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The purpose of this study was to investigate spirituality and attitudes toward death among rural and urban elderly. We asked 134 older adults from rural areas and 128 from urban areas to complete a self-administrated questionnaire including the Spiritual Self-assessment Scale and Death Attitude Scale. The fear and anxiety of death, escape acceptance, natural acceptance, approach acceptance, and death avoidance scores of older adults living in rural areas were higher than those living in urban areas. The construction of social infrastructure and medical care should be strengthened in rural areas so as to improve older adults' attitudes toward death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-photon microscopy (TPM) image is composed of two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF) and second harmonic generation (SHG) signals, which play a vital role in detecting lesions of biological tissues. However, low contrast and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) appear in TPM image due to the complex imaging process. Image super-resolution (SR) aims to reconstruct high-resolution (HR) images from low-resolution (LR) ones. According to the working principle of TPM imaging system, the degradation model of TPM image is first analyzed. Then, exploiting the Retinex theory, an enhanced ResNet-based super-resolution (ERNSR) method for TPM image is proposed, which consists of residual blocks, discrete cosine transform (DCT) and sub-pixel convolution. ERNSR is trained on a TPM dataset, which contains 113 TPM images of liver samples collected through Zeiss LSM510. Comparisons with several state-of-the-art methods, the experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach achieves a notable improvement in terms of both quantitative and qualitative measurements. It holds the potential to improve the precision of some computer-aided diagnosis systems after SR reconstruction by our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electroacupuncture (EA) pretreatment elicits the neuroprotective effect against cerebral ischemic injury through cannabinoid receptor type 1 receptor (CB1R). In current study, we aimed to investigate whether the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and manganese superoxide dismutase (Mn-SOD) were involved in the antioxidant effect of EA pretreatment through CB1R. At 2 h after EA pretreatment, focal cerebral ischemic injury was induced by transient middle cerebral artery occlusion for 60 min in C57BL/6 mice. The expression of Mn-SOD in the penumbra was assessed by Western blot and immunoflourescent staining at 2 h after reperfusion. In the presence or absence of Mn-SOD small interfering RNA (siRNA), the neurological deficit score, the infarct volume, the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUDP-biotin nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining, and oxidative stress were evaluated. Furthermore, the Mn-SOD protein expression and phosphorylation of STAT3 at Y705 were also determined in the presence and absence of CB1R antagonists (AM251, SR141716) and CB1R agonists (arachidonyl-2-chloroethylamide (ACEA), WIN 55,212-2). EA pretreatment upregulated the Mn-SOD protein expression and Mn-SOD-positive neuronal cells at 2 h after reperfusion. EA pretreatment also attenuated oxidative stress, inhibited cellular apoptosis, and induced neuroprotection against ischemic damage, whereas these beneficial effects of EA pretreatment were reversed by knockdown of Mn-SOD. Mn-SOD upregulation and STAT3 phosphorylation by EA pretreatment were abolished by two CB1R antagonists, while pretreatment with two CB1R agonists increased the expression of Mn-SOD and phosphorylation level of STAT3. Mn-SOD upregulation by EA attenuates ischemic oxidative damage through CB1R-mediated STAT3 phosphorylation in stroke mice, which may represent one new mechanism of EA pretreatment-induced neuroprotection against cerebral ischemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new compact optical Fano filter suitable for biological sensing is proposed, which patterns photon crystal in single crystalline silicon nanomembranes (SiNMs) and transferring onto transparent glass substrates. The effects of air hole size and silicon thickness on the transmission characteristics of new filter are numerically investigated by using three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique, the spectral response is also studied by back-filling bio-liquid. The results show that the dip wavelength will shift toward longer wavelength by either reducing air hole radius or filling bioliquid. The number of dips will increase with the increase of silicon thickness. The size of proposed filter can be less than 1 mm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated whether glutamate receptor subunit 2 (GluR2) is involved in EA pretreatment-induced neuroprotection via cannabinoid CB1 receptors (CB1R) after global cerebral ischemia in mice. Two hours after electric acupuncture (EA) pretreatment, global cerebral ischemia (GCI) was induced by bilateral common carotid artery occlusion (BCCAO) for 20 min. The GluR2 expression was examined in the hippocampus after reperfusion. Cell survival, neuronal apoptosis, the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and neurological scores were evaluated at 24 h after BCCAO in the presence or absence of the GluR2 inhibitor. Furthermore, the GluR2 was determined in the presence and absence of CB1R inhibitor. Our results showed EA pretreatment enhanced expression of GluR2 in the hippocampus 2 h after reperfusion. Moreover, EA pretreatment improved neurological outcome, promoted cell survival, inhibited neuronal apoptosis, and decreased the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio after reperfusion. GluR2 knockdown by GluR2 siRNA effectively reversed the beneficial effects of EA pretreatment. Furthermore, CB1R siRNA and two CB1R antagonists blocked the elevation of GluR2 expression by EA pretreatment, whereas the two CB1R agonists up-regulated GluR2 expression as EA pretreatment. In conclusion, GluR2 up-regulation is involved in neuroprotection of EA pretreatment against GCI through CB1R, suggesting that GluR2 may be a novel target for stroke intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]