Liaoning University

• First mechanistic elucidation of glycosylation-dependent HSA binding divergence: Crocetin exhibits 43 % higher affinity ( K a = 3.49×10 5 M -1 ) via bidentate H-bonding (LYS199/HIS242), while crocin-1 suffers glycosyl entropy penalty. • Clinically critical displacement risk : >99 % plasma protein binding and >100 % increased free warfarin ( P < 0.001) validated by multispectral/computational approaches. • Albumin-based solutions : Proposed formulations overcome crocin-1′s bioavailability limits and stabilize crocetin’s gut microbiota-dependent variability. Human serum albumin (HSA) serves as a critical carrier for systemic drug delivery.This study elucidates the competitive binding dynamics of the main active component of saffron, crocin-1, and its aglycone metabolite crocetin to HSA through integrated multispectral and computational analyses. Ultracentrifugation revealed high plasma protein binding (PPB) rates for both compounds (crocin-1: 90 %; crocetin: >99 %), indicating susceptibility to displacement by high-affinity drugs like warfarin. Static quenching dominated HSA interactions, confirmed by temperature-dependent K SV decay, K q exceeding diffusion limits, and UV–Vis spectral shifts. Crocetin exhibited 43 % higher affinity ( K a = 3.49×10 5 M -1 ) than crocin-1 ( K a = 2.44 × 10 5 M -1 ) at 310 K, driven by bidentate hydrogen bonding (LYS199/HIS242) and deeper hydrophobic pocket penetration, as evidenced by molecular docking. Thermodynamically, crocin-1 binding was enthalpy-driven (Δ H = −38.55 kJ/mol) but hindered by glycosyl conformational entropy loss, whereas crocetin leveraged strong exothermicity (Δ H = − 65.15 kJ/mol) to overcome entropy penalties. Structurally, crocin-1 reduced HSA α-helix content by 5.2 %, while crocetin preserved integrity. Critically, co-incubation with crocin-1/crocetin doubled free warfarin concentrations ( P < 0.001), highlighting clinical risks for anticoagulant co-therapy. These findings provide a foundation for developing albumin-based delivery systems for saffron-derived neuroprotectants while highlighting clinical risks in co-therapy.

This study examines the civil-military technology proximity-disclosure (PD) fit and its impact on the performance of civilian firms, with a comparative focus on China and the United States. In light of the growing global prominence of civil-military links, this research addresses the strategic tensions between technological proximity (access to military technologies) and technological disclosure (transparency to external stakeholders) in influencing firm outcomes. Leveraging data from 2,651 civilian firms across 82 countries, the analysis reveals distinct patterns between Chinese and American firms. Chinese firms, characterised by high proximity and lower disclosure, demonstrate superior performance when they maintain proximity to military technologies and increase their disclosure. Conversely, American firms perform better when they enhance proximity to military technologies while maintaining high disclosure levels. These findings suggest that national contexts significantly shape the optimal PD fit for firm performance, challenging universal approaches to civil-military collaboration in a single universal model. The study contributes to institutional theory by showing how different logics of conformance and legitimacy affect technological integration and firm outcomes in varied political and economic environments. One side of the logic and legitimacy is conformance to the military imperatives, and the other side is conformance to the market imperatives. Policymakers and firms can leverage these insights to craft context-specific strategies for navigating the complexities of civil-military alliances. • Through a comparative analysis of private enterprises in China and the United States, This study examines the civil-military technology proximity-disclosure (PD) fit and its impact on civilian firm performance. • Leveraging data from 2,651 civilian firms across 82 countries, the analysis reveals distinct patterns between Chinese and American firms. • The study advances institutional theory by showing how competing logics of conformance and legitimacy shape firm performance in civil-military alliances under differing national policies and cultures.

Abstract High-precision relative attitude measurement is a critical prerequisite for autonomous recovery of micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in GNSS-restricted and dynamic environments. However, motion blur and drastic scale changes often lead to a surge in visual observation noise, causing significant drift in state estimation. To address this, this paper proposes a holistic visual metrology system that deeply fuses enhanced perception with uncertainty suppression. First, at the perception layer, an improved YOLO11n-Landing network serves as a high-fidelity instrument, utilizing multi-scale feature enhancement and anti-blur attention mechanisms to boost detection confidence in dynamic scenes. Second, a height-constrained Kalman filter was constructed at the fusion layer, explicitly managing uncertainty propagation through a physical covariance model. The validity of the optimal fusion interval was confirmed based on parameter sensitivity analysis. Crucially, at the system level, a perception-control coupled isolation mechanism has been introduced. Unlike traditional loosely coupled architectures, this mechanism uses the visual confidence factor as an information hub, synchronously mapping it to the filter covariance, switching gain K , and boundary layer thickness. This dynamically reconstructs the system’s response bandwidth, actively isolating invalid observations, and physically blocking the propagation of measurement outliers into the control loop. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to traditional benchmark methods, this integrated system significantly converges the root mean square error to 0.156 m, reduces the error variance by approximately 74.7%, and achieves a 99.0% landing success rate in Monte Carlo simulations. This work not only provides a highly system-integrity-preserving technical solution for robust autonomous landing of micro UAVs, but its core coupling paradigm also demonstrates broad prospects for generalization to high-risk tasks such as aerial docking and close-range inspection.

Skeletal muscle repair after injury requires coordinated immune responses. The cannabinoid type 2 receptor (CB2R) has been implicated in this process; however, its molecular mechanism in regulating inflammation and muscle regeneration, particularly whether it involves modulating macrophage pyroptosis-a specific pro-inflammatory cell death-remains elusive. This study proposes and validates a novel mechanism: CB2R activation protects skeletal muscle by inhibiting the PI3K/AKT/NF-κB signaling axis, thereby suppressing NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated pyroptosis in macrophages and ultimately fostering a pro-regenerative microenvironment. Using a mouse contusion model and conditioned medium assays, we demonstrate that CB2R deficiency exacerbates macrophage pyroptosis, elevates inflammatory mediators, and impairs muscle repair. This effect is driven by hyperactivation of the PI3K/AKT/NF-κB pathway, as blocking this pathway alleviated the inflammatory response and restored the expression of muscle regeneration markers. Furthermore, inflammatory signals released from CB2R-deficient macrophages directly impaired the development of muscle cells in the conditioned medium-based assay. Our findings uncover a novel non-cell-autonomous mechanism whereby CB2R supports skeletal muscle regeneration by restraining macrophage-driven inflammation and maintaining a repair-permissive environment, providing new insights into skeletal muscle repair from the perspective of the regenerative microenvironment and further expand the current understanding of muscle regeneration following injury. This work provides a robust mechanistic rationale for repurposing CB2R agonists as promising therapeutic strategies for muscle injury.