Despite observed ethnic differences in eating patterns and obesity, evidence in China is limited. This study examined ethnic differences in eating patterns and their associations with weight outcomes among multi-ethnic adults in West China. A cross-sectional survey collected self-reported data on demographics, eating behaviors, weight and height in 2021. Principal component analysis and multivariate regression was conducted to identify eating patterns and examine their associations with weight outcomes. 4407 subjects aged ≥18 years were recruited across seven provinces in West China. Four eating patterns were identified: “meat-lover” - characterized by frequent consumption of meat and dairy products, “indulgent” - by frequent intakes of added salt, sugar, alcohol, and pickled food, “diversified-eating” - by frequently consuming food with diversified cooking methods and eating out, and “nutri-health-concerned” - by good food hygiene behaviors and reading food labels. Ethnic differences in eating patterns were observed. Compared with Han, Hui were less likely to exhibit meat-lover or diversified-eating patterns; Tibetans were less likely to have meat-lover or nutri-health-concerned patterns; Mongolians were more likely to have indulgent pattern. BMI was positively associated with meat-lover pattern in both genders (exp(β): 1.029; 95% CI: 1.001-1.058 for men; 1.018; 1.000-1.036 for women) and negatively associated with nutri-health-concerned pattern in women (0.983; 0.966-1.000). Mongolians were two times more likely to be overweight/obese than Han (OR: 3.126; 1.688-5.790). Considerable ethnic differences existed in eating patterns in West China. Mongolians were more likely to be overweight/obese, which was associated with their indulgent eating patterns. Ethnic-specific healthy eating intervention programs are needed.

The logarithmic law of the wall does not capture the mean flow when a boundary layer is subjected to a strong pressure gradient. In such a boundary layer, the mean flow is affected by the spatio-temporal history of the imposed pressure gradient; and accounting for history effects remains a challenge. This work aims to develop a universal mean flow scaling for boundary layers subjected to arbitrary adverse or/and favourable pressure gradients. We derive from the Navier–Stokes equation a velocity transformation that accounts for the history effects and maps the mean flow to the canonical law of the wall. The transformation is tested against channel flows with a suddenly imposed adverse or favourable pressure gradient, boundary layer flows subjected to an adverse pressure gradient, and Couette–Poiseuille flows with a streamwise pressure gradient. It is found that the transformed velocity profiles follow closely the equilibrium law of the wall.

Aphids exhibit seasonally alternating asexual and sexual reproductive modes. Different morphs are produced throughout the life cycle. To evaluate morph-specific fitness during reproductive switching, holocyclic Sitobion avenae were induced continuously under short light conditions, and development and reproduction were compared in each morph. Seven morphs, including apterous and alate virginoparae, apterous and alate sexuparae, oviparae, males, and fundatrices, were produced during the life cycle. The greatest proportions of sexuparae, oviparae, males, and virginoparae were in the G1, G2, G3, and G4 generations, respectively. Regardless of asexual or sexual morphs, alate morphs exhibited a marked delay in age at maturity compared with that of apterous morphs. Among the alate morphs, males had the longest age at maturity, followed by sexuparae and virginoparae. Among the apterous morphs, sexuparae were older at maturity than the fundatrices, virginoparae, and oviparae. The nymphs of each morph had equal survival potentials. For the same wing morphs, apterous sexuparae and oviparae exhibited substantial delays in the pre-reproductive period and considerable reductions in fecundity, compared with those of apterous virginoparae and fundatrices, whereas alate sexuparae and alate virginoparae had similar fecundity. The seven morphs exhibited Deevey I survivorship throughout the life cycle. These results suggest that sexual production, particularly in males, has short-term development and reproduction costs. The coexistence of sexual and asexual morphs in sexuparae offspring may be regarded as an adaptive strategy for limiting the risk of low fitness in winter.

In this paper, we study the behaviours of the commutators $[\vec b,\,T]$ generated by multilinear Calderón–Zygmund operators $T$ with $\vec b=(b_1,\,\ldots,\,b_m)\in L_{\rm loc}(\mathbb {R}^n)$ on weighted Hardy spaces. We show that for some $p_i\in (0,\,1]$ with $1/p=1/p_1+\cdots +1/p_m$, $\omega \in A_\infty$ and $b_i\in \mathcal {BMO}_{\omega,p_i}$ ($1\le i\le m$), which are a class of non-trivial subspaces of ${\rm BMO}$, the commutators $[\vec b,\,T]$ are bounded from $H^{p_1}(\omega )\times \cdots \times H^{p_m}(\omega )$ to $L^p(\omega )$. Meanwhile, we also establish the corresponding results for a class of maximal truncated multilinear commutators $T_{\vec b}^*$.

Breast cancer is a high-risk disease with a high mortality rate among women. Chemotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of breast cancer. However, chemotherapy eventually results in tumours that are resistant to drugs. In recent years, many studies have revealed that the activation of Wnt/β-catenin signalling is crucial for the emergence and growth of breast tumours as well as the development of drug resistance. Additionally, drugs that target this pathway can reverse drug resistance in breast cancer therapy. Traditional Chinese medicine has the properties of multi-target and tenderness. Therefore, integrating traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine into chemotherapy provides a new strategy for reversing the drug resistance of breast tumours. This paper mainly reviews the possible mechanism of Wnt/β-catenin in promoting the process of breast tumour drug resistance, and the progress of alkaloids extracted from traditional Chinese medicine in the targeting of this pathway in order to reverse the drug resistance of breast cancer.

Due to the curvature of the droplet surface, the propagation of transmitted waves is complex inside a droplet impacted by an incident shock wave. The wave converging phenomena inside a two-dimensional water column impacted by different curved shock waves are explored in this paper by means of theoretical ray analysis and high-resolution numerical simulations. An analytical method describing the wave structure evolution characteristics inside the shocked water column is established. Hence, the morphological pattern and focus locations of these waves are theoretically obtained. The analysis shows that both the first and the second reflected waves focus inside the water column regardless of the convergent, planar or divergent nature of the incident shock wave shape. The dimensionless distances from focusing points to the column centre are derived as ${\kappa }/{( 3\kappa -{{M}_{0}}{{f}_{s}} )}$ for the former and ${\kappa }/{( 5\kappa -{{M}_{0}}{{f}_{s}})}$ for the latter, respectively. Here, $\kappa$, $M_0$ and $f_s$ represent the sound-speed ratio of the two phases, the incident shock wave strength and a function characterising the shock wave shape effect, respectively. Moreover, highly negative pressures due to the first reflected wave focusing and significant pressure oscillations due to the second reflected wave focusing are numerically tracked for three shapes of the incident shock. The effects of the incident shock wave intensity on the pressure variations at focus points are further studied. As the incident shock wave intensity increases, stronger negative pressure and higher pressure oscillation are induced. The converged incident shock wave can enhance the above phenomena, but the diverged one can weaken them.

Straightplasma channels are widely used to guide relativistic intense laser pulses over several Rayleigh lengths for laser wakefield acceleration. Recently, a curved plasma channel with gradually varied curvature was suggested to guide a fresh intense laser pulse and merge it into a straight channel for staged wakefield acceleration [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 154801 (2018)]. In this work, we report the generation of such a curved plasma channel from a discharged capillary. Both longitudinal and transverse density distributions of the plasma inside the channel were diagnosed by analyzing the discharging spectroscopy. Effects of the gas-filling mode, back pressure and discharging voltage on the plasma density distribution inside the specially designed capillary are studied. Experiments show that a longitudinally uniform and transversely parabolic plasma channel with a maximum channel depth of 47.5 μm and length of 3 cm can be produced, which is temporally stable enough for laser guiding. Using such a plasma channel, a laser pulse with duration of 30 fs has been successfully guided along the channel with the propagation direction bent by 10.4°.

Since 2016, China has been conducting military flybys around Taiwan, while the US has approved arms sales to Taiwan on several occasions and sent warplanes and battleships through the Taiwan Strait. How does Taiwanese public opinion respond to the Chinese and US military presence in the Strait? Is the public likely to become less supportive of de jure independence for Taiwan on account of China's military deterrence or more supportive owing to a perceived likelihood of US military assistance? In this report, we provide answers to these questions based on evidence from a survey experiment conducted in Taiwan in October–November 2020. We find that Taiwanese are less sensitive to the Chinese military presence in the Taiwan Strait but have become more supportive of de jure independence after seeing the US aircraft in the area. Our findings contribute to studies of cross-Strait relations and US foreign policy on the Taiwan Strait.

Self-promotion, widespread in the workplace, has received extensive attention from scholars. However, due to the narrow one-dimensional structure of traditional self-promotion and the limitations of theoretical thinking, its antecedents and consequences are still unclear. Therefore, we propose a new pair of self-promotion behaviors (sole self-promotion and joint self-promotion), and develop the measures based on a more grounded definition of self-promotion. In phase 1, we developed the scales of sole self-promotion and joint self-promotion (sample 1), and assessed their psychometric properties (i.e., content validity, factor structure, and reliability) by using two samples (samples 2 and 3). In phase 2, using three-wave data (sample 4) with two sources (employees and coworkers), we tested the overall model based on social comparison theory, examining the antecedents and consequences of sole and joint self-promotion, and exploring the different effects of these two behaviors on career success. Overall, our research offers new insight into self-promotion research and provides a useful tool to evaluate employee self-promotion. Implications for theory and practice, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Taiwan's opposition to PRC demands such as acceptance of the ‘92 Consensus’ and ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula since 2016 has invited a series of retaliatory measures from Beijing, designed to coerce Taiwan into compliance. Given the stark asymmetry in economic size, military capability, and diplomatic status, Taiwan provides a case for studying coercive diplomacy that takes the form of threats to punish. Material differences suggest that Taiwan should capitulate, and ‘cheap talk’ theses expect PRC threats to have no discernible effect, while balance of threat arguments expect resolve. In this article, we use the survey data collected in the 2016, 2019, and 2020 rounds of the Taiwan National Security Study to examine how Taiwanese respond to China's intensifying and expanding threats. Our paper identifies four strategies that the public sees as responses to PRC coercion: isolation, bandwagon with China, balance against China by allying with the USA and Japan, and hedge by deepening economic ties with China while aligning with the USA and Japan against China. We show that the popular support for balancing against China rises as PRC coercion grows and Taiwanese citizens increasingly perceive China to be a threat. Our findings imply that citizens in a liberal democracy can develop the will to pushback against pressure from an authoritarian regime despite sharp asymmetries in capabilities and material limitations.

In this study, a single-sideband time-modulated phased array (STMPA)-based hyper beamforming (HBF) system for automobile radar is suggested. The left beam and the right beam are generated once the improved STMPA is split into two subarrays. The HBF method is then used to produce the hyper beam. The switching sequence may be adjusted to generate the hyper beam in the desired direction. This study's benefits may be summed up as follows: (1) The hyper beam's sidelobe level is lower and its beamwidth is narrower than the conventional beam, which can help with estimating the direction of arrival. (2) The HBF can be achieved over a very wide scanning range. (3) With time as an additional controllable variable, the system's control mode is flexible and only two channels are needed, which lowers the system's cost and complexity. The effectiveness of the algorithm is tested through simulation, and the results highlight the system's potential when used with automobile radar.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the clinical characteristics of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) PCR re-positivity after recovering from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Patients (n = 1391) from Guangzhou, China, who had recovered from COVID-19 were recruited between 7 September 2021 and 11 March 2022. Data on epidemiology, symptoms, laboratory test results and treatment were analysed. In this study, 42.7% of recovered patients had re-positive result. Most re-positive patients were asymptomatic, did not have severe comorbidities, and were not contagious. The re-positivity rate was 39%, 46%, 11% and 25% in patients who had received inactivated, mRNA, adenovirus vector and recombinant subunit vaccines, respectively. Seven independent risk factors for testing re-positive were identified, and a predictive model was constructed using these variables. The predictors of re-positivity were COVID-19 vaccination status, previous SARs-CoV-12 infection prior to the most recent episode, renal function, SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgM antibody levels and white blood cell count. The predictive model could benefit the control of the spread of COVID-19.

Liriomyza trifolii is a significant pest of vegetable and ornamental crops across the globe. Microwave radiation has been used for controlling pests in stored products; however, there are few reports on the use of microwaves for eradicating agricultural pests such as L. trifolii, and its effects on pests at the molecular level is unclear. In this study, we show that microwave radiation inhibited the emergence of L. trifolii pupae. Transcriptomic studies of L. trifolii indicated significant enrichment of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in ‘post-translational modification, protein turnover, chaperones’, ‘sensory perception of pain/transcription repressor complex/zinc ion binding’ and ‘insulin signaling pathway’ when analyzed with the Clusters of Orthologous Groups, Gene Ontology and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes databases, respectively. The top DEGs were related to reproduction, immunity and development and were significantly expressed after microwave radiation. Interestingly, there was no significant difference in the expression of genes encoding heat shock proteins or antioxidant enzymes in L. trifolii treated with microwave radiation as compared to the untreated control. The expression of DEGs encoding cuticular protein and protein takeout were silenced by RNA interference, and the results showed that knockdown of these two DEGs reduced the survival of L. trifolii exposed to microwave radiation. The results of this study help elucidate the molecular response of L. trifolii exposed to microwave radiation and provide novel ideas for control.

According to Hamilton's rule, matrilineal-biased investment restrains men in matrilineal societies from maximising their inclusive fitness (the ‘matrilineal puzzle'). A recent hypothesis argues that when women breed communally and share household resources, a man should help his sisters' household, rather than his wife's household, as investment to the later but not the former would be diluted by other unrelated members (Wu et al., 2013). According to this hypothesis, a man is less likely to help on his wife's farm when there are more women reproducing in the wife's household, because on average he would be less related to his wife's household. We used a farm-work observational dataset, that we collected in the matrilineal Mosuo in southwest China, to test this hypothesis. As predicted, high levels of communal breeding by women in his wife's households do predict less effort spent by men on their wife's farm, and communal breeding in men's natal households do not affect whether men help on their natal farms. Thus, communal breeding by women dilutes the inclusive fitness benefits men receive from investment to their wife and children, and may drive the evolution of matrilineal-biased investment by men. These results can help solve the ‘matrilineal puzzle'.

In this paper, we study divergence properties of the Fourier series on Cantor-type fractal measure, also called the mock Fourier series. We give a sufficient condition under which the mock Fourier series for doubling spectral measure is divergent on a set of strictly positive measure. In particular, there exists an example of the quarter Cantor measure whose mock Fourier sums are not almost everywhere convergent.

In this study, we report the first complete mitochondrial genome of the tapeworm Nippotaenia mogurndae in the order Nippotaeniidea Yamaguti, 1939. This mitogenome, which is 14,307 base pairs (bp) long with an A + T content of 72.2%, consists of 12 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, two rRNA genes, and two non-coding regions. Most tRNAs have a conventional cloverleaf structure, but trnS1 and trnR lack dihydrouridine arms of tRNA. The two largest non-coding regions, NCR1 (220 bp) and NCR2 (817 bp), are located between trnY and trnS2 and between nad5 and trnG, respectively. Phylogenetic analyses of mitogenomic data indicate that N. mogurndae is closely related to tapeworms in the order Cyclophyllidea.

We present a self-biased three-stage GaN-based monolithic microwave integrated circuit low-noise amplifier (LNA) operating between 26 and 29 GHz for 5G mobile communications. The self-biasing circuit, common-source topology with inductive source feedback, and RLC negative feedback loops between gate and drain of the third transistor were implemented to achieve low noise, good port match, high stability, high gain, and compact size. Measurement results show that the LNA has a high and flat gain of 30.5 ± 0.4 dB with noise figure (NF) of 1.65–1.8 dB across the band. The three-stage topology also achieves high linearity, providing the 1 dB compression point output power (P1dB) of 21 dBm in the band. To our knowledge, this combination of NF, gain, and linearity performance represents the state of art of self-biased LNA in this frequency band.

This paper focuses on a 2D magnetohydrodynamic system with only horizontal dissipation in the domain $\Omega = \mathbb {T}\times \mathbb {R}$ with $\mathbb {T}=[0,\,1]$ being a periodic box. The goal here is to understand the stability problem on perturbations near the background magnetic field $(1,\,0)$. Due to the lack of vertical dissipation, this stability problem is difficult. This paper solves the desired stability problem by simultaneously exploiting two smoothing and stabilizing mechanisms: the enhanced dissipation due to the coupling between the velocity and the magnetic fields, and the strong Poincaré type inequalities for the oscillation part of the solution, namely the difference between the solution and its horizontal average. In addition, the oscillation part of the solution is shown to converge exponentially to zero in $H^{1}$ as $t\to \infty$. As a consequence, the solution converges to its horizontal average asymptotically.

Automatic extraction of filler morphology (size, orientation, and spatial distribution) in Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) images is essential in many applications such as automatic quality inspection in composite manufacturing. Extraction of filler morphology greatly depends on accurate segmentation of fillers (fibers and particles), which is a challenging task due to the overlap of fibers and particles and their obscure presence in SEM images. Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) have been shown to be very effective at object recognition in digital images. This paper proposes an automatic filler detection system in SEM images, utilizing a Mask Region-based CNN architecture. The proposed system can simultaneously classify, detect, and segment fillers in SEM images, making it suitable for morphology analysis of fillers and automatic quality inspection. We also propose a novel SEM image simulation procedure to overcome the data scarcity for training a deep CNN architecture. The proposed filler detection system is trained on the simulated images. It is shown that the trained network can detect and segment fillers with higher accuracy even in the overlapping and obscure situations. The performance and robustness of the proposed system are evaluated using both simulated and real microscopic images.