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To analyze the safety of geological engineering, experimental research on the mechanical properties of the rock joint plane is critical. In this paper, triaxial compression tests are carried out on rock specimens with the different prefabricated joint planes, including different dip angles, roughness, confining pressure and surrounding rock strength, and the strength characteristics, failure modes, stress evolution laws, and crack propagation laws are revealed. The test results show that when the specimen is damaged, the strain, peak stress, and residual strength all increase with the increase of roughness, confining pressure, and strength of surrounding rock but decrease significantly with the increase of joint plane angle. With the increase of stress, the stress-strain curve shows multiple fluctuations, indicating that the specimen occurs multiple slip-stable phenomena during the loading process. With the increase of the angle, the multiple cracks of the specimen gradually merge, and the cracks are always vertical to the joint plane, showing splitting failure. As the roughness of the joint plane increases, the possibility of the joint plane sliding becomes smaller, and the splitting mode of the specimen develops from multiple fractures to a single fracture. As the strength of the surrounding rock increases, the slope of the stress-strain curve gradually increases, and the splitting mode develops from a small number of single splits to multiple splitting penetration failures. The increase of the confining pressure significantly improves the failure strength of the specimen, and the crack number of the damaged specimen also increases significantly. The research results provide theoretical support for scientific analysis of the stability of underground engineering under the disturbance of fissures or faults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insulators identification and their missing defect detection are of paramount importance for the intelligent inspection of high-voltage transmission lines. As the backgrounds are complex, some insulators may be occluded, and the missing defect of the insulator is so small that it is not easily detected from aerial images with different backgrounds. To address the above issues, in this study, a cascaded You Only Look Once (YOLO) models are mainly explored to perform insulators and their defect detection in aerial images. Firstly, the datasets used for insulators location and missing defect detection are created. Secondly, a new model is proposed to locate the position of insulators, which is improved in the feature extraction network and multisacle prediction network based on previous YOLOv3-dense model. An improved YOLOv4-tiny model is used to conduct missing defect detection on the detected insulators. And then, the proposed YOLO models are trained and tested on the built datasets, respectively. Finally, the final models are cascaded for insulators identification and their missing defect detection. The average precision of missing defect detection can reach 98.4%, which is 5.2% higher than that of faster RCNN and 10.2% higher than that of SSD. The running time of the cascaded YOLO models for missing defect detection can reach 106 frames per second. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed deep learning models achieve good performance in insulator identification and its missing defect detection from the inspection of high-voltage transmission lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sandy cobble ground has loose structure, uneven particle size, and random distribution characteristics, which may lead to the local collapse of ground. This paper carried out field tests based on the project of Luoyang urban rail transit. For this, the surface settlement, pore water pressure, and earth pressure in the test section were measured. The excavation disturbance and influence range on the soil layer in each stage of earth pressure balance shield tunneling were studied. Meanwhile, based on the key construction elements in sandy cobble ground, a numerical simulation method was proposed based on shield construction parameters. The disturbance characteristics of deformation, seepage action, and stress state of the sandy cobble ground during shield construction were obtained through numerical calculation. The rationality of the simulation results was verified by the measured tests. The results showed that the measured data were in good agreement with the simulation results. The research results provide a calculation method for predicting the soil disturbance in the earth pressure balance shield construction in a sandy cobble ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laparoscopic adrenalectomy (RLA) is widely used for adrenal tumors, cancer, cortical hyperplasia, etc. Therefore, how to care for patients after surgery is a necessary means to speed up the rapid healing of surgical wounds and reduce the incidence of related complications. To solve the problem in traditional wound treatment, antibacterial dressings are used, and most of the auxiliary materials need to be replaced frequently, or there is serious adhesion to the wound, which causes secondary wound infection. The methods used to study in this work report a new long-acting antibacterial and breathable wound dressing based on nanoscale zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) in the care of adrenalectomy; the clinical effects of ZnO NP-based antibacterial dressings were systematically evaluated in terms of patients' wound healing rate (%), infection rate (%), healing time (d), and the number of dressing changes. The results revealed that the wound healing rate of patients with ZnO NP-based antibacterial dressing was as high as 16.67% and the incidence of adverse reactions was only 26.19%, which was 40.48% lower than traditional dressings. Such promising antibacterial dressings are expected to be greatly used in the medical field in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the thermodynamic and thermoelastic theory, the coupled governing equations of deformation, heat transfer, and moisture migration in unsaturated soils were given. The coupled calculation process was realized by the finite element method. The hydrothermal coupling characteristics of two cases of unsaturated kaolin clay were studied by using a self-developed test device, and the test results were compared with the numerical results. The results showed that when the initial saturation of the soil is high, the volumetric water content of the measured point increases, and then it is in a stable state during the heating process. When the initial saturation is low, the volumetric water content near the heat source increases firstly and then decreases during the heating process. The rise and fall of temperature make the volumetric water content of the soil irreversible. The volumetric water content of each measured point is lower than the initial state. The closer it is to the internal measured heat source, the more obvious this phenomenon is; the lower the initial saturation is, the more obvious it is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chronic pain of knee osteoarthritis in the elderly is investigated in detail in this paper, as well as the complexity of chronic pain utilising neuroimaging recognition techniques. Chronic pain in knee osteoarthritis (KOA) has a major effect on patients' quality of life and functional activities; therefore, understanding the causes of KOA pain and the analgesic advantages of different therapies is important. In recent years, neuroimaging techniques have become increasingly important in basic and clinical pain research. Thanks to the application and development of neuroimaging techniques in the study of chronic pain in KOA, researchers have found that chronic pain in KOA contains both injury-receptive and neuropathic pain components. The neuropathic pain mechanism that causes KOA pain is complicated, and it may be produced by peripheral or central sensitization, but it has not gotten enough attention in clinical practice, and there is no agreement on how to treat combination neuropathic pain KOA. As a result, using neuroimaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), this review examines the changes in brain pathophysiology-related regions caused by KOA pain, compares the latest results in pain assessment and prediction, and clarifies the central brain analgesic mechanistic. The capsule network model is introduced in this paper from the perspective of deep learning network structure to construct an information-complete and reversible image low-level feature bridge using isotropic representation, predict the corresponding capsule features from MRI voxel responses, and then, complete the accurate reconstruction of simple images using inverse transformation. The proposed model improves the structural similarity index by about 10%, improves the reconstruction performance of low-level feature content in simple images by about 10%, and achieves feature interpretation and analysis of low-level visual cortical fMRI voxels by visualising capsule features, according to the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we establish global conservative solutions of the two-component μ -Hunter–Saxton system by the methods developed in "A. Bressan, A. Constantin, Global Conservative Solutions of the Camassa-Holm Equation, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 183 (2), 215–239 (2007)" and "H. Holden, X. Raynaud, Periodic Conservative Solutions of the Camassa-Holm Equation, Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble) 58(3), 945–988 (2008)." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) method, which uses one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1-D CNN) and WaveCluster clustering analysis to detect and diagnose sensor faults in the supply air temperature (Tsup) control loop of the air handling unit. In this approach, 1-D CNN is employed to extract man-guided features from raw data, and the extracted features are analyzed by WaveCluster clustering. The suspicious sensor faults are indicated and categorized by denoting clusters. Moreover, the Tc acquittal procedure is introduced to further improve the accuracy of FDD. In validation, false alarm ratio and missing diagnosis ratio are mainly used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed FDD method. Results show that the abrupt sensor faults in Tsup control loop can be efficiently detected and diagnosed, and the proposed method is equipped with good robustness within the noise range of 6 dBm∼13 dBm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interventional therapies, such as percutaneous transluminal angioplasty and endovascular stent implantation, are used widely for the treatment of diabetic peripheral vascular complications. Reendothelialization is an essential process in vascular injury following interventional therapy, and hyperglycemia in diabetes mellitus (DM) plays an important role in damaging endothelial layer integrity, leading to the retardance of reendothelialization and excessive neointimal formation. Notoginsenoside Fc (Fc), a novel saponin isolated from Panax notoginseng, effectively counteracts platelet aggregation. Nevertheless, the potential effects and molecular mechanisms of Fc on reendothelialization have yet to be explored. In this study, we present novel findings that show the benefit of Fc in accelerating reendothelialization and alleviating excessive neointimal formation following carotid artery injury in diabetic Sprague–Dawley rats in vivo. Simultaneously, the decreased autophagy of the injured carotid artery in diabetic rats was restored by Fc treatment. Our in vitro results also demonstrated that Fc promoted endothelial cell proliferation and migration under high-glucose treatment by increasing autophagy. In summary, this study supported the notion that Fc could accelerate reendothelialization following vascular injury in diabetic rats by promoting autophagy, suggesting that Fc may exert therapeutic benefits for early endothelial injury and restenosis following intervention in diabetes-associated vascular diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute liver injury is a common consequence of taking overdose of acetaminophen (APAP). The aim of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant activity and hepatoprotective effect of a mangrove plant Sonneratia apetala fruit extract (SAFE) on APAP-induced liver injury in mice. Mice were orally pretreated with SAFE (100, 200, and 400 mg/kg) daily for one week. The control and APAP groups were intragastrically administered with distilled water, and NAC group was treated with N-Acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) before APAP exposure. The results manifested that SAFE significantly improved survival rates, attenuated hepatic histological damage, and decreased the alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels in serum in APAP-exposed mice. SAFE treatment also increased glutathione (GSH) level and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity, enhanced catalase (CAT), and total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), as well as reducing malondialdehyde (MDA) level in liver. In addition, the formation of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and elevation of myeloperoxidase (MPO) in APAP-exposed mice were inhibited after SAFE treatment. And SAFE also displayed high DPPH radical scavenging activity and reducing power in vitro. The main bioactive components of SAFE such as total phenol, flavonoid, condensed tannin, and carbohydrate were determined. The current study proved that SAFE exerted potential protective effect against APAP-induced acute liver injury, which might be associated with the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of SAFE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated the role of MAP kinase phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) and rosiglitazone (RSG) in glucocorticoid resistance and glucocorticoid sensitivity, respectively, using a guinea pig model of lipopolysaccharide- (LPS-) induced sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL). The pigs were divided into control, LPS, LPS+dexamethasone (DEX), LPS+RSG, and LPS+DEX+RSG groups. Their hearing was screened by auditory brainstem response measurement. Immunofluorescence staining was used to identify the location of MKP-1 in the inner ear. The expression levels of MKP-1 and the related proteins in the inner ear were detected using western blotting. The morphological changes in the cochlea were observed via hematoxylin-eosin staining. Severe hearing loss was observed in the LPS group, as opposed to the protection from hearing loss observed in the LPS+DEX+RSG group. A positive correlation was observed between MKP-1 expression levels and protection from hearing loss. RSG and DEX synergistically influenced inner ear inflammation. In conclusion, resistance of LPS-induced SSHL guinea pig models to glucocorticoids may result from impaired MKP-1 function in inner ear tissues, induced by glucocorticoids, impairing the inhibition of inflammation. Our findings present novel targets to develop potential therapeutics to treat inflammatory diseases of the inner ear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rapid development of technology and improvement of living standards, the per capita holding of automobiles greatly increases, and the amount of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) becomes larger and larger such that it is valuable to investigate an effective strategy for recycling ELVs from the viewpoints of environmental protection and resource utilization. In this paper, an optimization model with fuzzy and stochastic parameters is built to formulate the transportation planning problems of recycling ELVs in polymorphic uncertain environment, where the unit processing and transportation costs, the selling price of reused items, and the fixed cost are all fuzzy, while the demand in secondary market and the production capacity are random owing to features underlying the practical data. For this complicated polymorphic uncertain optimization model, a unified compromising approach is proposed to hedge the uncertainty of this model such that some powerful optimization algorithms can be applied to make an optimal recycling plan. Then, an interactive algorithm is developed to find a compromising solution of the uncertain model. Numerical results show efficiency of the algorithm and a number of important managerial insights are revealed from the proposed model by scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims Icariin ( ICA), a flavonoid isolated from epimedii, has been reported to have potential protective effects on the cardiovascular system. This study is to investigate the effect and the underlying mechanisms of ICA on ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Methods Wister rat hearts were subjected to I/R using Langendorff perfusion system. Cardiac function, myocardial infarct size, lactate dehydrogenase ( LDH), and creatine kinase- MB ( CK- MB) activities in coronary effluent, and superoxide dismutase ( SOD) and malondialdehyde ( MDA) content in heart tissue and cardiomyocyte apoptosis were assayed. Results Compared with the I/R group, ICA treatment significantly improved cardiac function, decreased myocardial infarct size, enzyme activity, oxidative stress, and apoptosis. In addition, ICA treatment lead to an increased p-Akt level, which was partially reversed by LY294002, a PI3 K pathway inhibitor. Conclusion Our study suggests that ICA has a cardioprotective effect against I/R injury, which is associated with its antioxidative and anti-apoptotic effect, at least partially, through the activation of PI3 K-Akt signaling pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary breast lymphoma (PBL) is a rare subtype of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) with rapid progression and high risk of central nervous system metastasis. We have investigated 40 PBL patients retrospectively, and 16 of them were sequenced by a target panel of 112 genes related with lymphoma. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) identified 203 mutations spanning 35 genes and revealed seven potential protein-changing genes (PIM1, MYD88, DTX1, CD79B, KMT2D, TNFAIP3, and ITPKB) with high frequency, referring crucial roles in lymphomagenesis. Our result suggested that PIM1 mutation is correlated with the age and pathological type of PBL patients. Gene TNFAIP3 and KMT2D mutation is only related to the pathological type and primary site, respectively. These high-mutant genes detected in PBL indicated a tendency to shorten overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), which may lead to poor prognosis. Furthermore, the nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) pathway and related regulatory factors are essential for the development of targeted therapy as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. Since the prognosis of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients with bone metastasis (BM) is poor, this study is aimed at using big data to build a machine learning (ML) model to predict the risk of BM in RCC patients. Methods. A retrospective study was conducted on 40,355 RCC patients in the SEER database from 2010 to 2017. LASSO regression and multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to determine independent risk factors of RCC-BM. Six ML algorithm models, including LR, GBM, XGB, RF, DT, and NBC, were used to establish risk models for predicting RCC-BM. The prediction performance of ML models was weighed by 10-fold cross-validation. Results. The study investigated 40,355 patients diagnosed with RCC in the SEER database, where 1,811 (4.5%) were BM patients. Independent risk factors for BM were tumor grade, T stage, N stage, liver metastasis, lung metastasis, and brain metastasis. Among the RCC-BM risk prediction models established by six ML algorithms, the XGB model showed the best prediction performance (AUC = 0.891). Therefore, a network calculator based on the XGB model was established to individually assess the risk of BM in patients with RCC. Conclusion. The XGB risk prediction model based on the ML algorithm performed a good prediction effect on BM in RCC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To evaluate the effects of He's Yangchao Recipe (HSYC) on ameliorating ovarian oxidative stress of aging mice under consecutive superovulation. Methods. An 8-month-old C57BL/6 female mouse was chosen to establish an aging model under ovarian hyperstimulation. Mice were randomly separated into four groups: R1 as the control group, R4 as the model group, NR4 with N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) administration, and TR4 with HSYC administration. Oocyte collection, in vitro fertilization, and embryo culture were performed. The serum hormone levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA); the reactive oxygen species (ROS) level of oocytes, the number of growing follicles, corpus luteum, ovulated oocytes, and developing embryos at each stage, along with the proportions of fragmented oocytes and abnormal mitochondria in granulosa cells (GCs) and the apoptosis rate of GCs were calculated; the mRNA and protein levels of JNK, P53, BAX were detected by real-time PCR and the Simple Western System. Results. HSYC enhanced estradiol, progesterone, and inhibin-B levels and increased growing follicle and corpus luteum and ovulated egg counts compared to the R4 group (P < 0.05), whereas it decreased the proportions of fragmented oocytes (P < 0.01); Meanwhile, embryos from mice subjected to four superovulation cycles with HSYC treated had a higher hatching potential. The ROS level of oocytes is downregulated by HSYC (P < 0.01) and the percentage of abnormal mitochondrial in ovaries of the TR4 group was also significantly declined compared to the R4 group (P < 0.05); the most TUNEL-positive cells proportion was detected in the R4 group; nevertheless, HSYC effectively attenuated this detrimental effect (P < 0.05). The mRNA and protein expressions of JNK and P53 in ovary tissues were reduced in the TR4 group while these genes were upregulated by repeated superovulation (P < 0.05). Conclusions. HSYC exerted promising effects on promoting the diminished ovarian reserve and decreased oocyte quality induced by both aging and consecutive ovarian superovulation, potentially via the ROS/JNK/p53 pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: With the rapid development of electronic industry, the miniaturization and integration of components have become an irreversible development trend, which puts forward high requirements for lead‐free ceramic materials with excellent recoverable energy storage density and efficiency. In addition, it is also a great challenge to sustain excellent energy storage performance under different environmental conditions. In this work, a combined design strategy was proposed to induce polar nano regions and reduce grain size by introducing SrTi0.5Zr0.5O3 (STZ). The addition of STZ reduced the grain size to submicron level, accompanied by relaxation enhancement. The high energy storage properties (Wrec = 1.85 J/cm3, η = 65.92%) were achieved in 0.80Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3‐0.20SrTi0.5Zr0.5O3 (BNT‐STZ) ceramics at 150 kV/cm. Excellent temperature stability (40°C‐160°C) and frequency stability (1‐500 Hz) of energy storage performance have been obtained under 100 kV/cm, with the fluctuations below 8%. Importantly, A high power density of 3.64 MW/cm3 and a transitory discharge time (t0.9 ~ 0.632 μs) were achieved for 0.80BNT‐0.20STZ ceramic under 160 kV/cm. These characteristics indicate that 0.80BNT‐0.20STZ ceramic is expected to be applied in high‐power equipment. Highlights: A combined design strategy was proposed to induce polar nano regions and reduce grain size by introducing STZ.0.80BNT‐0.20STZ ceramic possesses a recoverable energy density of 1.85 J/cm3 and efficiency of 65.92%.0.80BNT‐0.20STZ ceramic exhibits good electrical stability in wide frequency (1‐500 Hz) and temperature range (40‐160°C).A high power density (PD) of 3.64 MW/cm3 and a transitory discharge time (t0.9 ~ 0.632 μs) can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The huge amount of gene expression data generated by microarray and next-generation sequencing technologies present challenges to exploit their biological meanings. When searching for the coexpression genes, the data mining process is largely affected by selection of algorithms. Thus, it is highly desirable to provide multiple options of algorithms in the user-friendly analytical toolkit to explore the gene expression signatures. For this purpose, we developed GESearch, an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit, which is written in MATLAB and supports a variety of gene expression data files. This analytical toolkit provides four models, including the mean, the regression, the delegate, and the ensemble models, to identify the coexpression genes, and enables the users to filter data and to select gene expression patterns by browsing the display window or by importing knowledge-based genes. Subsequently, the utility of this analytical toolkit is demonstrated by analyzing two sets of real-life microarray datasets from cell-cycle experiments. Overall, we have developed an interactive GUI toolkit that allows for choosing multiple algorithms for analyzing the gene expression signatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to have a clear understanding of the creep characteristics of water-rich soft rocks under a dynamic load and the evolution of cracks because soft rock roadways in deep mines are very sensitive to disturbances, and instability and damage can easily occur under the impact of disturbances such as mining and blasting. In this study, a self-developed disturbed creep test bench was used to conduct graded loading creep disturbance tests on mudstone specimens with different moisture contents. The results show that an increase in the moisture content leads to a significant increase in the creep failure strain of mudstone, and the accelerated creep rate is greatly accelerated. Moreover, as the moisture content increases, the type of mudstone creep disturbance failure gradually changes from accelerated creep failure to disturbance failure. By analyzing the acoustic emission (AE) characteristics of the mudstone creep disturbance tests, it was found that the increase in the moisture content greatly weakens the AE count and the accumulated energy. In each stage of disturbance, the AE signals jumped, and the stability was restored at the end of the disturbance. As the load increased, the specimen entered the accelerated creep stage, the AE signal increased exponentially, and the internal cracks expanded rapidly until failure occurred. It is of great significance to carry out creep disturbance experiments and to analyze the evolution of the internal cracks in specimens with different moisture contents to maintain the long-term stability of deep soft rocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a leading foodborne pathogen that occurs naturally in estuarine and marine environments worldwide, is responsible for raising food safety issues in China. The global dissemination of this pathogen underscores the importance of understanding its virulence factors and their effects on the human host. We herein obtained and compared the secretomic profiles of the virulent ATCC17802 strain and the avirulent JHY32 strain of V. parahaemolyticus. In total, 28 extracellular proteins were identified, and most proteins that were differentially expressed in ATCC17802 were related to toxicity and environmental adaptability. In addition, various extracellular proteins with unknown function and potential virulence factors were identified. Our results provide data that can be used for the development of novel vaccines against V. parahaemolyticus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning the knowledge hidden in the manifold-geometric distribution of the dataset is essential for many machine learning algorithms. However, geometric distribution is usually corrupted by noise, especially in the high-dimensional dataset. In this paper, we propose a denoising method to capture the "true" geometric structure of a high-dimensional nonrigid point cloud dataset by a variational approach. Firstly, we improve the Tikhonov model by adding a local structure term to make variational diffusion on the tangent space of the manifold. Then, we define the discrete Laplacian operator by graph theory and get an optimal solution by the Euler–Lagrange equation. Experiments show that our method could remove noise effectively on both synthetic scatter point cloud dataset and real image dataset. Furthermore, as a preprocessing step, our method could improve the robustness of manifold learning and increase the accuracy rate in the classification problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim of the Study. This study is aimed at exploring the effects and pharmacological mechanisms of the extracts from the Heritiera littoralis fruit (EFH) on dextran sulfate sodium- (DSS-) induced ulcerative colitis (UC) in mice. Materials and Methods. The chemical compositions of EFH were identified using LC-ESI-MS. The mice with 3% DSS-induced UC were administered EFH (200, 400, and 800 mg/kg), sulfasalazine (SASP, 200 mg/kg), and azathioprine (AZA, 13 mg/kg) for 10 days via daily gavage. The colonic inflammation was evaluated by the disease activity index (DAI), colonic length, histological scores, and levels of inflammatory mediators. The gut microbiota was characterized by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and analysis. Results. LC-ESI-MS analysis showed that EFH was rich in alkaloids and flavones. The results indicated that EFH significantly improved the DAI score, relieved colon shortening, and repaired pathological colonic variations in colitis. In addition, proteins in the NF-κB pathway were significantly inhibited by EFH. Furthermore, EFH recovered the diversity and balance of the gut microbiota. Conclusions. EFH has protective effects against DSS-induced colitis by keeping the balance of the gut microbiota and suppressing the NF-κB pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unbalanced inflammatory reactions and oxidative stress are inseparably interconnected, and both may play crucial roles in the pathophysiological mechanisms of preeclampsia (PE). In the published previous studies, we have genotyped for SNPs that related to inflammation (rs2227485, rs153109, rs17855750, rs2027432, rs2275913, rs763780, rs4819554, and rs13015714) and oxidative stress (rs1695, rs4680, rs1800566, rs4807542, rs713041, rs7579, rs230813, rs1004467, rs3824755, and rs9932581) to investigate whether these polymorphisms were associated with susceptibility to PE in a Chinese Han population. In this present study, we collected these data of experimental and clinical from above studies for haplotype analysis of inflammation-related SNPs in 631 PE patients and 720 normal pregnancy and oxidative stress-related SNPs in 342 PE patients and 457 normal pregnancies for susceptibility to PE. The data of genotype distribution and allele frequency comparisons after correction for multiple comparisons (P/8 or P/10) showed 2 among the 8 candidate inflammation-related SNPs have significant differences (rs2027432 genotype χ2 = 407.377, p < 0.001, p < 0.00625). Moreover, the minor alleles of rs2027432 T (minor allele χ2 = 450.923, p < 0.001, p < 0.00625; OR = 21.439, 95%CI = 15.181-30.278) and rs4819554 G (minor allele χ2 = 163.465, p < 0.001, p < 0.00625; OR = 5.814, 95%CI = 4.380-7.719) were confirmed as risk allele of PE, respectively. Our analysis revealed rs2027432 (TT) of NLRP3 and rs4819554 (GG) of IL-17RA are risk factors for PE. However, no significant difference was found at the oxidative stress-related SNPs. In the candidate loci for oxidative stress, we also identified 3 SNP matches (rs4807542 and rs713041, rs230813 and rs75799, rs1004467 and rs3824755) that had high linkage disequilibrium (LD) with each other and were selected as a block (r2 = 0.98, r2 = 0.97, r2 = 0.97, r2 > 0.9), and the GT and GC haplotypes of rs4807542 and rs713041 in GPX4 showed significant differences between the PE and control groups (χ2 = 5.143, p = 0.0233, p < 0.05; χ2 = 6.373, p = 0.0116, p < 0.05). So, we inferred that polymorphisms of NLRP3 rs2027432 and IL-17RA rs4819554, which are related to inflammation, and the rs713041 variant of GPX4, which is related to oxidative stress, were associated with susceptibility to PE. The GT and GC haplotypes of rs4807542 and rs713041 in GPX4 may increase the risk of PE in the Chinese Han population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce the feed rate fluctuation of interpolation, a novel approach for NURBS interpolation with minimal feed rate fluctuation based on improved Adams-Moulton (IAM) method is proposed. At first, the representation and calculation of NURBS curve interpolation are described. Then, the constraints of feeding step length are firstly given out to calculate the minimal hoping feeding step length and the detailed IAM method of NURBS curve interpolation is presented. Finally, simulations and experiments are carried out to verify the feasibility and applicability of proposed IAM method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papulonodular mucinosis ( PM) is a cutaneous clue to the presence and activity of silent lupus erythematosus ( LE), but the exact pathogenesis is still under secret. Moreover, the currently available treatments for PM are not satisfactory. To demonstrate the possibility of multiphoton microscopy ( MPM) to trace the pathological state of PM and evaluate the treatment efficacy, epidermal and dermal alteration in skin lesion with PM before and after treatment was examined using MPM. Microstructure of epidermis as well as content and distribution of collagen and elastin in dermis were quantified to characterize the pathological states of PM. The results showed significant morphological difference between skin lesion before and after treatment, indicating the possibility of MPM to assess the therapeutic efficacy. With the advancement on MPM miniaturization and enhancement of contrast and depth of imaging, the MPM technique can be applied in in vivo tracking PM formation and progression, and leading the better understanding the PM pathogenesis and mechanism of response to any treatment, helping to establish novel effective therapies for PM. SCANNING 35:22-27, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]