Search

The immuno-regulating potential of edible fungus polysaccharides has gained more and more attention. However, there is little information about the study of Auricularia cornea var. Li. polysaccharides regulating immunomodulatory activity. The objective of this work to analyze the immunomodulatory activity and the mechanism of A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides supplementation in an immunosuppressed mice model induced by cyclophosphamide. The effects of A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides on immune system including immune organ indices, immunoglobulin contents, and inflammation cytokines in immunosuppressed mice were determined. In addition, the regulatory effects of A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides on the gut microbiota and their metabolites were analyzed. Results showed that A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides significantly elevated immune organ indexes, remarkably enhanced the levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA), IgG and IgM in serum and secretory IgA (sIgA) in the intestinal mucosa, conspicuously stimulated the levels of tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a), interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, and IL-10 in the serum. A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides also could restore gut microbiota to the pattern that is similar with that of the control group with increase of the relative abundances of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs)-producing bacteria. Furthermore, the content of SCFAs were increased after A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides supplementation. This study provides useful information for applications of A. cornea var. Li. polysaccharides in immune-regulated foods and medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Objectives] The aim was to study the type and content of alcohol-soluble active ingredients in Auricularia auricula. [Methods] With total yield of alcohol extract as an indicator, the optimal concentrations of ethanol, isopropanol and n-butanol for alcohol extraction of A. auricula powder were determined. The contents of total flavonoids, polyphenols and triterpenoids in three different alcohol extracts of A. auricula, as well as in the alcohol extracts of polysaccharides and melanin extraction residue of A. auricuh were determined. [Results] When 90% ethanol was used, the yield of alcohol extract of A. auricula was 10.7%. In the alcohol extract, the contents of total flavonoids, polyphenols and triterpenoids were 5.68 mg/100 g, 0.43% and 0.55%, respectively. When 100% isopropanol was used, the yield of alcohol extract was 10.1%. In the alcohol extract, the contents of total flavonoids, polyphenols and triterpenoids were 4. 84 mg/100 g, 0.66% and 0.37%, respectively. When 70% n-butanol was used, the yield of alcohol extract was 5.4%. In the alcohol extract, the contents of total flavonoids, polyphenols and triterpenoids were 4.07 mg/100 g, 1.68% and 0.30%, respectively. The yields of ethanol, isopropanol and n-butanol ex-tracts of polysaccharide and melanin extraction residue of A. auricula were 13. 8%, 14.3% and 8.9%, respectively. In the three kinds of alcohol extracts, the contents of total flavonoids were 8. 28, 11. 99, and 12. 38 mg/100 g, respectively; the contents of polyphenols were 0.14%, 0.38% and 0.75%, respectively; and the contents of triterpenoids were 0.25%, 0.60% and 0.58%, respectively. [Conclusions] This study wiil provide certain reference for the in-depth study and development and utilization of active ingredients in A. auricuh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a running freely land-vehicle strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS), the problems of self-calibration and attitude alignment need to be solved simultaneously. This paper proposes a complete alignment algorithm for the land vehicle navigation using Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and an odometer. A self-calibration algorithm is proposed based on the global observability analysis to calibrate the odometer scale factor and IMU misalignment angle, and the initial alignment and calibration method based on optimal algorithm is established to estimate the attitude and other system parameters. This new algorithm has the capability of self-initialization and calibration without any prior attitude and sensor noise information. Computer simulation results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is superior to the extended Kalman filter (EKF) method during the oscillating attitude motions, and the vehicle test validates its advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a novel tracking algorithm by minimizing the sum-of-squared differences (SSD) between the normalized image gradients of the template image and the input image from the test image sequence. The proposed tracking algorithm is efficient to implement since it is based on the framework of the inverse compositional algorithm, a computationally efficient tracking technique. The experiments show that the proposed tracking algorithm is superior to the intensity-based inverse compositional algorithm in tracking objects under varying illumination conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active contours, as a technique for boundary extraction, have been successfully used in image processing and computer vision. One of the knotty problems of active contours is to conform to the object boundary with complex shape, which could bring heavy manual work at the initialization procedure. The gradient vector flow (GVF) field has been one of the most popular external forces that can increase the capture range of active contours and bidirectionally evolve the active contours toward the object boundary. However, it has a poor performance when dealing with some complex shapes, such as semi-closed concave, screwy concave, hooked concave, as well as the others presented in our experiments. We propose a novel GVF-based balloon force, which can efficiently assist the GVF field in driving active contours toward the complex object shapes. This additional force is used only when the active contours are prevented from evolving toward the object boundary by the saddle and/or stationary points in the GVF field. Therefore, it can maintain the bidirectional evolution property of the GVF and meanwhile take advantage of the power of the balloon force in segmenting complex shapes. Various experimental results on image segmentation are presented to show the good performance of the proposed active contour model that uses the GVF field and the proposed balloon force together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]