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Sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are new antidiabetic drugs that reduce hyperglycemia by inhibiting the glucose reabsorption in renal proximal tubules. Clinical studies have shown that SGLT2 inhibitors not only improve glycemic control but also reduce major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE, cardiovascular and total mortality, fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction or stroke) and hospitalization for heart failure (HF), and improve outcome in chronic kidney disease. These cardiovascular and renal benefits have now been confirmed in both diabetes and non-diabetes patients. The precise mechanism(s) responsible for the protective effects are under intensive investigation. This review examines current evidence on the cardiovascular benefits of SGLT2 inhibitors, with a special emphasis on the vascular actions and their potential mechanisms.

Renal sympathetic denervation (RSD) is a new method for the treatment of resistant hypertension (RH). However, few studies have focused on the effects of RSD on blood flow and the interaction between temperature field and flow field. In this paper, firstly, we designed a numerical simulation of electromagnetic field, flow field and temperature field coupling by finite element method. Secondly, numerical simulation results were verified by particle image velocimetry (PIV) and vitro experiment. From the simulation results, when the flow velocity increases to 0.05 m/s, the turbulence near the electrode disappeared and flow state became uniform laminar flow. With the increases of flow velocity (0 m/s to 0.1 m/s), temperature rise of the renal artery, the electrode tip and blood decreased from 13°C, 24°C and 5.4°C to 9.3°C, 9.7°C and 0.2°C, respectively. From PIV experiment and vitro experiment results, when the flow rate increases to 0.5 L/min, it appeared similar phenomenon with the velocity of 0.05 m/s in simulation. With the increases of flow rate (0 L/min to 0.8 L/min), temperature rise of three points decreased from 11.2°C, 20.5°C and 3.6°C to 7.8°C, 8.5°C, and 0.4°C, respectively. When the blood flow rate exceeds 0.5 L/min, there is no large velocity gradient and reflux area in the flow field, so there will be no hemolysis and thrombosis. Therefore, the temperature field has less influence on the flow field. With the increase of flow rate, the temperature at all three points decreases. Therefore, the flow field has an effect on the temperature field. But the central temperature of renal artery can still reach the treatment target in which temperature rises to be more than 6°C. Therefore, this study preliminarily verified the safety and effectiveness of RSD.

Objective Renal sympathetic denervation (RDN) is an alternative treatment for resistant hypertension (RH). This study aims to compare ablation effects using three radiofrequency applicators (i.e., balloon-based four electrodes, spiral and monopolar devices). Methods An idealized three-dimensional model of the renal artery was established using COMSOL Multiphysics to mimic radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Radiofrequency (RF) energy was delivered to the tissue at the same simulation settings, i.e., 4, 6, and 8 W for 60 s, using the three abovementioned RF applicators. The temperature distribution in the tissue was calculated using the coupled electrical–thermal–fluid finite element method. Lesion borders were defined using 50 °C isotherms. The maximum lesion depth, width, area, and circumferential coverage rate were compared among the three applicators at a blood flow of 0.4 m/s. Monopolar RF ablations in a renal artery phantom model were performed to validate the reliability of the simulation method. Results The balloon-based system yields greater lesion depths and widths compared with spiral and monopolar denervation under the same power. The range of maximum lesion depth is 1.58–3.11 mm for balloon-based RDN, 0.90–1.81 mm for spiral RDN and 1.12–2.38 mm for monopolar RDN, at a power of 4–8 W. The corresponding ranges of maximum lesion width are 2.22–5.73, 1.48–3.54, and 1.93–5.31 mm, respectively, and the circumferential coverage rates of the renal artery are 41.43%–91.99%, 31.71%–66.23%, and 9.55%–23.06%, respectively. The average velocity after balloon-based, spiral, and monopolar RDN increases by 3, 5, and 1 cm/s, respectively. The validation of the computer model offered prediction errors are

As one of the key building block of robotic system, current map fusion methods are usually constrained by using isomorphic modal of robotic systems or single type of sensors. They cannot works well in heterogeneous collaborative robotic systems that consists of aerial and ground robots. In this paper, we use heterogeneous robot systems consisting of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to build occupancy grid maps that can be used for navigation. To fuse sensor data of different types, we propose a Collaborative Map Fusion algorithm based on Multi-task Gaussian Process Classification (MTGPC) using heterogeneous robotic systems. Our system is tested in real scenes and can achieve an accuracy of more than 70%. To our knowledge, this is the first work that can build the occupancy grid maps using sparse data points sampled from aerial images map and ground lidar map.

Student action analysis plays an import role in learning and teaching. In order to improve the accuracy of student action recognition in classroom learning, a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network for Student Action Recognition (DCGANSAR) method is proposed. The method contains two stages: constructing the Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN) to obtain pre-trained weights in the discriminator, and using the discriminator of DCGAN to classify actions. The advantage is that the confrontation between the generator and the discriminator in DCGAN makes the discriminator get stronger, and effective weights are obtained. The pre-trained weights are beneficial for student action recognition, so the accuracy of recognition is improved. Experiments are conducted on the self-built student action dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method recognizes student action with high accuracy and fast convergence speed.

The research of image deblurring plays an important role in the digital image processing. In order to reduce image blurring problems, a content constraint loss (CCL) function in the generative adversarial network (GAN) is proposed. The SSIM loss and the perceptual loss constitute the CCL function, which makes the trained generative model stable. The CCL function as the content constraint loss component and the adversarial loss component constitute the total loss. The total loss is optimized by the iterative training to further improve the stability of the network model, and the image blurring will be reduced. In the test experiment of the open source image dataset MNIST, CIFAR10/100 and CELEBA, the CCL function is used as the content constraint loss component of the generative adversarial network, the effect of image deblurring has obvious promotion in the structural similarity measure and visual appearance.

Chronic wounds, for instance venous, pressure, arterial and diabetic ulcers, are a major health problem throughout the world. Compared with normal wounds, those that take more than four weeks to heal are defined as chronic. Interestingly, the numbers of patients suffering from chronic wounds and the cost for treatment have been increasing during the past two decades. There is increasing evidence that suggests that bacteria infect those chronic wounds and there exist as a biofilm, which affects wound healing and success of treatment. To study biofilms in infected wounds, both in vitro and in vivo biofilm models are important to be developed. In this project, a dynamic ex vivo chronic wound biofilm model for Staphylococcus aureus using a 3D printed chamber and porcine skin was developed. This dynamic model then used to determine antibiotic treatment by using poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) electrospun fibrous mats containing different antibiotics, e.g. tetracycline, gentamicin and fusidic acid. Furthermore, electrospun PCL/silk fibroin scaffolds were also used as carrier of gentamicin. The killing effect of mature S. aureus MRSA 252 growing in the wound model was tested by both viable count and qPCR. The results indicated that this newly designed dynamic model was successful in mimicking single-strain biofilm on infected chronic wounds. Compared with traditional biofilm assays, the flow system generates an air-liquid-solid interface, which more closely approaches to real conditions. Furthermore, results from using electrospun fibrous scaffolds provided strong evidence for their potential in clinical applications to treat infected skin.

Resistant hypertension (RH) is a major healthcare issue, causing cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. In recent years, radiofrequency (RF) ablation to renal sympathetic denervation (RSD) is a new effective method for the treatment of RH. However, the effect of RSD on renal artery blood flow still need further research. In this study, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) experiment and RF ablation experiment were used to observe the blood flow states in three conditions: no ablation with flow, ablation with no flow, and ablation with flow. The results showed that when the blood flow was 1L/min in renal artery without ablation, it was uniform laminar flow. When the blood was static in renal artery with ablation, there was eddy around the ablation catheter. When the blood flow was 1L/min in renal artery with ablation, the eddy disappeared and the blood flow was uniform laminar flow. Therefore, when the renal artery blood flow is 1L/min, there will be no thrombus and hemolysis in the renal artery due to eddy current and large velocity gradient, which preliminarily verified the safety of the RSD. Keyword: Resistant hypertension; Radiofrequency ablation; Flow field; PIVClinical relevance-When the blood flow of renal artery is 1L/min, there will be no thrombus and hemolysis in renal artery due to eddy current and large velocity gradient during the operation of RF ablation to renal sympathetic denervation.

Chronic wounds, for instance venous, pressure, arterial and diabetic ulcers, are a major health problem throughout the world. Compared with normal wounds, those that take more than four weeks to heal are defined as chronic. Interestingly, the numbers of patients suffering from chronic wounds and the cost for treatment have been increasing during the past two decades. There is increasing evidence that suggests that bacteria infect those chronic wounds and there exist as a biofilm, which affects the wound healing and success of wound treatment. The aim of this project is to develop a dynamic ex vivomodel to mimic Staphylococcus aureus biofilm on infected chronic wound using artificial wound fluid, 3D printing and porcine skin. This dynamic model also will be used to determine drug delivery from commercial antibiotic discs and poly-e-caprolactone (PCL) electrospun fibrous matrices. The results indicated that our new developed dynamic model was succeed with mimicking S. aureus biofilm on infected chronic wounds. Compared our flow system with traditional colony biofilm assay (CBA), it had generated an air-liquid-solid interface, which is more approach to real conditions. Meanwhile, drug delivery from PCL electrospun matrices had been tested with both CBA and flow system. The results provided further strong evidence on the benefaction of our new developed ex vivomodel. In summary, this new developed easily application model will be potentially significant on improving studying treatments of biofilms on infected chronic wounds.

Purpose. To report on an improved botulinum toxin injection with conjunctival microincision for beginners, and to determine the effectiveness of botulinum toxin A (BTXA) in the treatment of patients with acute acquired comitant esotropia (AACE). Methods. Medical records of 29 AACE patients were retrospectively analyzed. BTXA was injected into the unilateral or bilateral medial rectus muscle with conjunctival microincision without electromyographic guidance. Success was defined as total horizontal deviation ≤10 prism diopters (PD) and evidence of binocular vision. Results. Twenty-nine patients were included, of whom 22 were male and 7 were female. The mean age at onset was 14.2 ± 7.4 (range, 4–34) years. The mean time from onset of AACE to injection was 18.4 ± 20.3 (range, 1–96) weeks. All patients completed at least 6 months of follow-up, and the mean follow-up after BTXA injection was 12.3 ± 4.8 months (range, 7–24 months). Neurological evaluation and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were unremarkable in all patients. The mean spherical equivalent refraction was −1.22 ± 2.85D and −0.97 ± 2.80D in the right and left eyes, respectively. Mean preinjective esotropia was 38.4 ± 18.9 PD (range, +10–+80 PD) at near and 40.2 ± 17.7 PD (range, +20–+80 PD) at far distance. The mean angle of deviation at 6 months after injection was 0.6 ± 4.1 PD (range, −3–+15 PD) at near and 3.0 ± 5.9 PD (range, 0–+20 PD) at far distance. There was significant difference in the angle of deviation at near and far fixation between pre-BTXA and post-BTXA 6 months (p<0.001,p<0.001, resp.). There was no significant difference in the angle of deviation at near and far fixation between post-BTXA 6 months and post-BTXA at final follow-up (p = 0.259 and 0.326, resp.). Mean stereoacuity improved from 338 to 88 arc seconds. During the follow-up period, 5 of 29 patients had recurrent esotropia. Two patients refused all further treatment, and the other 3 patients required incisional strabismus surgery. The success rates were 86.2% (25/29) at 6 months and 82.8% (24/29) at final follow-up. Conclusion. Conjunctival microincision injection of botulinum toxin is a practical and safe method for beginners to locate an extraocular muscle, which is as effective as the traditional methods. Botulinum toxin injection can be preferred as the first-line treatment for AACE patients with potential binocular vision.

Chronic wounds, for instance venous, pressure, arterial and diabetic ulcers, are a major health problem throughout the world. Compared with normal wounds, those that take more than four weeks to heal are defined as chronic. Interestingly, the numbers of patients suffering from chronic wounds and the cost for treatment have been increasing during the past two decades. There is increasing evidence that suggests that bacteria infect those chronic wounds and there exist as a biofilm, which affects the wound healing and success of wound treatment. To study biofilms in infected wounds, both in vitro and in vivo biofilm models have been developed. In this project, the colony biofilm assay was used to determine antibiotics effect on removing biofilm. The results of this study so far indicated that mature Staphylococcus aureus biofilms were resistant to vancomycin treatment, which works effectively on killing planktonic cells. However, other antibiotics used topically for healing infected chronic wounds, for example, gentamicin, tetracycline, fusidic acid and mupirocin, were more effective at killing mature biofilms in the colony biofilm model. These sets of experiments were also done with pig skin based on colony biofilm assay. This project aims to build up a new ex vivo dynamic model using pig skin and a 3D print flow chamber to mimic chronic wounds. Hence, the results gathered from the colony biofilm assay will be compared with those obtained for the newly developed model. This model can then be used to study the drug delivery and topical treatment of chronic wounds.

A Recurrent Attention LSTM model (RAL) is proposed for image Chinese caption generation. The model uses Inception-v4 as CNN model developed by Google to extract image features while the recurrent attention LSTM mechanism determines feature weights. The model can generate words accurately because of adding the weights of image region. Therefore, the proposed model is able to generate more relevant descriptions and improve the efficiency of the system. Compared with Neural Image Caption (NIC) model, the experiment results show that the performance of the proposed model is improved by 1.8% with BLEU-4 metrics and 6.2% with CIDEr metrics on the AI Challenger Image Chinese Captioning dataset.

A hydrothermal fabrication of ZnO nanorod-based grating patterns on Si substrates is reported. The arrays of optical fiber cores were manually assembled as templates with nominal pitches of 250 μm and 375 μm. The profiles of the templates and the grating patterns were extracted and quantitatively characterized based on micrographs of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Image Processing Toolbox of MATLAB. The errors of the actual pitches and the parallelism demonstrate that the process capability of manually assembling the optical fiber cores can meet the quality requirement of the templates. The critical dimensions (CDs) show that the size of the trough formed by the template and the Si substrate determines the location of the grating pattern. The characteristic parameters, including line edge roughness (LER), line width roughness (LWR), skewness (Sk), kurtosis (Ku), and correlation length (ζ), exhibit that the three-phase contact lines among the trapped air bubble, ZnO seed solution, and Si substrate (or the optical fiber core) decide the form of the grating pattern. The research found that larger nominal pitch of the template resulted in larger size of the trough which further led to less CD, and higher hydrophilicity of the Si surfaces resulted in smoother profiles whilst lower hydrophilicity of the optical fiber core surfaces led to rougher ones.

Losartan, an angiotensin (Ang) II type 1 receptor blocker (ARB), has been revealed to protect against cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. However, the mechanism by which losartan protect brain ischemia injury is still obscure. In this study, we investigated whether losartan protected against cerebral I/R injury by reducing apoptosis and the possible signaling pathways. Wistar rats were pretreated for 14 days with 5mg/kg losartan, and then subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) for 2h followed by reperfusion. Meanwhile, PC12 cells pretreated with losartan were exposed to oxygen-glucose deprivation-reoxygenation (OGD/R), an in vitro model of cerebral ischemia. Our results showed that administration of losartan significantly inhibited the apoptosis by decreasing the number of apoptotic cells, decreasing the protein level of cleaved caspase-3, cytochrom C and Bax, and increasing the level of Bcl-2 both in vivo and in vitro. Moreover, losartan treatment markedly enhanced the phosphorylation of Akt and blockade of PI3K activity by wortmannin dramatically inhibited Akt phosphorylation and attenuated the anti-apoptotic effect of losartan. Furthermore, pretreatment with losartan significantly increased the protein level of β-arrestin1 and silence of β-arrestin1 by siRNA partly attenuated losartan-induced anti-apoptotic effect and the phosphorylation of Akt. These results suggested that β-arrestin1 modulated the activation of Akt in losartan-induced anti-apoptotic effect in cerebral I/R. Our data would provide a new molecular basis for further understanding of protective effect of losartan in cerebral I/R injury and may provide benefits of using losartan in the treatment of cerebrovascular disease.

This paper reports on UV-mediated enhancement in the sensitization of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) on zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods, improving the charge transfer efficiency across the QD-ZnO interface. The improvement was primarily due to the reduction in the interfacial resistance achieved via the incorporation of UV light induced surface defects on zinc oxide nanorods. The photoinduced defects were characterized by XPS, FTIR, and water contact angle measurements, which demonstrated an increase in the surface defects (oxygen vacancies) in the ZnO crystal, leading to an increase in the active sites available for the QD attachment. As a proof of concept, a model cadmium telluride (CdTe) QD solar cell was fabricated using the defect engineered ZnO photoelectrodes, which showed ∼10% increase in photovoltage and ∼66% improvement in the photocurrent compared to the defect-free photoelectrodes. The improvement in the photocurrent was mainly attributed to the enhancement in the charge transfer efficiency across the defect rich QD-ZnO interface, which was indicated by the higher quenching of the CdTe QD photoluminescence upon sensitization.

Resveratrol (Rev) can ameliorate cytotoxic chemotherapy-induced toxicity and oxidative stress. Arsenic trioxide (As2O3) is a known cytotoxic environmental toxicant and a potent chemotherapeutic agent. However, the mechanisms by which resveratrol protects the liver against the cytotoxic effects of As2O3are not known. Therefore, in the present study we investigated the mechanisms involved in the action of resveratrol using a cat model in which hepatotoxicity was induced by means of As2O3treatment. We found that pretreatment with resveratrol, administered using a clinically comparable dose regimen, reversed changes in As2O3-induced morphological and liver parameters and resulted in a significant improvement in hepatic function. Resveratrol treatment also improved the activities of antioxidant enzymes and attenuated As2O3-induced increases in reactive oxygen species and malondialdehyde production. In addition, resveratrol attenuated the As2O3-induced reduction in the ratio of reduced glutathione to oxidized glutathione and the retention of arsenic in liver tissue. These findings provide a better understanding of the mechanisms whereby resveratrol modulates As2O3-induced changes in liver function and tissue morphology. They also provide a stronger rationale for the clinical utilization of resveratrol for the reduction of As2O3-induced hepatotoxicity.

It is challenging to demonstrate the ideas of infiltration capacity and actual infiltration rates into soil from a water supply (such as rainfall) event because infiltration capacity models are usually given as a function of time. This article outlines a new visual method by which the actual infiltration rate can be demonstrated using an Excel spreadsheet file. The visual method is appropriate for junior/senior and graduate students interested in water resources management courses such as hydrology, groundwater engineering, or soil physics. The first step is to construct a relationship between the capacity infiltration rate and the cumulative infiltration depth. This relationship serves as the basis to determine the actual infiltration rate. The next step is to use a visual iterative approach in Excel to determine the timing of runoff and the actual infiltration rates. Three representative examples are presented to illustrate the method. The first example represents a case of constant water supply rate. In the second example, we present a scenario with unsteady water supply rate, but having large enough rate to sustain continuous runoff once it started. The third example is a case of unsteady water supply rate with intermittent runoff after it started. This new approach is a valuable tool by which students and researchers can better understand the concepts related to infiltration capacity and actual infiltration rate in real-world applications. Impact Statement Relationships between water supply rates and actual infiltration rates into a soil are important concepts of many real-world applications. This article outlines a new visual method by which the actual infiltration rate can be determined using a spreadsheet file in a trial-and-error manner. With this new method, the infiltration and runoff concepts can be quantitatively demonstrated to better understand the difference between the infiltration capacity and actual infiltration.

According to technical requirements of satellite optical communication, a set of optical system of transmitter and receiver with a common optical antenna is designed at 850nm. We select a Cassegrain-type afocal off-axis system as the optical antenna structure. The entrance pupil diameter is 150 mm. The field of view of transmitter and receiver is ±100μrad and ±5mrad, respectively. This optical system has a simple and feasible configuration. The design results show that system performances are acceptable. The MTF is close to the diffraction limit. The energy concentration ratios are more than 90% at 30μm of diameter of circle. The RMS of wave front aberration is less than λ/20.