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Background Oxidative stress and memory impairment have been implicated, a common functional brain disease. Nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) is highly induced in oxidative stress, indicating that Nrf2 is an emerging target of memory therapy. This study aimed to investigate the effect of Noni on brain memory impairment induced by hydrocortisone and its protection mechanism in mice. Methods Male Kuming mice were (n = 8/group) given hydrocortisone by gastric gavage for 14 consecutive days to establish the memory impairment model except for those in the control group. At the same day, the corresponding drugs were given by gastric gavage. The changes in ethology were examined. Brains were extracted and subjected to western blot analysis and biochemical analyses to assess the activities of oxidative stress. Results The middle and high-dose Noni groups ameliorated the ethology and the high-dose Noni group increased cerebral protein expressions of Nrf2, kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1 (KEAP1) and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), as compared to the model group. The arrangement of CA3 vertebral cells in hippocampus of mice was slightly compact and hyperchromatic and pyknosis were alleviated. Furthermore, the biochemical analyses showed the activities of related enzymes of oxidative stress in high-dose Noni group were increased. Conclusions Noni might be a powerful antioxidant that can protect nerve cell and may possess as a potential benefit for the treatment of memory impairment.

To monitor the degradation status of units and prevent unexpected failures in engineering systems, health index (HI)-based data fusion technologies have been rapidly developed by combining multiple sensor signals, which are helpful to understand the degradation processes of units and predict their remaining useful lifetime (RUL). Although promising, existing HI-based data fusion models for degradation modeling are still limited due to the restrictive assumptions made during the fusion or the degradation modeling processes, e.g., assuming the fusion model as a linear or kernel-based function from multiple sensor signals, or modeling the degradation process by a preselected basis function. Such assumptions are often invalid in industrial practice and may fail to accurately characterize the complicated relationships between multiple sensor signals and the underlying degradation process. To address the issue, this article proposes a generic indirect deep learning method that constructs an HI by combining multiple sensor signals to better characterize the degradation process. In particular, our innovative idea is to seamlessly integrate a deep neural network (DNN) and a long short term memory (LSTM) model to construct the HI by fusing multiple sensor signals and characterize the degradation process, which can be applied to the degradation modeling of various engineering systems. Domain knowledge including the concept of failure threshold and monotonicity of the degradation process is also considered to enhance the interpretability of the proposed method. For parameter estimation, we develop an indirect gradient descent (IGD) algorithm to train the proposed method. Simulation studies and a case study on the degradation of aircraft gas turbine engines are presented to validate the performance of the proposed method.

Serratus anterior plane block (SAPB) has been proven to be an efficient way to control postoperative pain. This study explored whether the use of continuous SAPB in combination with flurbiprofen could improve early pulmonary function in lung cancer patients undergoing video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS).From July 2019 to April 2020, patients who scheduled for elective lung resection undergoing VATS were randomly allocated to receive patient-controlled SAPB in combination with intravenous flurbiprofen or patient-controlled intravenous analgesia. Postoperative pulmonary function variables, including forced expiratory volume in 1 second, and forced vital capacity were collected before and 24, 48, and 72 hours after Surgical Procedure. Pain intensity was measured at rest and on coughing. Comfort scores during breathing exercises, postoperative pulmonary complications, and adverse events were recorded.A substantial reduction in lung function was exhibited in both groups after Surgical Procedure (P .001), but lung function variables in the continuous SAPB group were significantly higher (P .001) throughout the postoperative period up to 72 hours, regardless of the surgical procedure type. Meanwhile, there were significant differences of pain intensity at rest and on coughing between the groups (P .001). The incidence of pneumonia, pulmonary atelectasis, hypoxemia, vomiting, and the comfort score in the continuous SAPB group was significantly lower (P.05).Postoperative acute pain treatment with continuous SAPB in combination with flurbiprofen enhanced pulmonary function and reduced postoperative pulmonary complications in lung cancer patients undergoing VATS.

Self-drilling screws are commonly used as connectors in cold-formed steel (CFS) buildings as they can be drilled easily through thin sheet steels, allowing on-site assembly. The screw connections in the project all appear in the form of screw group connections. Studies have shown that the shear bearing capacity of a screw group connection of CFS sheets is not simply the shear bearing capacity of a single screw connection multiplied by the number of screws. But instead, there is a reduction effect of the screw group connection, called the Group Effect. However, there is no design provision for the shear bearing capacity of the screw group connection in the current design specifications, AISI S100-16w/S1-18, AS/NZS-4600:2018, EN1993-1–3, and GB50018-2002. Based on the authors' and other researchers' tests collected by authors, this paper verifies and analyzes the four existing design equations for the connection strength of the screw group connections that consider the Group Effect. The results show that the four current design equations cannot cover the test data that list in the paper because the existing four design equations all have their respective scopes and limitations, such as the screw spacing and the strength of steel sheetings, etc. For that, the paper proposed a new design equation that can calculate the nominal shear capacity of self-drilling screw group connections, including high-strength steel such as G550 CFS sheets and extensive screw spacing connections. The authors' new test of twelve screw group connections and the other 237 tests verified the new equation. The unsafe rate for the new design equation is 4.42% among the 249 connections test, and the new design equation has high reliability and broader application scope.

On-line detection of fault characteristic gases released by the insulation oil of transformers is developed as a scientific basis for estimating explosion accidents. However, the performance of most gas sensors, such as H2 and C2H2 sensors, is usually affected by temperature, and there exists large detection error when the temperature of transformer oil changes in operation. And the existing temperature compensation methods suffer from problems such as low integration, large volume, and high costs. Herein, a sensor array based on three triple-electrode sensors with carbon nanotubes was fabricated. Each of the three sensors has three vertically stacked electrodes with various interelectrode distances. The first and second sensors were used to detect H2 and C2H2, respectively, and the third sensor was used to measure temperature. All the detection mechanisms are based on the dependence of discharge current on gas concentration and temperature. The sensor array could detect H2/C2H2 mixture and temperature due to the exponential function between the output currents and electrode separations. The proposed sensor exhibited low relative and repeatability error values less than 5.1% and 4.9%, respectively, and displayed humidity compensation potential like temperature. High integration makes the sensor array superior among the other mechanism sensors.

Objective To determine the effects of maternal periconceptional supplementation with folic acid or multiple micronutrients containing folic acid on the prevention of fetal congenital heart defects (CHDs). Study design Data were drawn from a Prenatal Health Care System and a Birth Defects Surveillance System in a district of Beijing, China. A total of 63 969 singleton births, live or stillborn, 308 CHDs among them, during 2013 to 2018 were included. Associations between different patterns of supplementation and risk for total CHDs or main types of CHDs were evaluated with risk ratios (RRs). Results For folic acid or multiple micronutrients containing folic acid users compared with nonusers, the adjusted RRs (ARRs) for total CHDs, critical CHD, and ventricular septal defect (VSD) were 0.60 (95% CI, 0.44-0.83), 0.41 (95% CI, 0.26-0.67), and 0.47 (95% CI, 0.30-0.74), respectively. When we compared multiple micronutrients containing folic acid users with folic acid users, the ARRs were 0.84 (95% CI, 0.66-1.09), 0.64 (95% CI, 0.41-1.00), and 0.94 (95% CI, 0.63-1.41) for total CHDs, critical CHD, and VSD, respectively. We also found that, compared with supplementation initiated after conception, supplementation initiated before conception was associated with a lower risk for CHDs: the ARRs were 0.68 (95% CI, 0.48-0.95) for total CHDs and 0.26 (95% CI, 0.10-0.71) for critical CHD, but 1.08 (95% CI, 0.63-1.83) for VSD. Conclusions Maternal periconceptional supplementation with folic acid or multiple micronutrients containing folic acid seems to decrease the risk for CHDs, especially critical CHD, in offspring. Supplementation confers a greater protective effect when it is initiated before conception. We did not find any difference between folic acid and multiple micronutrients containing folic acid in terms of preventing CHDs.

A novel photonics-based technique of microwave frequency measurement (MFM) is proposed and verified. The method is implemented by introducing a parameter called Brillouin phase-gain ratio (BPGR) which combines Brillouin phase shift and Brillouin gain, where BPGR features a linear response to the unknown signal frequency. Moreover, it enables to enlarge the channel bandwidth of frequency measurement relative to the method of applying only the phase shift spectrum slope or gain spectrum slope, and the important problem of pump-power-dependency affecting system performance can be alleviated. The experiment is established to verify its feasibility and the results show that this method is competent for frequency measurement with very high accuracy. In the end, within two frequency bands of linear slope 0.12-0.17 and 10.12-10.17 GHz, the measurement error below 5 MHz is successfully achieved.

The main focus of this research work was to study the anti-cancer properties of 7,8-dihydromethysticin against HL-60 leukemia cells. Investigations were also performed to check its impact on the phases of the cell cycle, cell migration and invasion, JAK/STAT signalling pathway and intracellular mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Cell proliferation was assessed through 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and effects on colony formation were examined via clonogenic assay. Flow cytometry and Western blott analysis were performed to investigate the distribution of cell cycle phases. Flow cytometric analysis was performed for the examination of MMP and ROS production. The effect on JAK/STAT signalling pathway was examined through Western blot analysis. Results depicted that 7,8-dihydromethysticin induced concentration- as well as time-dependent inhibition of cell proliferation in leukemia HL-60 cells. Clonogenic assay indicated potential suppression in leukemia HL-60 cell colonies. The 7,8-dihydromethysticin molecule also caused cell cycle arrest at G2/M-phase along with concentration-dependent inhibition of cyclin B1, D1 and E. ROS and MMP measurements indicated significant ROS enhancement and MMP suppression with increasing 7,8-dihydromethysticin concentrations. Additionally, 7,8-dihydromethysticin led to remarkable dose-reliant inhibition of cell invasion as well as cell migration. Therefore, 7,8-dihydromethysticin should be considered a valuable candidate for leukemia research and chemoprevention.

In this paper, an optimal design method of micro-lens light trapping structure for thin film solar cells applied to building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) is proposed. Under three common scenes of BIPV, including lighting roof, sunshade and building facade, the optimal design and photoelectric performance study of Copper Indium Gallium Selenium (CIGS) thin film solar cells with micro-lens light trapping structure are studied. Among the three kinds of micro-lens light trapping structures, V-shaped, semi-cylindrical and concave, the light capture performance of V-shaped micro-lens light trapping structure is the best. The V-shaped micro-lens light trapping structure with a vertex angle of 70° and a groove depth of 100 μm has the best light capture performance in lighting roof and sunshade scene, which can increase the annual radiation flux of the absorption layer incident surface by 4.45% and 2.84% respectively. The V-shaped micro-lens light trapping structure with a vertex angle of 60° and a groove depth of 200 μm has the best light capture performance in building facade scene, which can increase the annual radiation flux of the absorption layer incident surface by 7.63%. When the light source is vertically incident, these two V-shaped micro-lens light trapping structures can increase the short-circuit current density by 15.57% and 7.11% respectively.

Summary Mixed-halide perovskite provides band-gap tunability, which is essential for tandem solar cell application. However, ion migration inducing phase segregation seriously affects the device’s long-term operational stability. The issue thus represents an important challenge for the whole perovskite community and urgently needs effective solutions. We showcase here for the first time that a strong chemical interaction, a halogen-halogen bond, is introduced at the phase interface to suppress the ion migration by increasing the corresponding activation energy. Various characterizations have proved that halogen-halogen bonds form between 2D and 3D phases, which do suppress the halide segregation. As expected, the encapsulated device retains 90% of initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) after maximum power point (MPP) tracking for ∼500 h under continuous simulated 1-sun illumination (AM 1.5) in ambient conditions, representing one of the most stable, wide-band-gap, mixed-halide perovskite photovoltaics reported so far.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the dark side the Internet and establish a hierarchical framework to provide its governance path based on users' negative psychology. However, this hierarchical framework must consider unnecessary attributes and the interrelationships between the aspects and the criteria. Hence, fuzzy set theory is used for screening out the unnecessary attributes, a decision-making and trial evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is proposed to manage the complex interrelationships among the aspects and attributes, and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to divide the hierarchy and construct a hierarchical theoretical framework. The results show that: (1) the institutional system is the driver of Internet governance improvement (2) personal values are the last link in the governance process (3) the governance transition from institutional system to values must cross the barriers of ethics and technology. This paper proposes a more systematic and integrated hierarchical framework which provides theoretical guidance to govern the dark side of the Internet.

BACKGROUND Visceral disseminated varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infection is a rare but life-threatening disease. In transplant recipients with VZV infection, visceral dissemination may develop without skin eruptions, which leads to the failure of early diagnosis. CASE SUMMARY The patient was a 33-year-old male renal recipient who was referred to our hospital with severe upper abdominal pain of 3-d duration. On admission, the patient rapidly developed septic shock and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome with liver dysfunction and acute kidney injury. Next-generation sequencing of peripheral blood yielded 39224 sequence reads of VZV, and real-time polymerase chain reaction for VZV was positive, with 1.2 × 107 copies/mL. The final diagnosis was visceral disseminated VZV infection. Acyclovir and supportive therapy were started, but the patient died of severe visceral organ damage 16 h after admission. CONCLUSION Visceral disseminated VZV infection is possible in renal transplant recipients presenting abdominal pain and rapidly-evolving organ damage without skin involvement.

Shoeprints contain valuable information for tracing evidence in forensic scenes, and they need to be generated into cleaned, sharp, and high-fidelity images. Most of the acquired shoeprints are found with low quality and/or in distorted forms. The high-fidelity shoeprint generation is of great significance in forensic science. A wide range of deep learning models has been suggested for super-resolution, being either generalized approaches or application specific. Considering the crucial challenges in shoeprint based processing and lacking specific algorithms, we proposed a deep learning based GUV-Net model for high-fidelity shoeprint generation. GUV-Net imitates learning features from VAE, U-Net, and GAN network models with special treatment of absent ground truth shoeprints. GUV-Net encodes efficient probabilistic distributions in the latent space and decodes variants of samples together with passed key features. GUV-Net forwards the learned samples to a refinement-unit proceeded to the generation of high-fidelity output. The refinement-unit receives low-level features from the decoding module at distinct levels. Furthermore, the refinement process is made more efficient by inverse-encoded in high dimensional space through a parallel inverse encoding network. The objective functions at different levels enable the model to efficiently optimize the parameters by mapping a low quality image to a high-fidelity one by maintaining salient features which are important to forensics. Finally, the performance of the proposed model is evaluated against state-of-the-art super-resolution network models.

BACKGROUND This study aimed to evaluate the perioperative, pathological and oncological outcomes of open versus laparoscopic total mesorectal excision (TME) plus lateral lymph node dissection (LLND) for mid- and low- rectal cancer using propensity score matching. METHODS Between September 2009 and December 2018, consecutive patients who underwent open or laparoscopic TME plus LLND were collected. Based on the propensity score matching analysis, laparoscopic TME plus LLND was compared with open TME plus LLND for the perioperative, pathological, and oncological outcomes. RESULTS A total of 77 patients were collected. There were 13 patients who underwent open TME plus LLND (open group) and 64 patients who underwent laparoscopic TME plus LLND (laparoscopic group). After propensity score matching, 13 patients in the open group were matched to 39 patients in the laparoscopic group (1:3). The laparoscopic group had a significantly shorter length of incision (5 cm vs. 20 cm, p

The advent of localization-based super-resolution ultrasound (SRUS) imaging creates a vista for precision vasculature and hemodynamic measurements in brain science, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. As blinking fluorophores are crucial to super-resolution optical imaging, blinking acoustic contrast agents enabling ultrasound localization microscopy have been highly sought, but only with limited success. Here we report on the discovery and characterization of a type of blinking acoustic nanodroplets (BANDs) ideal for SRUS. BANDs of 200-500 nm diameters comprise a perfluorocarbon-filled core and a shell of DSPC, Pluronic F68, and DSPE-PEG2000. When driven by clinically safe acoustic pulses (MI < 1.9) provided by a diagnostic ultrasound transducer, BANDs underwent reversible vaporization and reliquefaction, manifesting as "blinks", at rates of up to 5 kHz. By sparse activation of perfluorohexane-filled BANDs-C6 at high concentrations, only 100 frames of ultrasound imaging were sufficient to reconstruct super-resolution images of a no-flow tube through either cumulative localization or temporal radiality autocorrelation. Furthermore, the use of high-density BANDs-C6-4 (1 × 108/mL) with a 1:9 admixture of perfluorohexane and perfluorobutane supported the fast SRUS imaging of muscle vasculature in live animals, at 64 μm resolution requiring only 100 frames per layer. We anticipate that the BANDs developed here will greatly boost the application of SRUS in both basic science and clinical settings.

This paper studies the nonlinear mechanical performance of a new wall-beam-strut joint with the welded steel plate connection proposed for prefabricated underground construction under monotonic and low-reversed cyclic loading conditions using the three-dimensional finite element method with the concrete damaged plasticity model . The load-displacement curve, concrete cracking distribution, reinforcement strain, hysteresis loop curve, skeleton curve, and stiffness degradation obtained from the numerical modelling are compared with those from the full-scale experimental testing, which agree well with each other. However, the numerical modelling overestimates the yield load and ultimate bearing, underestimates the stiffness degradation and fail to capture the pinching effect compared with the experimental testing due to the limitation of the numerical modelling in simulating the slippage between the concrete and reinforcement after the concrete cracking. After that, the influence of the dilation angle, viscosity parameter and mesh sizes on the numerical modelling results was discussed. It is recommended that the range of the dilation angle should be between 25 degrees and 35 degrees and the viscosity parameter should be selected based on the parametric analyses. For optimization, with enough safety factor and good ductility, the longitudinal reinforcement ratio of the strut can be reduced to 1.16%. Finally, it is concluded that the wall-beam-strut joint with the welded steel plate connection has good mechanical performance under both monotonic and cyclic loading conditions, which provides a new joint connection method for the emerging prefabricated underground construction.

Although thoracoscopy has characteristics such as a small surgical incision and low stress response, post-surgical pain after a thoracoscopic operation is no less than that after a thoracotomy. Moreover, poor post-surgical pain management is likely to cause an increased incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) and chronic post-surgical pain. The serratus anterior plane block (SAPB) is a regional anesthesia method whereby local anesthetics (LAs) are injected into the serratus anterior space to block the lateral cutaneous branch of the intercostal nerve, long thoracic nerve, and dorsal thoracic nerve. The block range of the SAPB covers the incisions of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and the site of the chest tube, which are often located in the antero-lateral chest wall. Therefore, the SAPB can achieve effective analgesia in VATS. For example, 0.125% to 0.25% levobupivacaine (20-25 ml) is widely used for thoracic surgery, which can achieve effective analgesia and avoid adverse reactions. Moreover, it has advantages compared with thoracic segmental epidural block (TEA) and thoracic paravertebral block (TPVB), such as simple operation, increased safety, fewer complications, and hemodynamic stability. In addition, adequate analgesia is helpful for pulmonary function recovery and reduces the incidence of PPCs. This article introduces the anatomical mechanism of the SAPB, diverse operation approaches, how to choose drugs and adjuvants, and the resulting impacted area range. It summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the SAPB compared with other analgesic methods and posits that the SAPB is beneficial to the recovery of postoperative lung function, which provides more options for postoperative analgesia after VATS.

An investigation is conducted into the behaviour of bolted endplate connections between high-strength steel tubular members at elevated temperatures. Experiments are described where assemblies comprising Grade S460 steel square hollow sections connected via bolted endplates are heated to a target temperature between 150°C and 750°C using ceramic heating pads. The assembly, which is inclined at 45° to the horizontal, is then loaded vertically, thus generating combined bending and axial thrust in the members. The in-plane vertical deflection, the applied load and temperatures at various points were measured. Results for the ultimate loads, equilibrium paths and the observed failure modes are discussed along with the influence of temperature on these features. A complementary nonlinear finite element analysis of the experimental assemblies is also described. Material models incorporating temperature-dependent strengths, stiffnesses and strain hardening relationships available from the literature are employed, with temperature fields calibrated using steel temperatures recorded during the experiments applied to the models. It is shown that good agreement exists between the ultimate loads, equilibrium paths and failure modes predicted by the numerical models and those observed in the experiments, thus validating the modelling approach. It is found that, at lower temperatures, buckling of the endplate was the governing mode of failure. With increasing temperature, the mode of failure transitions to flexure in the beam and column stubs, thus suggesting that a relative degree of fixity is offered by the connections at the higher temperatures.

Ketamine has been demonstrated to be a rapid-onset and long-lasting antidepressant, but its underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Recent studies have emerged microRNAs as important modulators for depression treatment. In this study, we report that miR-98-5p is downregulated in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of mice subjected to chronic social stress, while overexpressing it by its agonist alleviates depression-like behaviors. More importantly, we demonstrate that miR-98-5p is upregulated by ketamine administration, while inhibition of it by its antagonist blocks the antidepressant effect of ketamine. Our data implicate a novel molecular mechanism underlying the antidepressant effect of ketamine, and that therapeutic strategies targeting miR-98-5p could exert beneficial effects for depression treatment.

Linear deception attacks can bypass the χ 2 detector by tampering with data. In this paper, we provide a secure strategy for a cyber physical system (CPS) against such attacks. In response to these attacks in multi-sensor system, we encrypt the innovation sequence by a watermark, so that they can help the χ 2 detector better detect the original undetected linear deception attacks when the attacker does not know the existence of the watermark. Simultaneously, when the attacker has information about the watermark, the estimated performance and control performance will not be reduced by adjusting the parameters of the watermark. Finally, the effectiveness of this defense strategy against deception attacks is verified by a numerical example.

Aiming at insufficient situation to express and operate assets in smart contracts, in this article we attempt to add a new asset model into smart contract language (such as SPESC) through combing method of asset's expressions and transactions in real-world contracts. Moreover, a translation mechanism can be set up to accomplish a conversion from the asset model to an executable contract program. On this basis, we propose a new language design toward asset-driven specific smart contracts, called TA-SPESC. This language complies with the structure of real-world contracts and supports a formal definition composed of four modules: Party, asset, term, and contract attribute. This asset model on it can be used to define various types of rights (including the right of ownership, use, possession, usufruct, and disposition of assets), as well as five asset operations (including asset registration, deposit, withdrawal, transfer, and cancellation) to effectively support asset transaction. More important, a series of generation rules are proposed to translate the TA-SPESC contract to an executable contract program. Moreover, taking house rental contract as an example, we provide a TA-SPESC instance and its specific description of translation process according to the generation rules, which supports a semiautomatic generation to executable programs. Finally, the Solidity codes derived from TA-SPESC contracts are run and tested, and the experiment and comparison results indicate that TA-SPESC contracts have high abstraction and low complexity, as well as versatility and convenience of asset transaction, which lead to more reliable software with less errors and fewer misunderstanding.

Background Sarcopenia widely exists in elderly people and triggers numerous age‐related events. The essential pathologic change lies in the increased intramuscular adipose tissue after aging with no exception to non‐obese objects. Pim1 appears to be associated with adipogenic differentiation in recent studies, inspiring us to explore whether it regulates adipogenesis in aging muscles and affects sarcopenia. Methods Wild‐type and Pim1 knockout C57/BL6J mice were randomized into young and old groups. Histo‐pathological and molecular biological methods were applied to assess the intramuscular adipose tissue content, the atrophy and regeneration, and the expressions of Pim1 and adipogenic transcription factors. PDGFRα+ mesenchymal progenitors were separated and their replicative aging model were established. Different time of adipogenic induction and different amounts of Pim1 inhibitor were applied, after which the adipogenic potency were evaluated. The expressions of Pim1 and adipogenic transcription factors were measured through western blotting. Results The aging mice demonstrated decreased forelimb grip strength (P = 0.0003), hanging impulse (P

Objective The role of cell death‐inducing DFF45‐like effector C (CIDEC) in insulin resistance has been established, and it is considered to be an important trigger factor for the progression of diabetic nephropathy (DN). We intend to explore whether CIDEC plays an important role in the regulation of DN and its potential mechanism. Methods High‐fat diet and low dose streptozotocin were used to establish type 2 diabetic rat model. We investigate the role of CIDEC in the pathogenesis and process of DN through histopathological analysis, western blot and gene silencing. Meanwhile, the effect of CIDEC on renal tubular epithelial cells stimulated by high glucose was also verified. Results DM group exhibited glucose and lipid metabolic disturbance, with hypertrophy of kidneys, damaged renal function, increased apoptosis, decreased autophagy, glomerulosclerosis and interstitial fibrosis. CIDEC gene silencing improved metabolic disorder and insulin resistance, alleviated renal hypertrophy and renal function damage, decreased glomerular and tubular apoptosis, increased autophagy and inhibited renal fibrosis. At the cellular level, high glucose stimulation increased CIDEC expression in renal tubular epithelial cells, accompanied by increased apoptosis and decreased autophagy. CIDEC gene silencing can improve autophagy and reduce apoptosis. At the molecular level, CIDEC gene silencing also decreased the expression of early growth response factor (EGR)1 and increased the expression of adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL). Conclusion CIDEC gene silencing may delay the progression of DN by restoring autophagy activity and inhibiting apoptosis with the participation of EGR1and ATGL., In diabetic rats, CIDEC gene silencing may prevent apoptosis by inhibiting the expression of EGR1, while restore autophagy activity and inhibit apoptosis by increasing the expression of ATGL, thereby improving renal glomerulosclerosis and tubulointerstitial fibrosis and delaying the progression of DN. CIDEC may be a valuable new target for DN treatment.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) and congestive heart failure (CHF) lead to many deaths worldwide. Generally, an electrocardiogram (ECG) is employed as the diagnostic tool for CAD/CHF recognition. However, since ECG changes are sometimes subtle, visually distinguishing long-term ECG abnormalities is time consuming and laborious. To address these issues, we proposed a novel two-channel hybrid convolutional network (THC-Net) for automatic ECG recognition. THC-Net contains a canonical correlation analysis (CCA)-principal component analysis (PCA) convolutional network, an independent component analysis (ICA)-PCA convolutional network, and a Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory-based linear support vector machine (SVM). The CCA-PCA and ICA-PCA convolutional networks are developed to extract deep features containing the lead-correlation and lead-specific information, respectively, from ECGs. Compared to common convolutional neural networks (CNNs), their kernels can be directly extracted by CCA, ICA, and PCA with a faster training time. Then, the D-S theory-based linear SVM, which can process multi-channel uncertainty information, is employed as the classification model . In this work, an accuracy of 95.54% was obtained for classifying normal, CHF and CAD patients based on leave-one-out cross-validation. Additionally, experiments on multi-level noisy and imbalanced data yielded remarkable results. Hence, the proposed method has the potential to diagnose CAD and CHF in clinical settings.

Background The γ-aminobutyric acid–mediated (GABAergic) inhibitory system in the brain is critical for regulation of sleep–wake and general anesthesia. The lateral septum contains mainly GABAergic neurons, being cytoarchitectonically divided into the dorsal, intermediate, and ventral parts. This study hypothesized that GABAergic neurons of the lateral septum participate in the control of wakefulness and promote recovery from anesthesia. Methods By employing fiber photometry, chemogenetic and optogenetic neuronal manipulations, anterograde tracing, in vivo electrophysiology, and electroencephalogram/electromyography recordings in adult male mice, the authors measured the role of lateral septum GABAergic neurons to the control of sleep–wake transition and anesthesia emergence and the corresponding neuron circuits in arousal and emergence control. Results The GABAergic neurons of the lateral septum exhibited high activities during the awake state by in vivo fiber photometry recordings (awake vs. non–rapid eye movement sleep: 3.3 ± 1.4% vs. –1.3 ± 1.2%, P < 0.001, n = 7 mice/group; awake vs. anesthesia: 2.6 ± 1.2% vs. –1.3 ± 0.8%, P < 0.001, n = 7 mice/group). Using chemogenetic stimulation of lateral septum GABAergic neurons resulted in a 100.5% increase in wakefulness and a 51.2% reduction in non–rapid eye movement sleep. Optogenetic activation of these GABAergic neurons promoted wakefulness from sleep (median [25th, 75th percentiles]: 153.0 [115.9, 179.7] s to 4.0 [3.4, 4.6] s, P = 0.009, n = 5 mice/group) and accelerated emergence from isoflurane anesthesia (514.4 ± 122.2 s vs. 226.5 ± 53.3 s, P < 0.001, n = 8 mice/group). Furthermore, the authors demonstrated that the lateral septum GABAergic neurons send 70.7% (228 of 323 cells) of monosynaptic projections to the ventral tegmental area GABAergic neurons, preferentially inhibiting their activities and thus regulating wakefulness and isoflurane anesthesia depth. Conclusions The results uncover a fundamental role of the lateral septum GABAergic neurons and their circuit in maintaining awake state and promoting general anesthesia emergence time. Editor’s Perspective What We Already Know about This Topic What This Article Tells Us That Is New

Purpose This study aims to reveal the presence of products with negatively correlated nutrients in the marketplace and their implications for consumer choices. It also investigates the role of an overall simplified nutrition scoring system (SNSS) – health star rating (HSR), in improving the healthiness of consumer choices. Design/methodology/approach Three (lab, online and eye-tracking) experiments investigate the effects of negatively correlated nutrients and the mitigating role of an overall SNSS for consumers’ food choices. A final panel-data study analyzes the changes in actual food purchases after the introduction of HSRs (an SNSS) in Australia. Findings Experimental results show that consumers use a decision strategy based on a dominant nutrient to choose food products, which creates health halos and leads to less healthy choices when products have negatively correlated nutrients. The presence of an overall SNSS leads to more accurate healthiness perception and healthier choices. Panel data analysis shows that the healthiness of consumer food purchases increased after the introduction of HSRs. Research limitations/implications The study investigated the effect of an overall SNSS on specific categories, but not on the overall shopping basket. Practical implications For policymakers, this paper shows that overall SNSS helps consumers choose healthier options. Food manufacturers and retailers could be motivated to formulate healthier products when consumers choose healthier options. Originality/value This is the first study to document the presence of products with negatively correlated nutrients and their implications for consumer choices. It highlights the unique role of an overall SNSS, in helping consumers identify healthier options when products have negatively correlated nutrients.

Structural deformation monitoring is vital to the safety of concrete structures. However, the distributed deformation of structures cannot be easily obtained using existing monitoring methods in civil engineering. To this end, this paper proposes a method to estimate the continuous deformation of concrete beams by utilizing the distributed optical fiber monitoring technology. In this method, optical fibers and a total station are used to obtain the strain and deformation distribution curves of a concrete beam, respectively. Subsequently, these curves are inputted to a back propagation network as training samples to learn their relationships. The results show that the deformation value of trained neural network is very close to that of the total station, with a maximum error of only 2.7% (0.3 mm). The linear regression analysis shows a goodness of fit R2 greater than 0.98, which confirms the reliability of the simulations results.

We compare the market reactions to the COVID-19 crisis of Chinese listed firms with high versus low tax integrity. We show negative market reactions to the crisis across all firms, which is consist...

Recent advances in spoof surface plasmon (SSP) have offered enormous opportunities for engineering electromagnetic waves at the subwavelength scale. However, the fundamental limitation of the extremely finite space channels on exciting SSP challenges their practical applications. Here, to the best of our knowledge, a new method that can realize high-efficiency infinite-channel SSP excitation based on hyperbolic plasmonic metasurfaces is proposed. Free-space propagating waves impinging from arbitrary directions can be coupled to SSP owing to the theoretical perfect wave vector match between the modulated incident waves and the hyperbolic plasmonic metasurfaces. A proof-of-method metacoupler working at 8 GHz is designed and fabricated with the novel functionality numerically and experimentally verified by the consistent guide wavelength with theory. Further experimental investigation reveals a total coupling efficiency exceeding 50% for the impinging waves with incidence angles ranging from −44° to 44°. The proposed methodology provides a new route to design multichannel antennas and detectors.

Background It is simple, convenient, inexpensive, proven, extensive, and safe for acupuncture in the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). However, there are no comparisons between various acupuncture therapies that can directly and effectively provide specific guidance to clinicians. The development of a guideline for the optimization of acupuncture for PHN is of great importance for the development of clinical acupuncture. Therefore, we attempted to design a study protocol for a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of acupuncture for PHN to provide evidence to support the treatment of acupuncture for PHN. Methods A search of 8 databases, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database, Wanfang, China Biomedical Literature Database, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science, was conducted to collect randomized controlled trials about acupuncture for PHN. RevMan 5.3 and Stata 14.0 software were used for data analysis. Results This meta-analysis will provide additional and more robust evidence for acupuncture treatment of PHN. Our findings will assist clinicians in making treatment decisions. Conclusion This study will provide comprehensive and reliable evidence-based evidence for the treatment of PHN with acupuncture.

An intelligent monitoring lubricant is essential for the development of smart machines because unexpected and fatal failures of critical dynamic components in the machines happen every day, threatening the life and health of humans. Inspired by the triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) work on water, we present a feasible way to prepare a self-powered triboelectric sensor for real-time monitoring of lubricating oils via the contact electrification process of oil–solid contact (O–S TENG). Typical intruding contaminants in pure base oils can be successfully monitored. The O–S TENG has very good sensitivity, which even can respectively detect at least 1 mg mL–1 debris and 0.01 wt % water contaminants. Furthermore, the real-time monitoring of formulated engine lubricating oil in a real engine oil tank is achieved. Our results show that electron transfer is possible from an oil to solid surface during contact electrification. The electrical output characteristic depends on the screen effect from such as wear debris, deposited carbons, and age-induced organic molecules in oils. Previous work only qualitatively identified that the output ability of liquid can be improved by leaving less liquid adsorbed on the TENG surface, but the adsorption mass and adsorption speed of liquid and its consequences for the output performance were not studied. We quantitatively study the internal relationship between output ability and adsorbing behavior of lubricating oils by quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) for liquid–solid contact interfaces. This study provides a real-time, online, self-powered strategy for intelligent diagnosis of lubricating oils.

Due to the limitation of mobile robots’ understanding of the environment in local path planning tasks, the problems of local deadlock and path redundancy during planning exist in unknown and complex environments. In this paper, a novel algorithm based on the combination of a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network, fuzzy logic control, and reinforcement learning is proposed, and uses the advantages of each algorithm to overcome the other’s shortcomings. First, a neural network model including LSTM units is designed for local path planning. Second, a low-dimensional input fuzzy logic control (FL) algorithm is used to collect training data, and a network model (LSTM_FT) is pretrained by transferring the learned method to learn the basic ability. Then, reinforcement learning is combined to learn new rules from the environments autonomously to better suit different scenarios. Finally, the fusion algorithm LSTM_FTR is simulated in static and dynamic environments, and compared to FL and LSTM_FT algorithms, respectively. Numerical simulations show that, compared to FL, LSTM_FTR can significantly improve decision-making efficiency, improve the success rate of path planning, and optimize the path length. Compared to the LSTM_FT, LSTM_FTR can improve the success rate and learn new rules.

Cisplatin is a chemotherapeutic agent widely employed in the treatment of various solid tumors. However, its use is often restricted by acute kidney injury (AKI) which is the dose-limiting adverse effect of cisplatin. While numerous studies aiming to alleviate the AKI have been conducted, there are no effective remedies in clinical practice. In this paper, a targeted metabolomics study was performed to reveal the potential relationship between tryptophan metabolism and cisplatin-induced AKI. A chemical derivatization integrated liquid chromatography coupled tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) approach was utilized to quantify 29 metabolites in the tryptophan pathway in rat kidney medulla and cortex after cisplatin administration. Results showed that tryptophan metabolism was remarkably disturbed both in the medulla and cortex after cisplatin administration. We also found that the tryptophan pathway in the medulla was more sensitive to cisplatin exposure compared with the cortex. Among these metabolites, indoxyl sulfate was focused for further study because it accumulated most significantly in the kidney cortex and medulla in a dose-dependent manner. A function verification study proved that chlormethiazole, a widely used CYP2E1 inhibitor, could reduce the production of indoxyl sulfate in the liver and attenuate cisplatin-induced AKI in rats. In conclusion, our study depicted the tryptophan pathway in cisplatin-induced AKI for the first time and demonstrated tryptophan metabolism is closely associated with the renal toxicity caused by cisplatin, which can be of great use for the discovery of renal toxicity attenuating remedies.

Purpose: To explore how Fourier parameters are associated with axial length growth (ALG) and clinical parameters in children who underwent orthokeratology.Materials and Methods: A total of 267 children received orthokeratology. Baseline cycloplegic autorefraction was performed. Axial length was measured at baseline and one year after the lens dispatch, and the difference was defined as ALG. Corneal topography was performed at the same two visits. Central treatment zone (CTZ) was identified from the difference between the two tangential maps, and its center distance to corneal center was defined as decentration. A relative refractive corneal power (RCRP) map was derived by subtracting the center value from every point on the one-year axial map. It was decomposed into 3 Fourier components: a mean (F0), a single-cycle sinewave (F1), and a double-cycle sinewave (F2). Linear regressions were used to reveal the association between ALG and these parameters.Results: At baseline, the age was 10.18 ± 1.48 year, spherical equivalent (SE) was - 3.10 ± 1.15D, astigmatism was 1.17 ± 0.58D, and axial length was 24.69 ± 0.81 mm. The mean ALG was 0.181 ± 0.22 mm. In multiple regression, ALG was negatively associated with F1 (p < .001), not F0 and F2. Amplitude-wise, F0 and F1 were correlated with decentration (p < .01) and SE (p < .01), and F2 was associated with astigmatism (p < .001). Direction-wise, F1 was correlated with decentration (p < .001) and F2 was associated with astigmatism (p < .001).Conclusions: Among Fourier parameters, F0 and F1 were negatively associated with ALG in myopic children undergoing orthokeratology. Their associations to SE and CTZ decentration may partially explain the effect on ALG retardation.

In recent years, the neural network (NN) has shown its great potential in image recognition tasks of autonomous driving systems, such as traffic sign recognition, pedestrian detection, etc. However, theoretically well-trained NNs usually fail their performance when facing real-world scenarios. For example, adverse real-world conditions, e.g., bad weather and lighting conditions, can introduce different physical variations and cause considerable accuracy degradation. As for now, the generalization capability of NNs is still one of the most critical challenges for the autonomous driving system. To facilitate the robust image recognition tasks, in this work, we build the RobuTS dataset: a comprehensive Robust Traffic Sign Recognition dataset, which includes images with different environmental variations, e.g., rain, fog, darkening, and blurring. Then to enhance the NN’s generalization capability, we propose two generalization-enhanced training schemes: 1) REIN for robust training without data in adverse scenarios and 2) Self-Teaching (ST) for robust training with unlabeled adverse data. The great advantages of such two training schemes are they are data-free ( REIN ) and label-free ( ST ), thus effectively reducing the huge human efforts/cost of on-road driving data collection, as well as the expensive manual data annotation. We conduct extensive experiments to validate our methods’ performance on both classification and detection tasks. For classification tasks, our proposed training algorithms could consistently improve model performance by +15%–25% ( REIN ) and +16%–30% ( ST ) in all adverse scenarios of our RobuTS datasets. For detection tasks, our ST could also improve the detector’s performance by +10.1 mean average precision (mAP) on Foggy-Cityscapes, outperforming previous state-of-the-art works by +2.2 mAP.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which mainly includes ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), is a group of chronic bowel diseases that are characterized by abdominal pain, diarrhea, and bloody stools. IBD is strongly associated with depression, and its patients have a higher incidence of depression than the general population. Depression also adversely affects the quality of life and disease prognosis of patients with IBD. The tryptophan-kynurenine metabolic pathway degrades more than 90% of tryptophan (TRP) throughout the body, with indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), the key metabolic enzyme, being activated in the inflammatory environment. A series of metabolites of the pathway are neurologically active, among which kynerunic acid (KYNA) and quinolinic acid (QUIN) are molecules of great interest in recent studies on the mechanisms of inflammation-induced depression. In this review, the relationship between depression in IBD and the tryptophan-kynurenine metabolic pathway is overviewed in the light of recent publications.

Landslides represent some of the most important geological disasters and not only pose a threat to human beings but also have a serious destructive impact on the environment and property. Delimiting the potential distribution of landslide risk zones is of great significance for reducing casualties and economic losses and promoting sustainable development. Research has been performed on landslide hazard risk assessment for decades; however, the risk factors for landslide disasters in China are still not well understood. Based on the assembled georeferenced landslide occurrence records and a set of spatial covariates, the risk factors for landslide disasters are estimated, and a landslide susceptibility map is generated using the maximum entropy model. The results suggest that distance to roads, rainfall, and land use are the main risk factors affecting landslide occurrence, with relative contribution rate values of 32.9%, 29.8%, and 14.3%, respectively. The estimate map reveals that the potential landslide risk for zones in eastern and southern parts of China is higher than that in zones in western and northern China and that the predicted highest risk provinces are Yunnan, Sichuan and Hunan. Our findings provide an important basis for decision-making regarding disaster prevention and mitigation.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are important but understudied state investors. We investigate whether geopolitics influences SWFs foreign acquisitions, asking if and how their FDI patterns differ from those of private firms. Theoretical expectations are mixed. On the one hand, limited managerial control of target firms suggests that SWFs may be unable to pursue political goals, and thus they are no more sensitive to geopolitics than private firms. On the other hand, state ownership of SWFs can generate national security externalities and thereby makes SWFs more sensitive to geopolitics. Utilizing novel big-data measures of cooperative and adversarial relations based on media reporting and three different tests, we examine over 5800 cross-border acquisitions by SWFs and private firms. We find that home–host conflict hinders SWFs more than private firms whereas cooperation helps SWFs more than private firms. Hence, despite SWFs’ lack of managerial control of target firms, state ownership moderates geopolitical influences on their internationalization and makes them more sensitive than private firms to interstate relations. Our findings suggest that government concern over FDI by state entities goes beyond their operational activities.

In this article, a defense method with watermarking to detect linear deception attack under Kullback–Leibler (K–L) divergence detector in cyber–physical system (CPS) is proposed. It is known that linear deception attacks can reduce the performance of remote estimator without being detected by the K–L divergence detector. In order to detect this kind of attack, we use watermarking to encrypt and decrypt data transmitted through wireless networks. When the attack does not exist, the transmitted data can be restored to ensure the remote estimation performance. In the presence of linear deception attacks, these data are marked with a watermarking so that they can assist the K–L divergence detector to discover the attack. The watermarking encryption method is proved to be helpful for K–L divergence detector to discover attack, or weaken the impact of the attack in different situations. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to further illustrate the results.

From the perspective of external market shocks, this paper proposed fuzzy integrated vector auto regression (FVAR) model that determines the long-term basis and short-term basis interactions of China’s coal price with international energy prices. The proposed FVAR preform coal price fluctuation based on long-term and short term span in six stages including unit root testing, Johansen cointegration test, vector auto regression (VAR) model construction, fuzzification of VAR model, vector error correction (VEC) model and an impulse response function(IRF). It is observed that there is a steady long-term stability and equilibrium bond between the China’s domestic coal price, international coal price and the international crude (unrefined) oil price. The international coal and international crude oil price have an opposite effect on China’s domestic coal price. In addition, the former has a stronger fuzzy price discovery function on China’s domestic coal market than the latter. In the short term, China’s domestic coal price is more complex to instability reactions and is affected by market expectations. The international energy market is more effective than domestic coal market, and there is a relatively stable price adjustment mechanism between the two, with the international coal price playing a leading role in the fuzzy guidance of China’s coal price. Therefore, in reference to international energy pricing models, the paper proposes a fuzzy pricing model for a coal futures index based on the coal futures trading price and supplemented by the premium and discount agreed to by both trading parties.

Previous studies reported that ferroptosis-related genes can regulate the process of tumor cell changes by regulating iron metabolism. However, the prognostic value of ferroptosis-related genes in LC remains to be further elucidated. Ferroptosis-related gene expression profiles of coexisting ferroptosis-related genes were extracted from both cohorts (TCGA and GSE27020) for eligible analysis. LASSO Cox regression was utilized to build an optimum ferroptosis-related prognostic model. Kaplan–Meier curve was performed by log‐rank test, and time‐dependent ROC curve was constructed to evaluate the predictive power of this signature in both cohorts. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis was used to investigate the potential mechanism of differential enrichment signal pathways. 112 LC patients from the TCGA cohort and 108 LC patients with clinical information from the GEO cohorts were eventually included in the study. Three ferroptosis-related genes were identified as an independent risk factor to establish the prognostic risk score. Kaplan–Meier curve represented that patients with high-risk group favors with worse OS than their low-risk group (P = 0.04). The good performance of the gene signature for predicting OS was evaluated by area under the curve (AUC) of time-dependent ROC curves achieved 0.74 at 3 years, and 0.70 at 5 years. Similar performance has been proved in the external validation cohort. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis have been performed to explore the signaling pathways and underlying mechanisms were significantly active in LC patients. In summary, our study developed a ferroptosis-related model that could be an effective biomarker to predict the prognosis of laryngeal cancer.

Nowadays, crowdsourcing gains an increasing popularity as it can be adopted to solve many challenging question answering tasks that are easy for humans but difficult for computers. Due to the variety in the quality of users, it is important to infer not only the underlying ground truth of these tasks but also the users ability from the answers given by users. This problem is called Ground Truth Inference and has been studied for many years. However, since the answers collected from the users may contain sensitive information, ground truth inference raises serious privacy concern. Due to this reason, the problem of ground truth inference under local differential privacy (LDP) model has been recently studied. However, this problem is still not well understood and even some basic questions have not been solved yet. First, it is still unknown what is the average error of the private estimators to the underlying ground truth. Secondly, we do not know whether we can infer the ability of each user under LDP model and what is the estimation error w.r.t. the underlying users ability. Finally, previous work only shows that their methods have better performance than the private major voting algorithm through experiments. However, there is still no theoretically result which shows this priority formally or mathematically. In this paper, we partially solve these problems by studying the ground truth inference problem under local attribute differential privacy (LADP) model, which is a relaxation of LDP model, and propose a new algorithm called private Dawid-Skene method, which is motivated by the classical Dawid-Skene method. Specifically, we first provide the estimation errors for both ability of users and the ground truth under some assumptions of the problem if the algorithm start with some appropriate initial vector. Moreover, we propose an explicit instance and show that the estimation error of the ground truth achieved by the private major voting algorithm is always greater than the error achieved by our method.

Summary Semitransparent organic solar cells (ST-OSCs) can potentially meet the huge demands of off-grid and rooftop power supplies for advanced agricultural activities; yet, only a few efforts have been devoted to its development. Herein, we developed a high-performance spectrally engineered ST-OSCs using “green” fabrication for greenhouse. Empowered by the newly designed quaternary blends, OSCs were obtained with an excellent power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.71%. Such quaternary blends not only exhibit the suitable photon transmission windows for plant absorption but also retain excellent photovoltaic properties upon non-halogenated solvent fabrication, leading to PCEs of 17.43% for opaque and 13.08% for ST-OSCs (with a plant growth factor of 24.7%), which represent the best-performed OSCs made from non-halogenated solvents. Under the ST-OSCs filtered lights, plants grow favorably, with growth being comparable with that under glass. This work provides an effective approach to constructing organic solar cells with promising features as eco-friendly greenhouse photovoltaics.

The nanoporous (NP) GaN wafers which were fabricated by electrochemical etching (EC) method were used as substrates to deposit Er-doped Ga2O3 epitaxial films by pulsed layer deposition (PLD). The epitaxial relationship between the GaN and Er doped β-Ga2O3 film was Ga2O3 (−201) ‖ GaN (0001) with Ga2O3 [010] ‖ GaN [-12-10]. Compared to the Er doped films on the epi-GaN wafers with the porosity of 0%, ~20% and ~60%, the β-Ga2O3 film deposited on the wafer with a porosity of ~40%, which has an energy bandgap of ~4.89 eV, has the best crystal quality and optoelectronic properties. The performance enhancement should be due to improved crystalline quality as a result of the existence of nanopores in the etched substrates. The excellent properties of Er doped Ga2O3 films indicated that the films have great potential to fabricate Ga2O3 optoelectronic devices.