild cervicovaginal changes. Chemical fingerprinting putatively annotated flavonoid-, tannin-, and phenolic-related features, including catechin, quercetin derivatives, rutin, corilagin, and kaempferol glycosides, as prominent features of KBLM. Our findings have demonstrated the sperm disruption activity of the methanolic fraction of F. virosa root bark. The observed disruption of multiple sperm functions, observed efficacy in a rabbit model and absent-to-mild short-term local tissue changes support additional preclinical investigations of the extract geared towards further functional characterization, extended safety testing, standardization, and potential formulation of an intravaginal contraceptive.
Detecting rare cell populations that drive development, differentiation, and disease-associated transformation remains a central challenge in biology and medicine. Although these populations often represent promising targets for intervention, they are difficult to resolve from single-cell transcriptomic data because most methods rely on homophily-based cell-cell similarity, which can merge rare cells into dominant populations and mask their subtle transcriptional signatures. The challenge is further amplified in multi-sample analyses, where batch correction can dilute rare-cell-specific signals. Here, we present scFormer, a heterogeneous graph transformer (HGT) framework for sensitive and robust rare-cell discovery. scFormer constructs a Z-score-guided cell-gene heterogeneous graph in which highly specific marker genes serve as informational bridges, embedding rare-cell features directly into the graph topology rather than inferring them from global neighbors. This design provides a clear biological rationale for rare-cell recovery, as low-abundance cells can remain connected through shared high-specificity genes even when local cell-cell neighborhoods are sparse. An integrated optimization strategy jointly performs representation learning, clustering, and optional batch correction, enabling rare-cell discovery while preserving biological structure. Across 125 simulated and 18 real datasets, scFormer consistently achieved competitive or superior performance relative to existing approaches. Applied to diverse multi-sample single-cell and spatial transcriptomics datasets, scFormer recovered known but weakly represented populations and revealed previously obscured cell states, including proliferative club cells in the airway epithelium, revival stem cells during intestinal regeneration, and rare embryonic cell states from spatial transcriptomics. Overall, scFormer provides a unified framework for identifying biologically meaningful rare populations while mitigating batch effects in multi-sample datasets.
This paper divided the history of family doctor renaming into the stages of origin, prosperity, decline and revival by examining its development history for the first time. It documented the changes of family doctor training and the process of its renaming at different times. It clarified the meanings and scope of family doctors and general practitioners and analyzed the differences between the two names in terms of emerging background, disciplinary foundation, training pattern and their main characteristics. It finally put forward some corresponding suggestions on the application of the family doctors and general practitioners in China. 通过对家庭医生的发展史进行梳理，将国外家庭医生的发展历程划分为起源期、繁荣期、衰退期与复兴期，阐述了不同发展时期家庭医生的培养模式转变和更名过程，厘清全科医生和家庭医生这两种称呼所代表的涵义和适用范围，重点从诞生背景、学科基础、培训模式、核心特征等方面分析全科医生和家庭医生的不同。最后，结合中国家庭医生培养模式的发展历程，对中国全科医生和家庭医生名称的适用范围提出了相应建议。.
This paper analyses two Indian documentaries-Re-Imagining Leadership (2022) and Uttarakhand Women End Water Woes (2021)-to interrogate how the state-sponsored and non-governmental organisation-led discourses of women empowerment and environmental conservation frame women's ecological labour, particularly in the state of Uttarakhand, India. While the 2022 documentary presents a near-utopian model of women-led rural governance promoting subsistence economies, its narrative subtly tucks away the reliance on state support, frequently hinted at by the women leaders. This complicates its vision of a sustainable-financial independence and the promise of probable autonomy at the centre. The latter, documenting grassroots water revival initiatives by non-governmental aid, similarly highlights women's labour as an empowering solution for systemic failures and presents it as an embodied technology for guaranteed success. Drawing on Feminist Postcolonial Ecology, Feminist Science and Technology Studies and Postcolonial Development theory, I argue that these narratives aggrandise women's subsistence practices/labour as 'embodied technologies' to sustain ecological viability, hinging on a promise of increased agency at the centre. By contrasting romanticization of women's care work as 'empowerment', the study exposes the tension between celebrating localised women empowerment and the state's systematic obscuring of structural dependency and land dispossession. The study, therefore, contributes to debates on feminist sociological debates on gender, decolonial sustainability, and the political economy of visual storytelling.
The gastrointestinal tract possesses a remarkable regenerative capacity to maintain tissue homeostasis against various injuries. However, the intestine and stomach exhibit distinct regenerative strategies. In the intestine, damage to Lgr5-positive (Lgr5+) stem cells induces cellular plasticity and the emergence of transient Revival stem cells (RevSCs), a process critically dependent on YAP/TAZ signaling. Conversely, the stomach utilizes paligenosis, where quiescent p57-positive (p57+) mature chief cells act as reserve stem cells, dedifferentiating to restore damaged tissue. Although the cellular origins differ, both organs appear to share some common regenerative features, including transient activation of pro-proliferative programs such as YAP/TAZ signaling. In contrast, whether Retinoic Acid (RA) signaling also serves as a conserved mechanism for regenerative resolution in the stomach remains to be determined. In this review, we discuss the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing regeneration in these two organs. This comparative analysis provides a framework for future research.
Mycoplasma pneumoniae is one of the causative agents of community-acquired infections, with epidemic cycles recorded over 37 years and a current international revival after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study elaborates and critically examines a deterministic thirteen-compartmental mathematical model to understand the dynamics of Mycoplasma pneumoniae, including vulnerability stratification, dual-strain progression, and intervention pathways in healthcare. The positivity and boundedness of solutions are proved to establish the well-posedness of the model biologically. Local asymptotic stability of the disease-free equilibrium (DFE) is established when [Formula: see text] and global asymptotic stability at the endemic equilibrium when [Formula: see text] via Lyapunov functions. The model exhibits backward bifurcation as temporary immunity decays (when [Formula: see text]), suggesting that [Formula: see text], though necessary, is not sufficient for eradication of Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Optimal control with time-varying vaccination [Formula: see text], intensified treatment [Formula: see text], and prevention compliance [Formula: see text] reduces infectious and hospitalised compartments by 90-[Formula: see text], while the absence of controls allows endemic persistence. The results provide an evidence-based framework for designing targeted, cost-efficient interventions to control Mycoplasma pneumoniae epidemics and safeguard vulnerable populations.
Quorum quenching (QQ) is an effective biological strategy for mitigating membrane biofouling in membrane bioreactors (MBRs), yet the persistence of QQ bacteria under harsh industrial wastewater conditions remains poorly understood. Here, the induction, resuscitation and functional recovery of the viable but nonculturable (VBNC) state in the efficient QQ bacterium Brucella sp. ZJ1 was investigated under salinity and combined phenol-salinity stress. Combined stress markedly accelerated VBNC formation (36 h vs. 10 days under salinity alone) and caused greater oxidative damage, metabolic suppression, structural deterioration and loss of QQ activity. Salinity-induced VBNC cells recovered following stress removal, whereas phenol-salinity-induced cells required resuscitation-promoting factor (Rpf) for efficient revival. Rpf-mediated resuscitation substantially restored both QQ activity and biofilm inhibition capacity. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that VBNC formation was accompanied by coordinated repression of genes involved in central metabolism, DNA replication and protein biosynthesis, together with activation of osmotic adaptation, membrane transport, quorum sensing and oxidative stress response pathways. These findings demonstrate that the VBNC state is an active adaptive strategy that preserves the potential for functional recovery and provides new insights for improving the antifouling performance of QQ-based MBR systems treating high-strength industrial wastewater.
The intestine is a multifunctional tissue relying on multipotent stem cells to establish a repertoire of epithelial cell lineages. We have previously shown that the enteric parasitic nematode Heligmosomoides polygyrus bakeri (Hpb) directly regulates the intestinal stem cell compartment, tuning the epithelium to a regenerative fetal-like state, marked by the expansion of Clusterin-expressing revival stem cells (revSCs) and inhibiting goblet and tuft cell differentiation. However, the host signaling pathway driving this response remained obscure. Here, we demonstrate that TGFβ receptor (TGFβR) engagement is critical for helminth-induced epithelial reprogramming. Specifically, we show that Hpb induces potent epithelial TGFβR signaling in both mouse and human intestinal epithelium and that Hpb-mediated revSC expansion is TGFβR-dependent. In addition, we show that the loss of TGFβR signaling in the intestinal epithelium enhances goblet cell expansion while compromising Hpb egg production. Finally, we identify the TGFβ mimic, TGM, as the Hpb-secreted protein responsible for the induction of the fetal-like transcriptional program and revSC expansion. Collectively, our study reveals how a parasitic helminth hijacks epithelial TGFβR signaling to expand a pro-regenerative stem cell population and support host-helminth mutualism.
We report a state-resolved study of ultrafast vibrational dynamics in the singly ionized heteronuclear dimer Ar-Kr using a femtosecond pump-probe reaction microscope. A linearly polarized pump pulse initiates the dynamics by ionizing the neutral dimer and preparing a coherent superposition of vibrational states on multiple electronic potential energy surfaces of Ar-Kr+. A time-delayed, circularly polarized probe pulse then induces further ionization and dissociation, allowing the evolving nuclear motion to be mapped onto the time-dependent kinetic-energy-release spectra of the fragments. The resulting time- and KER-resolved measurements reveal vibrational revivals at characteristic delays, each serving as a spectroscopic signature of a specific electronic state and exhibiting agreement with numerical simulations. Fourier analysis of the delay-dependent spectra further extracts the vibrational beating frequencies, which are consistent with established spectroscopic constants.
Hepatocellular carcinoma is a major cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide and is characterized by marked intratumoral heterogeneity, which contributes to variable treatment responses, tumor recurrence, and disease progression. A deeper understanding of how tumor cells change at the transcriptional level before and after drug treatment is therefore essential for improving therapeutic strategies. However, practical experimental workflows that connect organoid-based drug treatment with downstream single-cell transcriptomic profiling remain limited. In this study, a standardized workflow for generating hepatocellular carcinoma organoids, applying defined drug treatment, and performing single-cell RNA sequencing on samples collected before and after treatment is developed. The protocol includes organoid revival and expansion, pre-treatment quality assessment, drug exposure, organoid preparation for single-cell dissociation, library construction, and basic comparative analysis of single-cell transcriptomic data. Critical technical precautions are provided to improve reproducibility and sample quality. This workflow enables side-by-side characterization of cellular composition and transcriptional changes associated with drug treatment in hepatocellular carcinoma organoids. The protocol is robust, scalable, and adaptable across different organoid systems, providing a practical platform for investigating treatment-associated gene expression changes at single-cell resolution.
Coherence properties are central to quantum systems and are at the heart of phenomena such as superconductivity. In this work, we studied coherence properties of an ultracold Bose gas in a two-dimensional optical lattice across the thermal phase transition. To infer the phase coherence and phase fluctuation profiles, we used direct matter-wave imaging of higher Talbot revivals and introduced a phase microscope based on a site-resolved mapping of phase fluctuations to density fluctuations during matter-wave imaging. We observed the algebraic decay of the phase correlations in the superfluid phase and a linear temperature increase of the exponent. These techniques may enable studying coherence properties in strongly correlated quantum systems with full spatial resolution.
The preservation of chicken genetic resources is important to both backup commercial breeds that support egg and meat production worldwide and conserve the genetic diversity of indigenous breeds, which is essential for managing breeding according to future demands. Because chicken embryos are attached to a large yolk, cryopreservation is technically impossible. In chickens, a unique developmental engineering approach based on the manipulation of primordial germ cells (PGCs), the embryonic precursor cells of gametes, has been developed. Cryobanking of PGCs is an innovative strategy for efficiently maintaining chicken genetic resources without breeding live birds. Cryomedia containing dimethyl sulfoxide or propylene glycol (PG) as permeable cryoprotectants, combined with serum as a non-permeable cryoprotectant, have been widely used for the cryopreservation of chicken PGCs. However, because the serum composition varies greatly, performance differences arise between lots. Consequently, there is a demand for serum-free cryomedia with specific known compositions. Here, we investigated the cryoprotective effects of ovalbumin and sericin, as alternatives to serum, on chicken PGCs. Two cryomedia were designed: PO comprising 7.5% PG and 5% ovalbumin and PS comprising 7.5% PG and 2% sericin. Following the culture of PGCs cryopreserved in these cryomedia, viability and cell doubling times recovered to levels comparable to those of an unfrozen control group at 6 and 2 d post-culture, respectively. When frozen-thawed PGCs were transplanted, their gonadal migration ability was significantly lower immediately after thawing, but recovered to levels comparable to those of the unfrozen control group after 4 d of culture. We successfully revived viable offspring from Hinai-dori, designated as a natural monument of Japan, from PGCs cryopreserved in these cryomedia. In conclusion, we developed two serum-free cryomedia that achieved > 60% recovery of viable PGCs after thawing while maintaining germline competency.