Low molecular weight glutenin subunits (LWM-GSs) play a crucial role in determining wheat flour processing quality. In this work, 35 novel LMW-GS genes (32 active and three pseudogenes) from three Aegilops umbellulata (2n = 2x = 14, UU) accessions were amplified by allelic-specific PCR. We found that all LMW-GS genes had the same primary structure shared by other known LMW-GSs. Thirty-two active genes encode 31 typical LMW-m-type subunits. The MZ424050 possessed nine cysteine residues with an extra cysteine residue located in the last amino acid residue of the conserved C-terminal III, which could benefit the formation of larger glutenin polymers, and therefore may have positive effects on dough properties. We have found extensive variations which were mainly resulted from single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertions and deletions (InDels) among the LMW-GS genes in Ae. umbellulata. Our results demonstrated that Ae. umbellulata is an important source of LMW-GS variants and the potential value of the novel LMW-GS alleles for wheat quality improvement.

Lower-crust-derived adakitic rocks in the Gangdese belt provide important constraints on the timing of Tibetan crustal thickening and on the relative contributions of magmatic and tectonic processes. Here we present geochronological and geochemical data for the Wangdui porphyritic monzogranites in the western Gangdese belt. Zircon U–Pb dating yields emplacement ages of 46–44 Ma. All samples have high Sr (321–599 ppm), low Yb (0.76–1.33 ppm) and Y (10.6–18.3 ppm) contents, with high La/Yb (51.1–72.3) and Sr/Y (21.0–51.4) ratios, indicating adakitic affinities. The low MgO (0.97–1.76 wt %), Cr (7.49–53.6 ppm) and Ni (4.75–29.1 ppm) contents, as well as high 87Sr/86Sr(i) (0.7143–0.7145), low ϵNd(t) (−10.4 to −9.8) and zircon ϵHf(t) (−17.7 to 0.4) values, suggest that the Wangdui pluton most likely originated from partial melting of the thickened ancient lower crust. In combination with previously published data, despite the east–west-trending heterogeneity of crustal composition in the Gangdese belt, the La/Yb ratios of magmatic rocks reveal that both western and eastern segments experienced remarkable crustal thickening in the Eocene. However, in contrast to the thickened juvenile lower crust in the eastern segment formed by the underplating of mantle-derived magmas, tectonic shortening plays a more crucial role in thickening of the ancient basement in western Gangdese. In fact, such Eocene-thickened ancient lower-crust-derived adakitic rocks are widely distributed in the central Himalayan–Tibetan orogen. This, together with the extensive development of fold–thrust belts, suggests that tectonic shortening might be the main mechanism accounting for the crustal thickening associated with the India–Asia collision.

The mumps resurgence has frequently been reported around the world in recent years, especially in many counties mumps vaccines have been widely used. This study aimed to describe the spatial epidemiological characteristics of mumps in Jiangsu, and provide a scientific basis for the implementation and adjustment of strategies to prevent and control mumps. The epidemiological characteristics were described with ratio or proportion. Spatial autocorrelation, Tango's flexible spatial scan statistics, and Kulldorff's elliptic spatiotemporal scan statistics were applied to identify the spatial autocorrelation, detect hot and cold spots of mumps incidence, and aggregation areas. A total of 172 775 cases were reported from 2004 to 2020 in Jiangsu. The general trend of mumps incidence is declining with a bimodal seasonal distribution identified mainly in summer and winter, respectively. Children aged 5–10 years old are the main risk group. A migration trend of hot spots from southeast to northwest over time was found. Similar high-risk aggregations were detected in the northwestern parts through spatial-temporal analysis with the most likely cluster time frame around 2019. Local medical and health administrations should formulate and implement targeted health care policies and allocate health resources more appropriately corresponding to the epidemiological characteristics of mumps.

As one of the research hotspots in the field of rehabilitation robotics, the upper limb exoskeleton robot has been widely used in the field of rehabilitation. However, the existing methods cannot comprehensively and accurately reflect the motion state of patients, which may lead to overtraining and secondary injury of patients in the process of rehabilitation training. In this paper, an upper limb exoskeleton control method based on mixed perception model of motion intention and intensity is proposed, which is based on the 6 degree-of-freedom upper limb rehabilitation exoskeleton in the laboratory. First, the kinematic information and heart rate information in the rehabilitation process of patients are collected, corresponding to patients’ motion intention and motion intensity, and fused to obtain the mixed perception vector. Second, the motion perception model based on long short-term memory neural network is established to realize the prediction of upper limb motion trajectory of patients and compared with back-propagation neural network to prove its effectiveness. Finally, the control system is built, and both offline and online test of the control method proposed are implemented. The experimental results show that the method can achieve comprehensive motion state perception of patients, realize real-time and accurate prediction trajectory according to human motion intention and intensity. The average prediction accuracy is 95.3%, and predicted joint angle error is less than 5 degrees. Therefore, the control method based on mixed perception model has good robustness and universality, which provides a new method for the active control of upper limb exoskeleton.

Evidence of couples’ BMI and its influence on birth weight is limited and contradictory. Therefore, this study aims to assess the association between couple’s preconception BMI and the risk of small for gestational age (SGA)/large for gestational age (LGA) infant, among over 4·7 million couples in a retrospective cohort study based on the National Free Pre-pregnancy Checkups Project (NFPCP) between December 1, 2013 and November 30, 2016 in China. Among the live births, 256,718 (5·44%) SGA events and 506,495 (10·73%) LGA events were documented, respectively. After adjusting for confounders, underweight men had significantly higher risk [OR 1·17 95%CI (1·15-1·19)] of SGA infants compared with men with normal BMI, while a significant and increased risk of LGA infants was obtained for overweight and obese men [OR 1·08 (95% CI: 1·06-1·09); OR 1·19 (95%CI 1·17-1·20)] respectively. The restricted cubic spline (RCS) result revealed a non-linearly decreasing dose-response relationship of paternal BMI (less than 22·64) with SGA. Meanwhile, a non-linearly increasing dose-response relationship of paternal BMI (more than 22·92) with LGA infants was observed. Moreover, similar results about the association between maternal preconception BMI and SGA/LGA infants were obtained. Abnormal preconception BMIs in either women or men were associated with increased risk of SGA/LGA infants, respectively. Overall, couple’s abnormal weight before pregnancy may be an important preventable risk factor for SGA/LGA infants.

In the context of three-dimensional oceanic internal waves, taking topographic effects into account, a modified Benney–Luke equation is proposed for describing internal wave–wave interactions on a sloping bottom. The derived equation is characterised by isotropy and bi-directional propagation, which are absent in the widely used Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation. Indeed, these disparities are confirmed by numerical results of the diffraction of a truncated internal solitary wave and the evolution of a partially bent solitary wave. However, a good agreement between the numerical results of the modified Benney–Luke equation and those of the primitive equations confirms the validity of our simplified model. Because the stratification in a realistic ocean environment is usually continuous, in contrast to the assumption of a sharp density discontinuity used here, to maintain the kinematical equivalence, a layering scheme for determining the density and thickness of each layer from a continuous stratification is proposed. In addition, the occasionally observed but rarely examined X-shaped internal wave–wave interactions are shown to feature novel wave patterns, where topographic effects modulate the propagation speed, amplitude and waveform.

We use circulant matrices and hyperelliptic curves over finite fields to study some arithmetic properties of certain determinants involving Legendre symbols and kth power residues.

To achieve autonomous all-day flight by high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (HALE UAV), a new navigation method with deep integration of strapdown inertial measurement unit (SIMU) and triple star sensors based on atmospheric refraction correction is proposed. By analysing the atmospheric refraction model, the stellar azimuth coordinate system is introduced and the coupling relationship between attitude and position is established. Based on the geometric relationship whereby all the stellar azimuth planes intersect on the common zenith direction, the sole celestial navigation system (CNS) method by stellar refraction with triple narrow fields of view (FOVs) is studied and a loss function is built to evaluate the navigation accuracy. Finally, the new SIMU/triple star sensors deep integrated navigation method with refraction correction upgraded from the traditional inertial navigation system (INS)/CNS integrated method can be established. The results of simulations show that the proposed method can effectively restrain navigation error of a HALE UAV in 24 h steady-state cruising in the stratosphere.

Bladder cancer is the most common malignant tumour of the urinary system that is characterised by significant intra-tumoural heterogeneity. While large-scale sequencing projects have provided a preliminary understanding of tumour heterogeneity, these findings are based on the average signals obtained from the pooled populations of diverse cells. Recent advances in single-cell sequencing (SCS) technologies have been critical in this regard, opening up new ways of understanding the nuanced tumour biology by identifying distinct cellular subpopulations, dissecting the tumour microenvironment, and characterizing cellular genomic mutations. By integrating these novel insights, SCS technologies are expected to make powerful and meaningful changes to the current diagnosis and treatment of bladder cancer through the identification and usage of novel biomarkers as well as targeted therapeutics. SCS can discriminate complex heterogeneity in a large population of tumour cells and determine the key molecular properties that influence clinical outcomes. Here, we review the advances in single-cell technologies and discuss their applications in cancer research and clinical practice, with a specific focus on bladder cancer.

The internal electric field of a 2D P-N junction of a semiconductor is mapped out by two techniques: measuring the deflection of the transmitted beam in micro-STEM mode with acquisition and data fitting of an un-scattered beam image, and through the derivative of electrostatic potential maps by dual lens electron holography. Comparable results of the P-N junction internal electric field measured with these two techniques are reported.

Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification is inevitably subject to high-order spatial chirp, particularly under the condition of saturated amplification and a Gaussian pump; this corresponds to an irreversible spatiotemporal distortion and consequently degrades the maximum attainable focused intensity. In this paper, we reveal that such spatial chirp distortion can be significantly mitigated in quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification (QPCPA) with idler absorption. Simulation results show that the quality of focused intensity in saturated QPCPA is nearly ideal, with a spatiotemporal Strehl ratio higher than 0.98. As the seed bandwidth increases, the idler absorption spectrum may not be uniform, but the Strehl ratio in QPCPA can be still high enough due to stronger idler absorption.

High-Mg andesites (HMAs) are crucial for the reconstruction of plate tectonics, continental margin formation and lithospheric evolution. In this study, we present new fossil age, whole-rock geochemical and Sr–Nd isotope data on the newly discovered Dundunshan Group HMAs in the Dundunshan area of the Beishan orogen (central-southern Central Asian Orogenic Belt). The Dundunshan HMA samples are characterized by high MgO (6.47–7.02 wt%) contents and high Mg# values (67.27–68.77), with SiO2 (58.57–62.13 wt%), Al2O3 (14.49–16.07 wt%) and CaO (5.05–6.24 wt%) resembling typical HMAs. The Dundunshan HMA samples are calc-alkaline and strongly enriched in light rare earth elements (LREEs) and large-ion lithophile elements (LILEs), with slightly negative Eu anomaly and high-field-strength element (HFSE) depletions. Their (87Sr/86Sr)i ratios (0.7041–0.7057) and ϵNd(t) (3.73–5.59) indicate that the Dundunshan HMAs were mainly formed by the interactions between subducted oceanic sediment-derived melts and mantle peridotites. Fossil evidence and published radiometric age data constrain the formation of the Dundunshan HMAs to early Late Devonian time. Sedimentological features of the Middle Devonian Sangejing Formation and regional tectonic correlation suggest that the Hongliuhe–Niujuanzi–Xichangjing Ocean in the Dundunshan area was likely closed during late Middle Devonian time, and that the Dundunshan HMAs were formed in a post-collision extensional setting.

Kinetic energy flux (KEF) is an important physical quantity that characterizes cascades of kinetic energy in turbulent flows. In large-eddy simulation (LES), it is crucial for the subgrid-scale (SGS) model to accurately predict the KEF in turbulence. In this paper, we propose a new eddy-viscosity SGS model constrained by the properly modelled KEF for LES of compressible wall-bounded turbulence. The new methodology has the advantages of both accurate prediction of the KEF and strong numerical stability in LES. We can obtain an approximate KEF by the tensor-diffusivity model, which has a high correlation with the real value. Then, using the artificial neural network method, the local ratios between the real KEF and the approximate KEF are accurately modelled. Consequently, the SGS model can be improved by the product of that ratio and the approximate KEF. In LES of compressible turbulent channel flow, the new model can accurately predict mean velocity profile, turbulence intensities, Reynolds stress, temperature–velocity correlation, etc. Additionally, for the case of a compressible flat-plate boundary layer, the new model can accurately predict some key quantities, including the onset of transitions and transition peaks, the skin-friction coefficient, the mean velocity in the turbulence region, etc., and it can also predict the energy backscatters in turbulence. Furthermore, the proposed model also shows more advantages for coarser grids.

Thermal convection of fluid is a more efficient way than diffusion to carry heat from hot sources to cold places. Here, we experimentally study the Rayleigh–Bénard convection of aqueous glycerol solution in a cubic cell with suspensions of rod-like particles made of polydimethylsiloxane. The particles are inertial due to their large thermal expansion coefficient and finite sizes. The thermal expansion coefficient of the particles is three times larger than that of the background fluid. This contrast makes the suspended particles lighter than the local fluid in hot regions and heavier in cold regions. The heat transport is enhanced at relatively large Rayleigh number ($\textit {Ra}$) but reduced at small $\textit {Ra}$. We demonstrate that the increase of Nusselt number arises from the particle–boundary layer interactions: the particles act as ‘active’ mixers of the flow and temperature fields across the boundary layers.