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The effect of amide functional groups at the nanodiamond surface is of great significance. Herein, we develop a new facile, inexpensive, and contaminant-free approach to modify nanodiamond surface through the mechanochemical amidation of nanodiamond using ball milling technique in the presence of ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) as amidation reagent to introduce the amide functional groups on the nanodiamond surface. It is observed that the amidated nanodiamonds can uniformly disperse well in an aqueous solution. Moreover, the results indicated that the technique is easy to operate and scale-up for industrial application. Furthermore, the well-dispersed nanodiamond colloids can be used for numerous applications including lubrication, thermal interface materials, and drug delivery system. More interesting, the dried amidated nanodiamond can be re-dispersed back to the colloidal solution of a wide range of solvents including water, dimethylsulfoxide, dimethyl formamide and ethanol, which greatly expands the application and functionality of nanodiamond.

The nanodiamond (ND) particles have several potential applications including tribology, drug delivery, bioimaging, etc. However, the severe colloidal aggregation tendency of ND particles strictly limits its exploitation. Moreover, due to NDs rich surface chemistry and relatively small size, it is still difficult to separate these large ND particles using conventional separation methods. Herein, we develop an efficient and straightforward strategy to separate the colloidal aminated nanodiamonds (ND-NH2) into small size nanoparticles by viscosity gradient centrifugation method in a polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) aqueous solution. Prior to and after separation, the pristine ND and ND-NH2 particles size and morphology were characterized by DLS (dynamic light scattering analyzer) and TEM (transmission electron microscopic), which show that ND particles with narrow size distribution and uniform morphology can be easily separated by the viscosity gradient of PVP aqueous solution. This simple, rapid and effective separation method could be extended to separate other functionalized NDs with different sizes.

Sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE) is key manifestation of sepsis which is responsible for increased morbidity and mortality. Leucine rich alpha-2-glycoprotein 1 (Lrg1) is a secreted protein implicated in a variety of diseases. We aimed to explore the effects and potential mechanism of Lrg1 on sepsis-mediated brain injury. A sepsis-induced brain damage mice model was established. Then, ELISA was utilized to detect the levels of inflammatory factors in brain tissues. Behavioral performance, spatial learning and memory of mice were evaluated by open field test and Morris water maze test. The number of neurons was tested by HE staining. Lrg1 expression was evaluated by RT-qPCR and western blot. In vitro, mouse hippocampal neuronal cell line (HT22) was stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). After Lrg1 silencing, cell viability was determined using CCK-8 and cell apoptosis was assessed by TUNEL. The levels of inflammatory factors were detected by ELISA. Moreover, western blot was applied to analyze the expression of proteins in transforming growth factor beta1 (TGFβ1)/SMAD signaling. Results revealed that mice in the model group showed obvious behavioral changes. Lrg1 was highly expressed in the brain tissues of model mice. Besides, Lrg1 knockdown suppressed the inflammation and apoptosis of LPS-induced HT22 cells. Moreover, Lrg1 silencing caused the inactivation of TGFβ1/SMAD signaling. Rescue assays confirmed that TGFβ1 overexpression reversed the impacts of Lrg1 deletion on the inflammation and apoptosis in LPS-induced HT22 cells. Collectively, Lrg1 silencing alleviates brain injury in SAE via inhibiting TGFβ1/SMAD signaling, implying that Lrg1 might serve as a promising target for SAE treatment.

AIM: To investigate microvascular changes in eyes with central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) complicated by macular edema before and after intravitreal conbercept injection and evaluate correlations between these changes and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and retinal thickness. METHODS: Twenty-eight eyes of 28 patients with macular edema caused by CRVO were included in this retrospective study. All patients received a single intravitreal conbercept injection to treat macular edema. BCVA and the results of optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) automatic measurements of the vessel density in the superficial (SCP) and deep retinal capillary plexus (DCP), the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area, the FAZ perimeter (PERIM), the vessel density within a 300-μm wide ring surrounding the FAZ (FD-300), the acircularity index (AI), the choriocapillaris flow area, and retinal thickness were recorded before and at one month after treatment and compared with the results observed in age- and sex- matched healthy subjects. RESULTS: The vessel density in the SCP and DCP, the FD-300, and the flow area of the choriocapillaris were all significantly lower in CRVO eyes than in healthy eyes, while the AI and retinal thickness were significantly higher (all P

Background: We aimed to investigate the high-risk factors of stroke through logistic regressive analysis and using LightGBM algorithm separately. The results of the two models were compared for instructing the prevention of stroke. Methods: Samples of residents older than 40 years of age were collected from two medical examination centers in Jiaxing, China from 2018 to 2019. Among the total 2124 subjects, 1059 subjects were middle-aged people (40-59 years old) and 1065 subjects were elder-aged people (≥60 years old). Their demographic characteristics, medical history, family history, eating habits etc. were recorded and separately input into logistic regressive analysis and LightGBM algorithm to build the prediction models of high-risk population of stroke. Four values including F1 score, accuracy, recall rate and AUROC were compared between the two models. Results: The risk factors of stroke were positively correlated with age, while negatively correlated with the frequency of fruit consumption and taste preference. People with low-salt diet were associated with less risk of stroke than those with high-salt diet, and male had higher stroke risk than female. Meanwhile, the risk factors were positively correlated with the frequency of alcohol consumption in the middle-aged group, and negatively correlated with the education level in the elder-aged group. Furthermore, the four values from LightGBM were higher than those from logistic regression, except for the recall value of the middle-aged group. Conclusion: Age, gender, family history of hypertension and diabetes, the frequency of fruit consumption, alcohol and dairy products, taste preference, and education level could as the risk predictive factors of stroke. The Model of using LightGBM algorithm is more accurate than that using logistic regressive analysis.

PURPOSE: To evaluate pre-operative and post-operative morphologic characteristics in idiopathic macular epiretinal membrane (ERM) by optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). METHODS: Thirty-three subjects with unilateral idiopathic ERM were enrolled and the contralateral eyes served as controls. Vascular parameters including superficial capillary plexus (SCP), deep capillary plexus (DCP), outer capillary plexus (OCP), and choroidal capillary plexus (CCP) were evaluated by OCTA. RESULTS: The superficial foveal avascular zone (FAZ) was significantly smaller in eyes with ERM (P

Well-structured pushdown systems (WSPDSs) extend pushdown systems with well-quasi-ordered (possibly in_nitely many) states and stack alphabet. As an expressive model for concurrent recursive computations, WSPDSs are believed to “be close the border of undecidability” [11]. Most of the decidability results are known only on subclasses. In this paper, we investigate the decidability of the termination and boundedness problems for WSPDSs using two algorithms: One is an extension of the reduced reachability tree technique proposed by Leroux et. al. in [11]. The other is based on Post^*-automata technique which has been successfully applied in the model checking of pushdown systems. The complexity of both are Hyper-Ackermannian for bounded WSPDSs. We implement both algorithms and make experiments on a large number of randomly generated WSPDSs. The results illustrate that the Post^*_automata based algorithm sometimes behaves an order of magnitude faster., リサーチレポート（北陸先端科学技術大学院大学先端科学技術研究科情報科学系）

The applied pi calculus proposed by Abadi and Fournet is successful in the analysis of security protocols. Its semantics mainly depends on several structural rules. Structural rules are convenient for specification, but inefficient for implementation. In this paper, we establish a new semantics for applied pi calculus based upon pure labeled transition system and propose a new formulation of labeled bisimulation. We prove that the new labeled bisimularity coincides with observational equivalence. A zero-knowledge protocol is given as an example to illustrate the effectiveness of this new semantics.

Both the patents issued and applications filed in China regarding nickel/metal hydride (Ni/MH) battery technology are reviewed in the article. Selective works from 39 battery manufactures, 9 metal hydride alloy suppliers, 13 Ni(OH)2 suppliers, 20 hardware suppliers, 19 system integrators, universities, and 12 research institutes are included. China being the country that produces the most Ni/MH batteries is relatively weak in the innovation part of intellectual properties when compared to the US and Japan. However, it produces very many patents in the areas of cell structure optimization and production processes. Designs of high-capacity, high-power, and low-cost cells are compared from different manufacturers.

Research on Grids has received considerable attention in recent years. Whereas existing work on connecting the grids primarily focused on grid services, in our work we propose a unified approach, so-called FederationGrid (or FedGrid for short), which integrates both virtual organization (VO) and grid services, thus enabling formation of virtual communities on top of grids. FedGrid is based on the standard High Level Architecture (HLA) that enjoys the advantages of high-level information modeling, including re-usability of software components and real-time performance of the overall systems. In addition, FedGrid is a fractal grid, comprised of hierarchical HLA federations, e.g. Realms and Lobby, which supports well the concept of virtual communities and scalability.