Preparation and Characterization of Nano-Cu/Polysaccharide Composite Antimicrobial Film and Its Control Effect on Black Spot Disease of Winter Jujube

In this study, a nano-Cu/polysaccharide composite film was prepared by the solution casting method using gelatin and sodium alginate as film-forming substrates. Before casting, green synthesized nano-Cu was incorporated into the film-forming solution by co-blending method. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TAG), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), texture analysis (TA) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) were used to characterize the structure, light transmittance and physicochemical properties of nano-Cu and the composite film. The antifungal activity of the composite film was also evaluated and applied to the biological control of the black spot disease of winter jujube. Finally, the migration of Cu2+ in the composite film was measured. The results showed that the particle size of green synthetic nano-Cu was approximately 44 nm, and gelatin/sodium alginate could be used as an excellent carrier for nano-Cu. The composite film had good thermal stability, barrier properties and mechanical properties. In addition, the inhibition rates of the composite films with different concentrations of nano-Cu against Alternaria alternata, Fusarium and Botrytis cinerea were up to 87.80%, 77.73% and 81.96%, respectively, showing good and broad-spectrum antifungal properties. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of nano-Cu against A. alternata biomass was 0.25 g/L. When stored for 10 days, the composite film with nano-Cu at 0.25 g/L reduced the lesion diameter by 52.53% and the incidence of black spot disease by 53.16% compared with the control group, and the migration of Cu2+ was 0.018 7 μg/mL. This study provides a new idea for the application of nano-Cu and a theoretical basis for the development of new antifungal materials

Femtosecond Laser Filamentation in Atmospheric Turbulence

The effects of turbulence intensity and turbulence region on the distribution of femtosecond laser filaments are experimentally elaborated. Through the ultrasonic signals emitted by the filaments, and it is observed that increasing turbulence intensity and expanding turbulence active region cause an increase in the start position of the filament, and a decrease in filament length, which can be well explained by the theoretical calculation. It is also observed that the random perturbation of the air refractive index caused by atmospheric turbulence expanded the spot size of the filament. Additionally, when turbulence intensity reaches , multiple filaments are formed. Furthermore, the standard deviation of the transverse displacement of filament is found to be proportional to the square root of turbulent structure constant under the experimental turbulence parameters in this paper. These results contribute to the study of femtosecond laser propagation mechanisms in complex atmospheric turbulence conditionsComment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Digital Life Project: Autonomous 3D Characters with Social Intelligence

In this work, we present Digital Life Project, a framework utilizing language as the universal medium to build autonomous 3D characters, who are capable of engaging in social interactions and expressing with articulated body motions, thereby simulating life in a digital environment. Our framework comprises two primary components: 1) SocioMind: a meticulously crafted digital brain that models personalities with systematic few-shot exemplars, incorporates a reflection process based on psychology principles, and emulates autonomy by initiating dialogue topics; 2) MoMat-MoGen: a text-driven motion synthesis paradigm for controlling the character's digital body. It integrates motion matching, a proven industry technique to ensure motion quality, with cutting-edge advancements in motion generation for diversity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that each module achieves state-of-the-art performance in its respective domain. Collectively, they enable virtual characters to initiate and sustain dialogues autonomously, while evolving their socio-psychological states. Concurrently, these characters can perform contextually relevant bodily movements. Additionally, a motion captioning module further allows the virtual character to recognize and appropriately respond to human players' actions. Homepage: https://digital-life-project.com/Comment: Homepage: https://digital-life-project.com

Perfluorocarbon nanodrug induced oxygen self-enriching sonodynamic therapy improves cancer immunotherapy after insufficient radiofrequency ablation

Residual lesions and undetectable metastasis after insufficient radiofrequency ablation (iRFA) are associated with earlier new metastases and poor survival in cancer patients, for induced aggressive tumor phenotype and immunosuppression. Programmed cell death protein 1(PD-1) blockade has been reported to enhance the radiofrequency ablation-elicited antitumor immunity, but its ability to eliminate incompletely ablated residual lesions has been questioned. Here, we report a combined treatment modality post iRFA based on integrating an oxygen self-enriching nanodrug PFH-Ce6 liposome@O2 nanodroplets (PCL@O2)-augmented noninvasive sonodynamic therapy (SDT) with PD-1 blockade. PCL@O2 containing Ce6 as the sonosensitizer and PFH as O2 reservoir, was synthesized as an augmented SDT nanoplatform and showed increased ROS generation to raise effective apoptosis of tumor cells, which also exposed more calreticulin to induce stronger immunogenic cell death (ICD). Combining with PD-1 blockade post iRFA, this optimized SDT induced a better anti-tumor response in MC38 tumor bearing mouse model, which not only arrested residual primary tumor progression, but also inhibited the growth of distant tumor, therefore prolonging the survival. Profiling of immune populations within the tumor draining lymph nodes and tumors further revealed that combination therapy effectively induced ICD, and promoted the maturation of dendritic cells, tumor infiltration of T cells, as well as activation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes. While iRFA alone could result in an increase of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the residual tumors, SDT plus PD-1 blockade post iRFA reduced the number of Tregs in both primary and distant tumors. Moreover, the combined treatment could significantly initiate long-term immune memory, manifesting as elevated levels of CD8+ and CD4+ central memory cells. Therefore, this study establishes the preclinical proof of concept to apply oxygen self-enriching SDT to augment cancer immunotherapy after iRFA

LLMs as Workers in Human-Computational Algorithms? Replicating Crowdsourcing Pipelines with LLMs

LLMs have shown promise in replicating human-like behavior in crowdsourcing tasks that were previously thought to be exclusive to human abilities. However, current efforts focus mainly on simple atomic tasks. We explore whether LLMs can replicate more complex crowdsourcing pipelines. We find that modern LLMs can simulate some of crowdworkers' abilities in these "human computation algorithms," but the level of success is variable and influenced by requesters' understanding of LLM capabilities, the specific skills required for sub-tasks, and the optimal interaction modality for performing these sub-tasks. We reflect on human and LLMs' different sensitivities to instructions, stress the importance of enabling human-facing safeguards for LLMs, and discuss the potential of training humans and LLMs with complementary skill sets. Crucially, we show that replicating crowdsourcing pipelines offers a valuable platform to investigate (1) the relative strengths of LLMs on different tasks (by cross-comparing their performances on sub-tasks) and (2) LLMs' potential in complex tasks, where they can complete part of the tasks while leaving others to humans