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Liquid biopsy has the advantage of diagnosing diseases in a non-invasive manner. Seminal plasma contains secretions from the bilateral testes, epididymides, seminal vesicles, bulbourethral glands, and the prostate. These organs are relatively small and contain delicate tubes that are prone to damage by invasive diagnosis. Cell-free seminal nucleic acids are a newly emerged item in liquid biopsy. Here, we present a comprehensive overview of all known cell-free DNA and cell-free RNAs (mRNA, miRNA, lncRNA, circRNA, piRNA, YRNA, tsRNA, etc.) and discuss their roles as biomarker candidates in liquid biopsy. With great advantages, including high stability, sensitivity, representability, and non-invasiveness, cell-free DNA/RNAs may be developed as promising biomarkers for the screening, diagnosis, prognosis, and follow-up of diseases in semen-secreting organs. Moreover, RNAs in semen may participate in important processes, including sperm maturation, early embryo development, and transgenerational disease inheritance, which may be developed as potential treatment targets for future clinical use.

Using a large animal model and employing a comprehensive approach integrating hemodynamic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and immunohistochemical analyses, we examined the early (2 wk) effects of severe PH on the RV. We observed that RV remodeling during PH progression represents a continuum of transcriptionally driven processes whereby cardiac myocytes, fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and proremodeling macrophages act to coordinately maintain physiological homeostasis and protect myocyte survival during chronic, severe, and progressive pressure overload.

What Is Known? In elderly inpatients, potential inappropriate medication (PIM) is a prominent prescription challenge. However, there is limited information available regarding PIM in patients with central nervous system (CNS) diseases in China. Objective. To evaluate and improve the rational use of drugs for the treatment of CNS diseases in elderly inpatients. Method. A retrospective, cross-sectional study was conducted among elderly inpatients (≥65 years) admitted to the Ninth People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou in China from March 2020 to March 2021. PIM was identified based on the 2019 Beers criteria at admission and discharge. The patients recruited in March 2020 were considered a baseline group, which was used as a comparison to evaluate PIM of CNS disease-related drugs in June 2020, September 2020, December 2020, and March 2021. Results. A total of 1500 patients were included in the evaluation. There was a statistically significant difference in the number of average hospitalization days, drug varieties used, and PIM detection ( p < 0.05 ), as determined by X2 test. A total of 332 cases of PIM were identified, and 226 cases were detected for the interaction with CNS disease dementia. Multifactor logistic regression analysis showed that male, length of stay ≥15 days, and >10 medication types were risk factors for the occurrence of PIM ( p < 0.05 ). After clinical supervision and training based on the High-Risk Drug Replacement Program for the Elderly, the rate of irrational medication under medical advice decreased from 34.67% in March 2020 to 14.0% ( p < 0.001 ) in March 2021. What Is New and Conclusion. There was certain rationality based on the High-Risk Drug Replacement Program for the Elderly, and the rates of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, 5-hydroxylamine/norepinephrine re-intake inhibitor, rotenone, quetiapine, and proton pump inhibitor use were improved. These results provide a reference for the continuous improvement of the PIM catalog for elderly patients.

Background. Excessive proliferation and activation of B cells, resulting in the production of various autoantibodies, is a crucial link and significant feature of the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), as well as the pathological basis of systemic multiorgan damage. However, whether exosomes derived from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hucMSCs-Exo) are involved in the immune regulation of SLE has not been clarified. Objectives. Therefore, our study aimed to investigate the efficacy of hucMSCs-Exo for treating SLE. Methods. hucMSCs-Exo and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of SLE patients were cocultured in vitro, and B cell apoptosis, activation, proliferation, and inflammation levels were detected by flow cytometry. Subsequently, the expression level of miR-155 in B lymphocytes of SLE patients was detected by qRT-PCR, and the target gene relationship between miR-155 and SHIP-1 was found through bioinformatics and dual luciferase activity experiments, which verified the inhibition of miR-155 in B lymphocytes of SLE patients to regulate immunity. Results. We found that hucMSCs-Exo promoted B cell apoptosis, prevented B cell overactivation, and reduced inflammation. MicroRNA-155 (miR-155) has a powerful regulatory function in B cells. It was demonstrated that hucMSCs-Exo acts synergistically with miR-155 inhibitors to target SHIP-1 to B cells more effectively than exosomes alone. Conclusion. Our results provide insight into how hucMSCs-Exo regulates autoimmunity in patients with lupus and suggest targeting miR-155 for autoimmunity while protecting immunity.

BACKGROUND: High-resolution (HR) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides rich pathological information which is of great significance in diagnosis and treatment of brain lesions. However, obtaining HR brain MRI images comes at the cost of extending scan time and using sophisticated expensive instruments. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to reconstruct HR MRI images from low-resolution (LR) images by developing a deep learning based super-resolution (SR) method. METHODS: We propose a feedback network with self-attention mechanism (FNSAM) for SR reconstruction of brain MRI images. Specifically, a feedback network is built to correct shallow features by using a recurrent neural network (RNN) and the self-attention mechanism (SAM) is integrated into the feedback network for extraction of important information as the feedback signal, which promotes image hierarchy. RESULTS: Experimental results show that the proposed FNSAM obtains more reasonable SR reconstruction of brain MRI images both in peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index measure (SSIM) than some state-of-the-arts. CONCLUSION: Our proposed method is suitable for SR reconstruction of MRI images.

This paper deals with the design and analysis of a surface-mounted outer rotor in-wheel motor (IWM) with the aim of reducing cogging torque and torque ripple for electric vehicles. The proposed IWM is equipped with axial sinusoidal surface-mounted permanent magnets (PMs), with the purpose of producing sinusoidal air gap flux density distribution, thus to realize sinusoidal back electromotive force (EMF) and smooth electromagnetic torque. To highlight the advantage of the proposed IWM, the conventional IWM with tile-shaped PMs and the IWM with stepwise-shaped PMs are also studied for comparison. The finite element method in the commercial software package is utilized to analyze the performance of the three motors, including the radial flux density of air gap, back EMF, cogging torque, and electromagnetic torque. Through the quantitative comparison, it is found that the proposed IWM greatly reduces the cogging torque, highly improves the sinusoidality of back EMF, and nearly eliminates the torque ripple.

The open-winding permanent magnet synchronous motor (OWPMSM) system is a novel high-cost system that uses dual-inverters to control both sides of the stator to improve the performance of the motor. To save the system cost, the three-phase four-switch open-winding permanent magnet synchronous motor (TPFS-OWPMSM) system is proposed to replace the general three-phase six-switch OWPMSM system, but it brings the problem of bridge arm capacitor voltage offset. To solve the instability problem caused by capacitance, this paper carries out the state analysis and offset source analysis of the inverter capacitor voltage, and proposes a dual-inverters capacitor voltage balance control strategy. The capacitor balance control converts unstable capacitor offset voltage into current and injects the currents into the stator current loop through closed-loop correction. And this strategy includes the optimal control of different capacitors under dual-inverters with the goal of system stability. The effectiveness of the balancing strategy is verified by the simulation of various motor working conditions.

This paper deals with the leakage magnetic field calculation and magnetic field shielding design of transformers. A large-capacity traction transformer is firstly established, and its magnetic flux density and eddy current loss of the transformer tank are calculated by the layered subdivision method and the surface impedance method. To reduce the eddy current loss of the tank, plate-shaped magnetic shielding and electromagnetic shielding are installed on the surface of the tank. And the simulation results show that plate-shaped magnetic shielding has better shielding effectiveness compared with electromagnetic shielding. Then based on the plate-shaped magnetic shielding, the tile-shaped magnetic shielding is proposed to further reduce the magnetic flux density and loss of the tank. By analyzing the shielding effect of tile-shaped shielding at different heights and widths, the tile-shaped shielding structure with the best shielding effect is obtained. Finally, the advantages of tile-shaped shielding are verified by magnetic-thermal coupling analysis.

Traditional methods of extracting finger vein texture changes and orientation features are susceptible to illumination, translation, noise, and rotation, and the process has difficulty directly extracting structural features through the original image. In this paper, the histogram of competitive Gabor directional binary statistics (HCGDBS) is proposed to extract discriminative structural features. First, the index of the largest filter value is obtained based on the multidirectional Gabor filter as the dominant direction, thereby obtaining the rotation-invariance feature. Second, according to the filter response size of each pixel in different directions, the order difference relationship between the adjacent three directions is compared, and a highly discriminative competitive Gabor direction binary pattern (CGDBP) is constructed. Finally, the CGDBP features are extracted in blocks, and the HCGDBS is constructed to overcome image translation. Experimental results show that it improves the recognition performance and overcomes illumination, translation, noise, and rotation.

Background: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) remains a nationwide health problem in China; there were a reported 1,045,000 people living with Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS by the end of October 2020, and the proportion of individuals aged 50 years and older living with HIV has also increased from 8% to 24% over the past two decades. background: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains a nationwide health problem in China, there were a reported 1,045,000 people living with HIV/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) by the end of October 2020, and the number of individuals aged over 50 years living with HIV has also increased over the past two decades. Methods: A cross-sectional study and an 1:2 matched case-control study were conducted from July to August 2016, in Wuxi city, eastern China. A total of 1,000 men aged 50 years and older completed a face-to-face interview regarding their AIDS-related knowledge and attitudes, as well as risk behaviors. Results: Prevalence was 0.1% for HIV and 2% for syphilis. The awareness rate of AIDS-related knowledge among elderly men was 48.9% (range 40.7%-63.9%). The 1꞉2 matched case-control study indicated that only the AIDS-related attitudes were different between the two groups (χ2=8.726, P=0.013), the conditional logistic regression analysis indicated that scores of AIDS health knowledge were the only significant prognostic factor for the infection (HR=0.754 (0.569- 0.999), P=0.049). method: A cross-sectional study and an 1:2 matched case-control study were conducted from July to August 2016, in Wuxi city, eastern China. A total of 1000 men aged over 50 years completed a face-to-face interview regarding their HIV-related knowledge and attitudes, as well as risk behaviors. Conclusion: It was crucial to prevent HIV/AIDS and syphilis infections by improving the awareness of AIDS-related knowledge and changing related attitudes among the elderly. Further research aimed at identifying how these factors impact their sexual decision-making can shed valuable insight into further prevention program in this population.