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We have synthesized ferromagnetic Heusler alloy Ni2FeGa using the melt-spinning technique. The Ni2FeGa ribbon, having a high chemical ordering L21 structure, exhibits a thermoelastic martensitic transformation from cubic to orthorhombic structure at 142 K and a premartensitic transformation. The alloy has a relatively high Curie temperature of 430 K, a magnetization of 73 Am2/kg, and a low saturated field of 0.6 T. The textured samples with preferentially oriented grains show a completely recoverable two-way shape memory effect with a strain of 0.3% upon the thermoelastic martensitic transformation.

Compared with indirect assessments, such as mouth opening and other parameters, mandibular condylar mobility, as assessed directly using sonography, was correlated with difficult laryngoscopy and demonstrated an independent and notably predictive property.

We have found two distinctive structural modulations altering evidently along with the martensitic transition (MT) in the Ni 2 FeGa alloy. The first one ðq 1 Þ; corresponding to the well-known phonon anomalies in the ½zz0 TA 2 branch, occurs along the k110l direction. The second one ðq 2 Þ; an incommensurate modulation observed for the first time, occurs along the k211l-direction. Both modulations change gradually with the premartensitic phonon softening and discontinuously with the MT. Anomalies in magnetic properties emerging around the MT have been briefly discussed. q

With fcc iron as an example, it is shown that a set of effective exchange integrals, obtained simply by fitting to the total energy of frozen collinear magnon states within the local spin-density approximation, reproduces the energy dispersion of the spiral spin-density wave in remarkable agreement with previous direct theoretical calculations. Monte Carlo simulation is used in the search of the ground spin configuration and in the study of the spin orientational fluctuation behaviors at finite temperature. The Néel temperature thus obtained for antiferromagnetic fcc Fe and Mn is in reasonable agreement with the experimental measurement.

As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) threatens human health globally, infectious disorders have become one of the most challenging problem for the medical community. Natural products (NP) have been a prolific source of antimicrobial agents with widely divergent structures and a range vast biological activities. A dataset comprising 618 articles, including 646 NP-based compounds from 672 species of natural sources with biological activities against 21 infectious pathogens from five categories, was assembled through manual selection of published articles. These data were used to identify 268 NP-based compounds classified into ten groups, which were used for network pharmacology analysis to capture the most promising lead-compounds such as agelasine D, dicumarol, dihydroartemisinin and pyridomycin. The distribution of maximum Tanimoto scores indicated that compounds which inhibited parasites exhibited low diversity, whereas the chemistries inhibiting bacteria, fungi, and viruses showed more structural diversity. A total of 331 species of medicinal plants with compounds exhibiting antimicrobial activities were selected to classify the family sources. The family Asteraceae possesses various compounds against C. neoformans , the family Anacardiaceae has compounds against Salmonella typhi , the family Cucurbitacea against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and the family Ancistrocladaceae against Plasmodium . This review summarizes currently available data on NP-based antimicrobials against refractory infections to provide information for further discovery of drugs and synthetic strategies for anti-infectious agents. Supporting Information The supporting information is available online at 10.1007/s11427-020-1959-5. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) play important roles in cancer development and treatment. However, the tumor-promoting RBPs and their partners, which may potentially serve as the cancer therapeutic targets, need to be further identified. Here, we report that zinc finger CCHC domain-containing protein 4 (ZCCHC4) is of aberrantly high expression in multiple human cancer tissues and is associated with poor prognosis and chemoresistance in patients of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. ZCCHC4 promotes chemoresistance of HCC cells to DNA-damage agent (DDA) both in vitro and in vivo. HCC cell deficiency of ZCCHC4 reduces tumor growth in vivo and intratumoral interference of ZCCHC4 expression obviously enhances the DDA-induced antitumor effect. Mechanistically, ZCCHC4 inhibits DNA-damage-induced apoptosis in HCC cells by interacting with a new long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) AL133467.2 to hamper its pro-apoptotic function. Also, ZCCHC4 blocks the interaction between AL133467.2 and γH2AX upon DDA treatment to inhibit apoptotic signaling and promote chemoresistance to DDAs. Knockout of ZCCHC4 promotes AL133467.2 and γH2AX interaction for enhancing chemosensitivity in HCC cells. Together, our study identifies ZCCHC4 as a new predictor of cancer poor prognosis and a potential target for improving chemotherapy effects, providing mechanistic insights to the roles of RBPs and their partners in cancer progression and chemoresistance.

High-k dielectric LaAlO3 (LAO) thin films were deposited by laser molecular-beam epitaxy under various oxygen pressures. X-ray diffraction showed that the LAO films were amorphous. The chemical compositions and thickness of the LAO thin films were measured using Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. Al/LAO/Si metal–oxide–semiconductor capacitor structures were fabricated and measured. The leakage current density versus voltage curves showed that the leakage current of the LAO thin films decreased by increasing the oxygen pressure of the preparation. Specifically, when prepared under the active oxygen (containing atom oxygen), the leakage current of the LAO sample was lower than that prepared under the general oxygen. All of the capacitance–voltage curves have a positive shift along the voltage axis and the flatband voltage decreased with increasing oxygen pressures during the LAO thin-film preparation.