Search

OBJECTIVE: To access the efficacy and safety of the double-ProGlide technique for the femoral vein access-site closure in cryoballoon ablation with uninterrupted oral anticoagulants (OAC), and its impact on the electrophysiology laboratory time as well as hospital stay after the procedure in this observational study. METHODS: Patients with atrial fibrillation undergoing cryoballoon ablation with uninterrupted OAC at Department of Cardiology, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China from May 2019 to May 2021 were enrolled in this study. From October 2020, double-ProGlide technique was consistently used for hemostasis (ProGlide group), and before that conventional manual compression was utilized (manual compression group). The occurrence of vascular and groin complications was accessed during the hospital stay and until the three-month follow-up. RESULTS: A total of 140 participants (69.30% of male, mean age: 59.21 ± 10.29 years) were evaluated, 70 participants being in each group. Immediate hemostasis was achieved in all the patients with ProGlide closure. No major vascular complications were found in the ProGlide group while two major vascular complications were occurred in the manual compression group. The incidence of any groin complication was obviously higher in subjects with manual compression than patients with ProGlide devices (15.71% vs. 2.86%, P = 0.009). In addition, compared with the manual compression group, the ProGlide group was associated with significantly shorter total time in the electrophysiology laboratory [112.0 (93.3–128.8) min vs. 123.5 (107.3–158.3) min, P = 0.006], time from sheath removal until venous site hemostasis [3.8 (3.4–4.2) min vs. 8.0 (7.6–8.5) min, P < 0.001], bed rest time [8.0 (7.6–8.0) h vs. 14.1 (12.0–17.6) h, P < 0.001] and hospital stay after the procedure [13.8 (12.5–17.8) h vs. 38.0 (21.5–41.0) h, P < 0.001]. CONCLUSIONS: Utilization of the double-ProGlide technique for hemostasis after cryoballoon ablation with uninterrupted OAC is feasible and safe, which has the clinical benefit in reducing the total electrophysiology laboratory time and the hospital stay length after the procedure.

Leaf pigments are critical indicators of plant photosynthesis, stress, and physiological conditions. Inversion of radiative transfer models (RTMs) is a promising method for robustly retrieving leaf biochemical traits from canopy observations, and adding prior information has been effective in alleviating the "ill-posed" problem, a major challenge in model inversion. Canopy structure parameters, such as leaf area index (LAI) and average leaf inclination angle (ALA), can serve as prior information for leaf pigment retrieval. Using canopy spectra simulated from the PROSAIL model, we estimated the effects of uncertainty in LAI and ALA used as prior information for lookup table-based inversions of leaf chlorophyll (C-ab) and carotenoid (C-ar). The retrieval accuracies of the two pigments were increased by use of the priors of LAI (RMSE of C(ab )from 7.67 to 6.32 mu g cm(2) , C-ar from 2.41 to 2.28 mu g cm(2)) and ALA (RMSE of C-ab from 7.67 to 5.72 mu g cm(2) , C-ar from 2.41 to 2.23 mu g cm(2)). However, this improvement deteriorated with an increase of additive and multiplicative uncertainties, and when 40% and 20% noise was added to LAI and ALA respectively, these priors ceased to increase retrieval accuracy. Validation using an experimental winter wheat dataset also showed that compared with C-ar , the estimation accuracy of C-ab increased more or deteriorated less with uncertainty in prior canopy structure. This study demonstrates possible limitations of using prior information in RTM inversions for retrieval of leaf biochemistry, when large uncertainties are present. (C) 2022 Crop Science Society of China and Institute of Crop Science, CAAS. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

International audience; Despite the extensive applications, selective and diverse access to N,N’-diarylethane-1,2-diamines remains, to date, a challenge. Here, by developing a bifunctional cobalt single-atom catalyst (Co(SA)-N/NC), we present a general method for direct synthesis of such compounds via selective reductive coupling of cheap and abundant nitroarenes and formaldehyde, featuring good substrate and functionality compatibility, an easily accessible base metal catalyst with excellent reusability, and high step and atom efficiency. Mechanistic studies reveal that the N-anchored cobalt single atoms (CoN(4)) serve as the catalytically active sites for the reduction processes, the N-doped carbon support enriches the HCHO to timely trap the in situ formed hydroxyamines and affords the requisite nitrones under weak alkaline conditions, and the subsequent inverse electron demand 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of the nitrones and imines followed by hydrodeoxygenation of the cycloadducts furnishes the products. In this work, the concept of catalyst-controlled nitroarene reduction to in situ create specific building blocks is anticipated to develop more useful chemical transformations.

We study the information paradox of Reissner-Nordstr${\ddot{o}}$m anti-de Sitter (RN-AdS$_{d+1}$) black holes in the large dimension limit by using the island formula. The entanglement entropy of Hawking radiation is calculated both for the non-extremal and the extremal cases, in which the boundary of the radiation region is close to the outer horizon. For the non-extremal case, the entanglement entropy of Hawking radiation obeys the Page curve, i.e. the entanglement entropy of Hawking radiation increases with time and reaches saturation about twice Bekenstein-Hawking entropy at the Page time. For the extremal case, the entanglement entropy of Hawking radiation becomes ill-defined in the absence of the island due to the appearance of the singularity at the origin of the radial coordinate, while when the island exists, the entanglement entropy is found to be equal to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. In addition, for the case where the boundary of the radiation region is close to the horizon, there are some obvious constraints required by the existence of island solution for both non-extremal and extremal cases, which can be utilized to put constraints on the size of the black hole. These results reveal new features of the semi-classical large $d$ black holes from the island perspective.

Stomata are pores found in the epidermis of stems or leaves, that modulates both plant gas exchange and water/nutrient uptake. The development and function of plant stomata is regulated by a diverse range of environmental cues. However, how carbohydrate status in pre-existing leaves determines systemic stomatal formation within newly developing leaves has remained obscure. The glucose (Glc) sensor HEXOKINASE1 (HXK1) has been reported to decrease the stability of an ethylene/Glc signaling transcriptional regulator, EIN3 (ETHYLENE INSENSITIVE3). EIN3 in turn directly represses the expression of SUC2 (SUCROSE TRANSPORTER 2), encoding a master transporter of sucrose (Suc). Further, KIN10, a nuclear regulator involved in energy homeostasis, has been reported to repress the transcription factor SPCH (SPEECHLESS), a master regulator of stomatal development, to orchestrate stomatal development. Here, we demonstrate that the Glc status of pre-existing leaves determines systemic stomatal development within newly developing leaves by the HXK1—¦EIN3—¦SUC2 module. Further, increasing Glc levels in pre-existing leaves results in a HXK1-dependent decrease of EIN3 and increase of SUC2, triggering the perception, amplification and relay of HXK1-dependent Glc signaling and thereby triggering Suc transport from mature to newly developing leaves. The HXK1—¦EIN3—¦SUC2 molecular module thereby drives systemic Suc transport from pre-existing leaves to newly developing leaves. Subsequently, increasing Suc levels within newly developing leaves promotes stomatal formation through the known KIN10⟶ SPCH module. Our findings thus establish how a carbohydrate signal in pre-existing leaves is sensed, amplified and relayed to determine the extent of systemic stomatal development within newly developing leaves.

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to introduce enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) concept into patients with lumbar degenerative diseases who were treated with oblique lumbar interbody fusion (OLIF), and to assess whether it could increase clinical efficacy, reduce perioperative complications, shorten length of hospital stay (LHS), decrease readmission rate, and improve patient satisfaction.MethodsThe study included patients with lumbar degenerative diseases (LDDs) who underwent OLIF between July 2017 and October 2018 (non-ERAS group), and between November 2018 and July 2020 (ERAS group). The two groups were compared according to the demographic and clinical characteristics.ResultsThere was no significant difference in descriptive characteristics and concomitant diseases between the two groups. The preoperative Oswestry disability index (ODI) score (P = 0.191), lumbar visual analogue scale (VAS) score (P = 0.470), and leg VAS score (P = 0.657) did not significantly different. Most of the ERAS measures were also well implemented after surgery, except for early delivery (74.2%), early catheter removal (63.9%), and multimodal analgesia (80.6%). The LHS in the ERAS group was significantly shorter than that in the non-ERAS group (P = 0.004). Besides, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA) score at 3 days after surgery showed a significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.019). The patient satisfaction in ERAS group was significantly higher than that in the non-ERAS group (P = 0.001).ConclusionThe new nursing pattern combined with ERAS in patients with LDDs who underwent OLIF did not improve the short-term prognosis of surgery, while it could effectively reduce postoperative complications, shorten the LHS, and improve patient satisfaction, and did not lead to additional adverse events.

Users worldwide access massive amounts of curated data in the form of rankings on a daily basis. The societal impact of this ease of access has been studied and work has been done to propose and enforce various notions of fairness in rankings. Current computational methods for fair item ranking rely on disclosing user data to a centralized server, which gives rise to privacy concerns for the users. This work is the first to advance research at the conjunction of producer (item) fairness and consumer (user) privacy in rankings by exploring the incorporation of privacy-preserving techniques; specifically, differential privacy and secure multi-party computation. Our work extends the equity of amortized attention ranking mechanism to be privacy-preserving, and we evaluate its effects with respect to privacy, fairness, and ranking quality. Our results using real-world datasets show that we are able to effectively preserve the privacy of users and mitigate unfairness of items without making additional sacrifices to the quality of rankings in comparison to the ranking mechanism in the clear.

Chen-Ye Feng &ast;, Shi-Yao Bai &ast;, Meng-Lu Li, Jie-Yu Zhao, Jia-Min Sun, Hui-Jing Bao, Yuan Ren, Xin-Ming Su Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Institute of Respiratory Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University; Respiratory Disease Institution of China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xin-Ming SuDepartment of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Institute of Respiratory Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University; Respiratory Disease Institution of China Medical University, 155 North Nanjing Street, Shenyang, 110001, Liaoning, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail xinming_med@126.comBackground: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease featured by inflammation and remodeling of airway. Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell (ADSCs)-derived exosomal miRNAs have been suggested as promising therapeutic manners for diseases.Methods: ADSCs and airway smooth muscle cells (ASMCs) were isolated from SD rats. Flow cytometry was conducted to detect the surface biomarkers of isolated cells. Exosomes were extracted by sequentially centrifuge method and identified by Western blotting and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA). Uptake of exosomes by ASMCs was detected by confocal assay. ASMCs were treated with platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) to mimic cell remodeling and inflammation. Cell counting 8 (CCK-8), Transwell, and flow cytometry were performed to determine the viability, migration, and apoptosis of ASMCs. Release of inflammatory factors was detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Levels of RNAs and proteins were measured by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assay. Interaction between miR-301a-3p and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) was determined by luciferase reporter gene assay. The effect of Exosomal miR-301a-3p was analyzed in ovalbumin (OVA)-induced asthma mouse model.Results: ADSCs-derived exosomes could be effectively internalized by ASMCs. Exosomal miR-301a-3p notably suppressed the PDGF-BB-stimulated proliferation and migration of ASMCs, and enhanced apoptosis, as well as decreased the secretion of inflammatory factors. MiR-301a-3p directly targeted the 3ʹUTR region of STAT3. STAT3 overexpression reversed the suppressive effects of exosomal miR-301a-3p on ASMCs under PDGF-BB stimulation. The expression of miR-301a-3p and STAT3 was negative correlation in specimen from patients with asthma. Exosomal miR-301a-3p inhibited OVA-induced lung injury by targeting STAT3 in mice.Conclusion: This study exposed that exosomal miR-301a-3p from ADSCs could effectively alleviate PDGF-BB-stimulated remodeling and inflammation of ASMCs via targeting STAT3, presented ADSCs-derived exosomal miR-301a-3p as a promising therapeutic approach for asthma.Keywords: asthma, mesenchymal stem cell, exosome, miR-301a-3p, STAT3

BackgroundCalcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is a progressive disease resulting in severe calcific aortic stenosis (AS), and there is increasing interest in the discovery of novel biomarkers to identify patients with potential future calcific AS at an early stage. This study aimed to determine whether follistatin-like 1 (FSTL1) is associated with calcific AS events and its exact role in aortic valve calcification.MethodsA prospective observational cohort study involving 656 patients was performed to investigate the relationship between serum FSTL1 and calcific AS incidence during a follow-up of 5 years. Furthermore, we detected FSTL1 levels in valvular interstitial cells (VICs) from calcified valves and explored the effects of FSTL1 on VIC osteogenic differentiation in vitro as well as the signaling pathways involved.ResultsDuring a median follow-up of 5 years, lower FSTL1 levels were associated with a significantly higher risk of calcific AS events (log rank test, P = 0.007). In addition, Cox multivariable regression analyses verified the predictive value of FSTL1 after adjusting for both demographic features and laboratory confounders. Consistent with our results for serum, a lower concentration of FSTL1 was observed in calcified human valves (n = 11) and mainly colocalized with VICs. Recombinant human FSTL1 (rhFSTL1) stimulation inhibited calcium deposition, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, and osteogenic gene expression partly through the downregulation of the ERK1/2 pathway.ConclusionTaken together, this study provides a strong rationale to consider FSTL1 as a potential therapeutic target for calcific AS.

The principle of minimum potential and complementary energy are the most important variational principles in solid mechanics. The deep energy method (DEM), which has received much attention, is based on the principle of minimum potential energy, but it lacks the important form of minimum complementary energy. To fill the gap, we propose a deep complementary energy method (DCM) based on the principle of minimum complementary energy. The output function of DCM is the stress function that naturally satisfies the equilibrium equation. We extend the proposed DCM algorithm to DCM-Plus (DCM-P), adding the terms that naturally satisfy the biharmonic equation in the Airy stress function. We combine operator learning with physical equations and propose a deep complementary energy operator method (DCM-O), including branch net, trunk net, basis net, and particular net. DCM-O first combines existing high-fidelity numerical results to train DCM-O through data. Then the complementary energy is used to train the branch net and trunk net in DCM-O. To analyze DCM performance, we present the numerical result of the most common stress functions, the Prandtl and Airy stress function. The proposed method DCM is used to model the representative mechanical problems with different types of boundary conditions. We compare DCM with the existing PINNs and DEM algorithms. The result shows the advantage of the proposed DCM is suitable for dealing with problems of dominated displacement boundary conditions, which is proved by mathematical derivations, as well as with numerical experiments. DCM-P and DCM-O can improve the accuracy and efficiency of DCM. DCM is an essential supplementary energy form to the deep energy method. Operator learning based on the energy method can balance data and physical equations well, giving computational mechanics broad research prospects., Comment: 46 pages, 23 figures

Object picking in cluttered scenes is a widely investigated field of robot manipulation, however, ambidextrous robot picking is still an important and challenging issue. We found the fusion of different prehensile actions (grasp and suction) can expand the range of objects that can be picked by robot, and the fusion of prehensile action and nonprehensile action (push) can expand the picking space of ambidextrous robot. In this paper, we propose a Push-Grasp-Suction (PGS) tri-mode grasping learning network for ambidextrous robot picking through the fusion of different prehensile actions and the fusion of prehensile action and nonprehensile aciton. The prehensile branch of PGS takes point clouds as input, and the 6-DoF picking configuration of grasp and suction in cluttered scenes are generated by multi-task point cloud learning. The nonprehensile branch with depth image input generates instance segmentation map and push configuration, cooperating with the prehensile actions to complete the picking of objects out of single-arm space. PGS generalizes well in real scene and achieves state-of-the-art picking performance., Comment: 8 pages

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-cpc-10.1177_10556656231163398 for Integrated Analysis of the Association Between Variants at PAX7 and NSCL/P in the Han Population by Cheng-Wei Yang, Yue You, Jia-lin Sun, Bing Shi and Zhong-Lin Jia in The Cleft Palate Craniofacial Journal

Additional file 2: Figure S1. SPRYD4 expressions in pan-cancer. The analyses of SPRYD4 expression in several cancer types in GEPIA database. Figure S2. Survival analyses of SPRYD4 in other cancer types. Kaplan-Meier analyses showed patients with low SPRYD4 expression had inferior overall survival in kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), kidney renal papillary cell carcinoma (KIRC), liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC), pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). Figure S3. Correlations of SPRYD4 with immunomodulators in ACC. (A) Correlations between immunostimulators and SPRYD4 expression shown by TISIDB database. (B) Correlations between immunoinhibitors and SPRYD4 expression shown by TISIDB database. (C) Top 3 immunostimulators with greatest negative Spearman’s correlation with SPRYD4. (D) Top 3 immunoinhibitors with greatest negative Spearman’s correlation with SPRYD4.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Information on PCR primer oligonucleotide sequences.

Dexterous in-hand manipulation for a multi-fingered anthropomorphic hand is extremely difficult because of the high-dimensional state and action spaces, rich contact patterns between the fingers and objects. Even though deep reinforcement learning has made moderate progress and demonstrated its strong potential for manipulation, it is still faced with certain challenges, such as large-scale data collection and high sample complexity. Especially, for some slight change scenes, it always needs to re-collect vast amounts of data and carry out numerous iterations of fine-tuning. Remarkably, humans can quickly transfer learned manipulation skills to different scenarios with little supervision. Inspired by human flexible transfer learning capability, we propose a novel dexterous in-hand manipulation progressive transfer learning framework (PTL) based on efficiently utilizing the collected trajectories and the source-trained dynamics model. This framework adopts progressive neural networks for dynamics model transfer learning on samples selected by a new samples selection method based on dynamics properties, rewards and scores of the trajectories. Experimental results on contact-rich anthropomorphic hand manipulation tasks show that our method can efficiently and effectively learn in-hand manipulation skills with a few online attempts and adjustment learning under the new scene. Compared to learning from scratch, our method can reduce training time costs by 95%., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, submitted to TNNLS

The mechanism of antler peptide (TL4 peptide), an active ingredient of deer antler, in promoting the proliferation and ALP content of osteoblasts in MC3T3-E mice was investigated by using nuclear magnetic resonance hydrogen spectroscopy (1HNMR)-based cellular metabolomics techniques. The proliferation rate of MC3T3-E mouse osteoblasts and the ALP content in the cell culture medium were measured before and after the administration of TL4 peptide, and the metabolites in the cell crushing medium of MC3T3-E mice were investigated with principal component analysis and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis. The results showed that deer antler peptide (TL4 peptide) could increase the proliferation rate and ALP content of MC3T3-E mouse osteoblasts, and the metabolic profile of cell lysate of MC3T3-E mouse significantly changed after administration. Metaboanalyst analysis revealed that the differential metabolites were mainly related to Phenylalanine, tyrosine and try.ptophan biosynthesis, Taurine and hy. potaurine metabolism, Phenylalanine metabolism and Glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, etc. It was initially clarified that TL4 peptide promoted cell proliferation and ALP content in MC3T3-E mice by regulating the nodes of these metabolic pathways.

The adversarial attack is firstly studied in image classification to generate imperceptible perturbations that can mislead the prediction of a convolutional neural network.Recently,it has also been extensively explored in image retrieval and shows that the popular image retrieval models are undoubtedly vulnerable to return irrelevant images to the query image with small perturbations.In particular,landmark image retrieval is a research hotspot of image retrieval as an explosive volume of landmark images are uploaded on the Internet by people using various smart devices when taking tours in cities.This paper makes the first trail to investigate the defending approach against adversarial attacks on city landmark image retrieval models without training.Specifica-lly,we propose to perform image feature transformation at inference time to eliminate the adversarial effects based on the basic image features.Our method explores four feature transformation schemes:resize,padding,total variance minimization and image quilting,which are performed on a query image before feeding it to a retrieval model.Our defense method has the following advantages:1) no fine-tuning and incremental training procedure is required,2) very few additional computations and 3) flexible ensembles of multiple schemes.Extensive experiments show that the proposed transformation strategies are advanced at defending the existing adversarial attacks performed on the state-of-the-art city landmark image retrieval models.

Clostridium perfringens is an important zoonotic pathogen. This study was designed to explore the prevalence and toxin types of C. perfringens in retail beef collected from Beijing, China. Among 221 beef samples collected, 53 samples were positive for C. perfringens, resulting in the average prevalence as 23.98%. By toxin gene-based typing, the most C. perfringens strains belong to type A (96.23%, 51/53), only 2 strains were identified as type D. By a multi-locus sequence typing (MLST)-based analysis, a total of 36 sequence types (STs) were detected, and the most STs (n=30) represented just a single strain. These finding suggested that the prevalence of C. perfringens in retail beef in Beijing was considerably high and these bacteria displayed extreme diversity in genetics.

Meat quality, an important economic trait, is regulated by many factors, especially by genetic factors, including coding genes, miRNAs, and lncRNAs. Recent studies have elucidated that circRNAs also play a key role in muscle development and lipid deposition. However, the functions and regulatory mechanisms of circRNAs in meat quality remain mostly unknown. The circRNA expression profiles between Huainan pigs (Chinese indigenous pigs, fat-type, Huainan HN) and Large White pigs (Western commercial pigs, lean-type, LW) in the longissimus dorsi (LD) muscle at 38, 58, and 78 days post conception (dpc) were compared by sequencing. In total, 39,887 circRNAs were identified in 18 samples, and 60, 78, and 86 differentially expressed circRNAs (DECs) were found at the three stages mentioned above between these two breeds. The parent genes of DECs were enriched in myogenesis, proliferation, adipogenesis and muscle fiber-type transition. The circRNA-miRNA interaction networks included 38 DECs and 47 miRNAs, and these miRNAs were involved in muscle development and lipid metabolism. Two shared DECs (circ_0030593 and circ_0032760) of these three stages were selected, their head-to-tail junction sites were validated by Sanger sequencing, and RT‒qPCR results suggested that these two DECs might be involved in intramuscular fat deposition. These findings provide a basis for understanding the role of circRNAs in meat quality.

Using the symmetry of the near-horizon geometry and applying quantum field theory of a complex scalar field, we study the spontaneous pair production of charged scalars from near-extremal rotating, electrically and/or magnetically charged black holes. Analytical expressions for pair production, vacuum persistence and absorption cross section are found, and the spectral distribution is given a thermal interpretation. The pair production in near-extremal black holes has a factorization into the Schwinger effect in AdS and Schwinger effect in Rindler space, measuring the deviational from extremality. The associated holographical correspondence is confirmed at the 2-point function level by comparing the absorption cross section ratio as well as the pair production rate both from the gravity and the conformal field theories. The production of monopoles is discussed., Comment: 9 pages, contribution to the proceedings of 15th Marcel Grossmann Meeting (MG15)

μ-opioid receptors (MOR) are widely expressed in the brain, varying in density in different areas. Activation of MORs underlies analgesia, euphoria, but may lead to tolerance, dependence, and ultimately opioid addiction. The Purkinje cell (PC) is the only efferent neuron in the cerebellar cortex and receives glutamatergic synaptic inputs from the parallel fibers formed by the axons of granule cells. Studies have shown that MORs are expressed during the development of cerebellar cells. However, the distribution of MOR and their effects on PF-PC synaptic transmission remain unclear. To examine these questions, we used whole-cell patch clamp recordings and pharmacological methods to determine the effects and mechanisms of MOR activation on synaptic transmission at PF-PC synapses. The MOR-selective agonist DAMGO significantly reduced the amplitude and area under the curve (AUC) of PF-PC evoked (e) EPSCs, and increased the paired-pulse ratio (PPR).DAMGO-induced inhibitory effects on PF-PC eEPSCs and PPR were abolished by MOR specific blocker CTOP. Further, DAMGO significantly reduced the frequency of PF-PC mEPSCs, but had no obvious effect on their amplitude, suggesting a presynaptic site of action. The DAMGO-induced reduction in the frequency of PF-PC mEPSCs also was blocked by CTOP. A protein kinase A (PKA) inhibitor PKI added in the pipette solution did not affect the inhibitory effects on PF-PC mEPSCs induced by DAMGO. Both the PKA inhibitor K5720 and MEK inhibitor U0126 in artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) prevented the inhibitory effects of DAMGO on PF-PC mEPSCs. These findings reveal that MORs are expressed in presynaptic PF axon terminals, where DAMGO can activate presynaptic MORs to inhibit PF-PC synaptic transmission by regulating the release of glutamate. G-protein-dependent cAMP-PKA signaling pathway may be involved in this process.

Bacterial blight (BB) of rice caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) is one of the most serious bacterial diseases that hinder the normal growth and production of rice, which greatly reduces the quality and yield of rice. The effect of traditional methods such as chemical control is often not ideal. A series of production practices have shown that among the numerous methods for BB controlling, breeding and using resistant varieties are the most economical, effective, and environmentally friendly, and the important basis for BB resistance breeding is the exploration of resistance genes and their functional research. So far, 44 rice BB resistance genes have been identified and confirmed by international registration or reported in journals, of which 15 have been successfully cloned and characterized. In this paper, research progress in recent years is reviewed mainly on the identification, map-based cloning, molecular resistance mechanism, and application in rice breeding of these BB resistance genes, and the future influence and direction of the remained research for rice BB resistance breeding are also prospected.

Fine-Grained Visual Classification(FGVC) is the task that requires recognizing the objects belonging to multiple subordinate categories of a super-category. Recent state-of-the-art methods usually design sophisticated learning pipelines to tackle this task. However, visual information alone is often not sufficient to accurately differentiate between fine-grained visual categories. Nowadays, the meta-information (e.g., spatio-temporal prior, attribute, and text description) usually appears along with the images. This inspires us to ask the question: Is it possible to use a unified and simple framework to utilize various meta-information to assist in fine-grained identification? To answer this problem, we explore a unified and strong meta-framework(MetaFormer) for fine-grained visual classification. In practice, MetaFormer provides a simple yet effective approach to address the joint learning of vision and various meta-information. Moreover, MetaFormer also provides a strong baseline for FGVC without bells and whistles. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MetaFormer can effectively use various meta-information to improve the performance of fine-grained recognition. In a fair comparison, MetaFormer can outperform the current SotA approaches with only vision information on the iNaturalist2017 and iNaturalist2018 datasets. Adding meta-information, MetaFormer can exceed the current SotA approaches by 5.9% and 5.3%, respectively. Moreover, MetaFormer can achieve 92.3% and 92.7% on CUB-200-2011 and NABirds, which significantly outperforms the SotA approaches. The source code and pre-trained models are released athttps://github.com/dqshuai/MetaFormer.

The mode-2 internal solitary waves (ISWs) generated by mode-2 internal tide (IT) are identified by mooring observations in the northern South China Sea (SCS) from 2016 to 2017. Two mode-2 ISWs with a re-appearance period of 24.9 h observed on 29 and 30 July 2016 are characterized by type-b ISWs. They occurred when the isotherms compressed obviously in the vertical direction. Modal decomposition of IT horizontal currents shows that the vertical compression of the isotherms is mainly caused by diurnal mode-2 IT. The analysis of the role of the density stratification reveals that a deeper and thinner pycnocline is favorable for generation of mode-2 ISWs rather than pycnocline intensity. By comparing the mode-2 nonlinear, dispersion coefficients and the Ursell numbers calculated based on the stratification associated with different kinds of ITs with the observation results, it is shown that the diurnal mode-2 IT plays a crucial role in the generation of the mode-2 ISWs. When the diurnal mode-2 IT interacts with the semidiurnal IT and causes a deeper and thinner pycnocline, the mode-2 ISWs are easily excited.

The spatial-temporal patterns of tropical cyclone (TC) intensity changes caused by the warm ocean mesoscale eddy (WOME) distribution are evaluated using two sets of idealized numerical experiments. The results show that the TC was intensified and weakened when a WOME was close to and far away from the TC center, respectively. The area where the WOME enhanced (weakened) TC intensity is called the inner (outer) area in this study. Amplitudes of the enhancement and weakening caused by the WOME in the inner and outer area decreased and increased over time, while the ranges of the inner and outer area diminished and expanded, respectively. The WOME in the inner area strengthened the secondary circulation of the TC, increased heat fluxes, strengthened the symmetry, and weakened the outer spiral rainband, which enhanced TC intensity. The effect was opposite if the WOME was in the outer area, and it weakened the TC intensity. The idealized simulation employed a stationary TC, and thus the results may only be applied to TCs with slow propagation. These findings can improve our understanding of the interactions between TC and the WOME and are helpful for improving TC intensity forecasting by considering the effect of the WOME in the outer areas.

Carbon-Emission Accounting (CEA) is an important assessment method for sustainable manufacturing, which mainly focuses on raw materials, energy and waste disposal factors but ignores labor and capital factors. However, the generation process of labor and capital inevitably produce Carbon Dioxide Emissions (CDE). Referring the Extended Exergy Accounting method, the calculation model of extended carbon dioxide emissions factors of capital and labor is established based on the standard CDE per capita, total population, annual working hours, intermediate money M2 and total annual wage S, etc. Then the Extended Carbon-Emission Accounting (ECEA) method is proposed based on the current CEA method, accounting labor, capital, raw materials, energy and all other environmental related factors. Comparatively analyzing on grinding and hard-turning process of a lathe spindle part is studied, the result shows ECEA method is more reasonable and suitable for sustainable manufacturing than CEA method.

Biodegradable elastic scaffolds have attracted more and more attention in the field of soft tissue repair and tissue engineering. These scaffolds made of porous bioelastomers support tissue ingrowth along with their own degradation. It is necessary to develop a computer-aided analyzing method based on ultrasound images to identify the degradation performance of the scaffold, not only to obviate the need to do destructive testing, but also to monitor the scaffold's degradation and tissue ingrowth over time. It is difficult using a single traditional image processing algorithm to extract continuous and accurate contour of a porous bioelastomer. This paper proposes a joint algorithm for the bioelastomer's contour detection and a texture feature extraction method for monitoring the degradation behavior of the bioelastomer. Mean-shift clustering method is used to obtain the bioelastomer's and native tissue's clustering feature information. Then the OTSU image binarization method automatically selects the optimal threshold value to convert the grayscale ultrasound image into a binary image. The Canny edge detector is used to extract the complete bioelastomer's contour. The first-order and second-order statistical features of texture are extracted. The proposed joint algorithm not only achieves the ideal extraction of the bioelastomer's contours in ultrasound images, but also gives valuable feedback of the degradation behavior of the bioelastomer at the implant site based on the changes of texture characteristics and contour area. The preliminary results of this study suggest that the proposed computer-aided image processing techniques have values and potentials in the non-invasive analysis of tissue scaffolds in vivo based on ultrasound images and may help tissue engineers evaluate the tissue scaffold's degradation and cellular ingrowth progress and improve the scaffold designs.

Although the overall survival of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients has been significantly improved, prognostic clinical evaluation remains a substantial problem owing to the heterogeneity and complexity of tumor. A reliable and accurate predictive biomarker may assist physicians in better monitoring of patient treatment outcomes and follow the overall survival of patients. Accumulating evidence has revealed that DTNBP1 plays functional roles in cancer prognosis. Therefore, the expression and function of DTNBP1in HCC was systematically investigated in our study. The expression and prognostic value of DTNBP1 were investigated using the data from Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohorts and clinical samples. A series of cellular function assays were performed to elucidate the effect of DTNBP1 on cellular proliferation, apoptosis and metastasis. Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment and Protein–protein interaction (PPI) network construction were performed to screen the genes with highest interaction scores with DTNBP1. Finally, the underlying mechanism was also analyzed using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and confirmed using RT-qPCR and western blotting. DTNBP1 was upregulated in many types of cancers, especially in HCC. The DTNBP1 expression levels is associated with clinicopathologic variables and patient survival status. The differential expression of DTNBP1 could be used to determine the risk stratification of patients with HCC. DTNBP1 deficiency inhibited cell proliferation and metastasis, but promoted cell apoptosis. Mechanistically, DTNBP1 regulated the cell cycle progression through affecting the expression of cell cycle-related genes such as CDC25A, CCNE1, CDK2, CDC20, CDC25B, CCNB1, and CDK1. DTNBP1, which regulates the cell cycle progression, may be used as a prognostic marker for HCC.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Double immunofluorescence of p-JNK and NeuN, Iba1, GFAP in the spinal cord of sham and neuropathic pain rats. (a) Double immunofluorescence of p-JNK and NeuN, Iba1, GFAP in the spinal cord of sham rats. (b) Double immunofluorescence of p-JNK and NeuN, Iba1, GFAP in the spinal cord of SNI rats. (c-e) Histogram showed that p-JNK co-localization with Iba-1, or GFAP was increased in the SNI 7d group (*p

Background. Primary membranous nephropathy (MN), sometimes referred to as idiopathic membranous nephropathy (IMN), is a kind of MN whose pathogenesis is yet unclear. According to research reports, the incidence of IMN is about 9.8–26.8%, and it is on the rise. Methods. The computer retrieves eight databases to obtain controlled trials at home and abroad on the rituximab (RTX) actions in IMN management. After a rigorous literature quality evaluation, software called RevMan 5.3 was used for data analysis. Results. This meta-analysis finally contained 8 papers. They were all regarded as controlled trials. Six studies reported serum creatinine (standardized mean difference [SMD]: −6.87; 95% CI: −14.09, 0.35; P=0.062), ALB (SMD: 1.91; 95% CI: −0.31, 4.14; P=0.092), and adverse reactions (OR: 0.56; 95% CI: 0.36, 0.90; P

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: There is emerging evidence for critical roles of epigenetic modifiers in development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Protein arginine methyltransferase 2 (PRMT2) is responsible for methylation of arginine residues on histones and targets transcription factors critically involved in many cellular processes, including gene transcription, mRNA splicing, cell proliferation and differentiation. However, its role in colitis remains unknown. In this study, the role and underlying mechanisms of PRMT2 in colitis was studied. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: A mouse dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced experimental colitis model was applied to study PRMT2 in colitis. Lentivirus induced PRMT2 silencing or overexpression in vivo was applied to address the role of PRMT2 in colitis. Detailed western blot and expression analysis was done to understand epigenetic changes induced by PRMT2 in colitis. KEY RESULTS: PRMT2 is highly expressed in patients with IBD, inflamed colon of mice and TNF-α stimulated mice gut epithelial cells. PRMT2 overexpression aggravates while knockdown alleviates DSS-induced colitis in mice, suggesting that PRMT2 is a pivotal mediator of colitis development. Mechanistically, PRMT2 mediates colitis by increasing repressive histone mark H3R8 asymmetric methylation (H3R8me2a) at the promoter region of the suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) promoter. Resultant inhibition of SOCS3 expression and SOCS3-mediated degradation of TNF receptor associated factor 5 (TRAF5) via ubiquitination led to elevated TRAF5 expression and TRAF5-mediated downstream NF-κB/MAPK activation. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Our study demonstrates that PRMT2 acts as a transcriptional co-activator for proinflammatory genes during colitis. Hence targeting PRMT2 may provide a novel therapeutic approach for colitis.

One new luminescent metal-organic framework (LMOF), {[Cd2(L) (BDC)2(H2O)2]·4H2O}n (1) (L = N,N’-bis-pyridin-2-ylmethylene-hydrazine, H2BDC = phthalic acid), was synthesized and structurally characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis, elemental analysis, infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis. Complex 1 exhibits two-dimensional (6,3)-topological layer structures that are further stabilized by hydrogen bonds into a 3 D architecture. Luminescence experiments showed that 1 can act as a turn-off luminescent probe for the sensitive and selective detection of Fe3+, CrO42-, and Cr2O72- ions. The detection limits as well as the possible quenching mechanism was also explored.

Two new sesquiterpenoids, named 9,10-dihydroxy-albaflavenone (1) and 5-hydroxy-albaflavenone (2) were isolated from Dictyophora indusiata. Their structures and absolute configurations were determined by NMR, ECD and HRESIMS. Compounds 1 and 2 showed anti-inflammatory activity by inhibiting TNF-α and NO secretion to varying degrees.

Additional file 5: Fig. S5. The improved neuroinflammation caused by rDKK3 was abolished by Kremen-1 siRNA or DVL-1 siRNA in neuropathic pain rats. (a-c) Western blot results indicated that rDKK3 reduced the pro-inflammatory cytokines level of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α in the spinal cord caused by neuropathic pain, while administration with Kremen-1 siRNA or DVL-1 siRNA up-regulated the decreased pro-inflammatory cytokines level of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α in the spinal cord caused by neuropathic pain (*p

Additional file 3: Fig. S3. rDKK3 alleviated neuroinflammation in the spinal cord induced by neuropathic pain. (a-c) Western blot results indicated that administration with rDKK3 reduced the pro-inflammatory cytokines level of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α in the spinal cord caused by neuropathic pain (*p

Additional file 4: Fig. S4. The Flow cytometry result of the Sham group, SNI + Vehicle group, SNI + rDKK3 group, SNI + rDKK3 + scramble siRNA group, SNI + rDKK3 + Kremen-1 siRNA group, and SNI + rDKK3 + DVL-1 siRNA group. (a) Representative dot spot of flow cytometry for microglia. (b) Histogram showed that rDKK3 promoted the switch of microglia from M1 type to M2 type in the spinal cord of rats with neuropathic pain, while Kremen-1 siRNA and DVL-1 siRNA could abrogate the effect of rDKK3 on microglia polarization (**p

Routine computed tomography (CT) scans are thought to have poor performance for detection of gastrointestinal (GI) neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs), which leads to delayed workup. Detection of even 1 bowel tumor can guide diagnostic workup and management. The purposes of this study were to assess the accuracy of multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) and to compare negative versus positive enteric contrast in detecting at least 1 GI tumor per patient with suspected or confirmed diagnosis of a NEN.This retrospective study included 107 patients with intravenous and oral contrast (65 positive, 40 negative, and 2 no oral contrast) abdominopelvic MDCT. Two abdominal radiologists independently analyzed the CTs for detection and localization of bowel NENs. Surgical pathology was considered the reference standard. Analyses included κ and summary statistics, McNemar test, Pearson χ2 test, and Fisher exact test.Among the 107 CT scans, there were 30 pathology negative studies and 77 studies with positive pathology for GI NEN. Interreader agreement for CT evaluation was substantial (κ = 0.61). At least 1 GI NEN per patient was detected with 51% to 53% sensitivity, 87% to 93% specificity, 91% to 95% positive predictive value (PPV), 42% negative predictive value, and 63% accuracy for each reader, and 57% accuracy when only the concordant (ie, matching) results of the 2 readers were considered. Computed tomography scans with negative enteric contrast had significantly higher sensitivity for concordant results than CTs with positive enteric contrast (58% vs 30%, P = 0.01). Specificity (100% vs 95%, P = 0.5), PPV (100% vs 93%, P = 0.49), negative predictive value (39% vs 39%, P = 0.99), and accuracy (67% vs 51%, P = 0.10) were not significantly different for negative versus positive enteric contrast for the concordant results. There was no significant difference in GI NEN localization between the readers.Routine MDCT with either positive or negative enteric contrast can detect at least 1 GI tumor per patient with more than 90% PPV and more than 50% accuracy in patients suspected of GI NEN. Using negative enteric contrast improves sensitivity for GI NEN versus positive enteric contrast. In addition, there is high accuracy in localizing the bowel tumor with positive or negative enteric contrast, which may guide surgery. Radiologists should have heightened awareness that evaluating such scans closely may lead to detection of primary bowel NENs at a higher rate than previously reported.

Additional file 1: Appendix I. Single covariate adjusted binary logistic regression models of housework and metabolic markers for Chinese men. Appendix II. Single covariate adjusted binary logistic regression models of housework and metabolic markers for Chinese women.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-cpc-10.1177_10556656221125387 for A Novel Missense Variant in the TCOF1 Gene in one Chinese Case With Treacher Collins Syndrome by Bin Yin, Yu-Ya Pang, Jia-Yu Shi, Yan-Song Lin, Jia-Lin Sun, Qian Zheng, Bing Shi and Zhong-Lin Jia in The Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal

China’s urban educational policies have been established to solve the problems of potential discrimination and inequitable access to education, disrupting migrant children who move from rural areas to urban cities and who tend to suffer from a range of mental health issues. However, little is known regarding how China’s urban educational policies affect migrant children’s psychological capital and social integration. This paper aims to explore the effect of urban education policies on improving migrant children’s psychological capital level in China. The second objective of this paper is to examine whether policies can encourage them to integrate into urban society in a positive way. This paper thoroughly analyzes the impact of China’s urban educational policies on three dimensions of social integration of migrant children (identification, acculturation, and psychological integration), and also verifies the mediating effects of psychological capital on the relationships between these variables. The subjects of this study are 1770 migrant children in grades 8–12, who are sourced from seven coastal cities in China. Multiple regression analysis and mediation effect tests are employed to analyze the data. This study reveals that migrant children’s identification with educational policies has a significant positive impact on their psychological capital. Psychological capital has partial mediating effects on the relationship between identification with educational policies and the three dimensions of social integration. In other words, identification with educational policies indirectly affects the process of social integration of migrant children through psychological capital. Based on this, for the purpose of promoting the positive impacts of educational policies of inflow cities on the social integration of migrant children, this study makes the following recommendations: (a) at the micro-level, the psychological capital of individual migrant children should be enhanced; (b) at the meso-level, the partnerships between migrant children and urban children should be taken seriously; and (c) at the macro-level, the urban educational policies related to migrant children should be improved. This paper not only makes policy recommendations for improving the educational policies of inflow cities, but also offers a Chinese perspective on the research related to the tricky issue facing all countries around the world, the social integration of migrant children.

Blue sheep and red deer, second-class key protected animals in China, are sympatric species with a high degree of overlap of food resources in the Helan Mountains, China. Previous studies with blue sheep and red deer in nature have shown that their physiology is closely related to their gut microbiota. However, growth stages and changes occurring in these species in captivity are still unknown. Thus, 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to explore diversity, composition and function of the gut microbiota in these two animal species. The diversity and structure of the gut microbiota in captive blue sheep and red deer changed at different growth stages, but the dominant microbiota phyla in the gut microbiota remained stable, which was composed of the phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobia. Moreover, gut microbiota diversity in juvenile blue sheep and red deer was low, with the potential for further colonization. Functional predictions showed differences such as red deer transcription being enriched in adults, and blue sheep adults having a higher cell wall/membrane/envelope biogenesis than juveniles. Microbial changes between blue sheep and red deer at different growth stages and between species mainly depend on the abundance of the microbiota, rather than the increase and absence of the bacterial taxa.

In the disks of spiral galaxies, diffuse soft X-ray emission is known to be strongly correlated with star-forming regions. However, this emission is not simply from a thermal-equilibrium plasma and its origin remains greatly unclear. In this work, we present an X-ray spectroscopic analysis of the emission from the northern hot spot; a region with enhanced star-formation off the nucleus of M51. Based on the high spectral resolution data from XMM-Newton/RGS observations, we unambiguously detect a high $G$ ratio ($3.2^{+6.9}_{-1.5}$) of the OVII He$\alpha$ triplet. This high $G$ ratio is also spatially confirmed by oxygen emission-line maps from the same data. A physical model consisting of a thermal plasma and its charge exchange (CX) with neutral cool gas gives a good explanation for the $G$ ratio and the entire RGS spectra. This model also gives a satisfactory characterization of the complementary Chandra/ACIS-S data, which enables a direct imaging of the diffuse emission, tracing the hot plasma across the galaxy. The hot plasma has a similar characteristic temperature of ~0.34 keV and an approximately solar metallicity. The CX contributes ~50% to the diffuse emission in the 0.4-1.8 keV band, suggesting an effective hot/cool gas interface area about five times the geometric area of the M51 disk. Therefore, the CX appears to play a major role in the soft X-ray production and may be used as a powerful tool to probe the interface astrophysics, important for studying galactic ecosystems., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, published in ApJ

Background Aidi Injection (ADI), a Chinese herbal preparation with anti-cancer activity, is used for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Several clinical studies have shown that co-administration of ADI with doxorubicin (DOX) is associated with reduced toxicity of chemotherapy, enhanced clinical efficacy and improved quality of life for patients. However, limited information is available about the herb-drug interactions between ADI and DOX. The study aimed to investigate the pharmacokinetic mechanism of herb-drug interactions between ADI and DOX in a rat model of HCC. Methods Experimental HCC was induced in rats by oral administration of diethylnitrosamine. The HCC rats were pretreated with ADI (10 mL/kg, intraperitoneal injection) for 14 consecutive days prior to administration of DOX (7 mg/kg, intravenous injection) to investigate pharmacokinetic interactions. Plasma concentrations of DOX and its major metabolite, doxorubicinol (DOXol), were determined using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). Results Preadministration of ADI significantly altered the pharmacokinetics of DOX in HCC rats, leading to increased plasma concentrations of both DOX and DOXol. The area under the plasma drug concentration-time curve (AUCs) of DOX and DOXol in rats pretreated with ADI were 3.79-fold and 2.92-fold higher, respectively, than those in control rats that did not receive ADI. Conclusions Increased levels of DOX and DOXol were found in the plasma of HCC rats pretreated with ADI.

This paper reports the use of a self-assembling hydrogel as a delivery vehicle for the Parkinson’s disease drug L-DOPA. Based on a two-component combination of an L-glutamine amide derivative and benzaldehyde, this gel has very soft rheological properties and self-healing characteristics. It is demonstrated that the gel can be formulated to encapsulate L-DOPA. These drug-loaded gels are characterized, and rapid release of the drug is obtained from the gel network. This drug-loaded hydrogel has appropriate rheological characteristics to be amenable for injection. We therefore tested this system as a vehicle for nasal delivery of neurologically-active drugs – a drug delivery strategy that can potentially avoid first pass liver metabolism and bypass the blood-brain barrier, hence enhancing brain uptake. In vitro tests indicated that the gel has biocompatibility with respect to nasal epithelial cells. Furthermore, animal studies demonstrated that the nasal delivery of a gel loaded with 3H-labelled L-DOPA out-performed a simple intranasal L-DOPA solution. This was attributed to longer residence times of the gel in the nasal cavity resulting in increased blood and brain concentrations. It was demonstrated that the likely routes of brain penetration of intranasally-delivered L-DOPA gel involve the trigeminal and olfactory nerves connecting to other brain regions.

The advantages of online learning are very significant. With the popularization of network technology and the development of network hardware equipment and mobile terminals, the development of technology provides a foundation for the rapid development of online learning. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, classroom teaching cannot be carried out. Therefore, many schools use online platforms to implement online teaching. From the traditional face-to-face teaching as the main body, online teaching supplements, to a single online teaching form. At present, online teaching mainly includes three forms: live broadcast, recorded broadcast and online self-directed learning. At the same time, a large amount of student activity data is generated on the teaching platform. Take the online teaching data of colleges and universities in the first half of 2020 as an example, with the help of the mining tool RapidMiner to mine and analyze teaching data, student click-through rates and student performance data. Deeply analyze the implementation of online teaching and the mechanism of various influencing factors, and use logistic regression algorithms to predict whether students will pass the exam. Through student learning: On the online learning platform, students' learning content is the same, but the difference is their learning behavior on the platform. The click-through rate reflects the learning behavior of students in the data, and the level of performance is closely related to the degree of active learning of students.