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Many companies are considering “social recommendation” for their businesses, e.g., “rms are offering rewards to customers who recommend the firms” products/services in online social networks (OSNs). However, the pros and cons of such social recommendation scheme are still unclear. Thus, it is difficult for firms to design rewarding schemes, and for OSN platforms to design regulating policies. Via empirical analysis of data, we first identify key factors that affect the spreading of a firm's product in OSNs. These findings enable us to develop an accurate (i.e., with a high validation accuracy) mathematical model on social recommendations. Our model captures how users decide whether to recommend an item, which is a key factor but often ignored by previous social recommendation models. We also design algorithms to infer model parameters. Using our model, we uncover conditions when social recommendation improves a firm's profit and users’ utilities, as well as when it cannot improve the profit or hurts users’ utilities. These conditions help the design of both rewarding schemes and regulating policies. Last but not least, we extend our model to an dynamic setting, so that a firm can improve its profit by dynamically optimizing its rewarding schemes.

Automatic building extraction from high-resolution remote sensing images plays an important role in many application fields, such as the urban planning and photogrammetry. However, the complex background and large variety in building appearances in high-resolution remote sensing images make the building instance extraction challenging. In this study, we propose a novel two-stage instance segmentation network named gated spatial memory and centroid-aware network (GSMC) to handle these problems. Two new modules, including a gated spatial memory module (GSM) and a centroid-aware head (CH), are developed in our GSMC. The GSM is a top-down spatial structure and semantic information transmission module, where two gates including an input gate and a state gate are designed to strengthen the important features and replenish the lacking information. The CH is a new task head for regressing the geometric center of each instance, which can help to promote the accurate and complete recognition for irregularly shaped buildings. Experiments on the WHU Aerial data set, the WHU Satellite data set, and the Massachusetts Building data set demonstrate that the proposed GSMC can achieve consistently superior performances when compared with the recent state-of-the-art deep learning methods.

This letter investigates joint estimation of the channel, phase noise (PN), and in-phase (I) and quadrature-phase (Q) imbalance in multicarrier MIMO full-duplex wireless systems. We approximate the time-varying channels with a basis expansion model (BEM) to reduce the number of unknowns. We then propose a pilot-aided linear minimum mean-squared error (LMMSE) estimator for the BEM coefficients. To improve its performance, we develop a deep learning (DL) network. The DL network is trained offline by using simulation data and then deployed for online estimation. The numerical results illustrate that the proposed DL-LMMSE estimator outperforms conventional estimators, such as maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) in terms of the mean-squared error (MSE).

Objective : The purpose of this work was to enable simultaneous head and spine Magnetic Resonance imaging (MRI) in children at 3T by using a dedicated multichannel radiofrequency coil array system. Methods : A 24-channel head and spine pediatric coil system was developed and constructed. The coil's performance was compared with a commercially available 24-channel adult head-neck coil and a spine coil (1-4 spine of 16-channel were selected). Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and parallel imaging capability were quantitatively evaluated by phantom studies and in vivo imaging experiments. With Institutional Review Board and Ethics Committee approval, the designed coil was used to acquire head and spine images on 27 children in clinical settings. Results : The pediatric coil provided substantial SNR improvements with an increase of 32% to 40% in the brain region and up to a two-fold increase in the surface. SNR increased by at least 18% in the spine region. The coil enabled higher resolution and a faster imaging speed, owing to significantly improved SNR. Extensive coverage of the coil enabled high-quality fast imaging from head-neck to the whole spine. Good image quality with an average score 4.63 out of 5 was achieved using the developed pediatric coil in clinical studies. Conclusion : Simultaneous head and spine MRI with superior performance have been successfully acquired in children subjects at 3T using the dedicated 24-channel head and spine pediatric coil system. Significance : The 24-channel pediatric coil system potentially can enhance pediatric head and spine MRI in clinical research and diagnosis.

Purpose To investigate characteristics of intra- and extracranial arterial culprit plaques between patients with single infarct and multiple-infarcts by a head-neck combined high resolution magnetic resonance vessel wall imaging (HR-MRVWI). Materials and methods Forty-three patients with recent ischemic stroke due to large artery atherosclerosis were enrolled. The head-neck combined HR-MRVWI was performed in all patients both pre- and post-contrast administration. Based on diffusion weighted imaging findings, patients were divided into single-infarction and multiple-infarction groups. For patients with anterior circulation ischemic stroke, they were also divided into perforating artery infarction (PAI) and non-PAI groups. Patient demographics, number and location of culprit plaques, artery stenosis percentage, intraplaque hemorrhage, and plaque enhancement were evaluated and compared between single-infarction and multiple-infarction groups, as well as between PAI and non-PAI groups. Results A total of 83 culprit plaques were identified. The artery stenosis degree was more severe and plaque enhancement more prominent in multiple-infarction group than in single-infarction group. Patients with multiple infarcts also had more culprit plaques per patient than those with single infarct, which contributed to the occurrence of multiple infarcts. For comparison of PAI and non-PAI groups, a higher artery stenosis percentage was observed in non-PAI group, and patients with non-PAI had more culprit plaques per patient, which contributed to a variety of infarct manifestations. Conclusion A higher stenosis grade and higher number of culprit plaques seem to be associated with a higher number of cerebral infarcts in patients with large artery atherosclerosis.

COVID-19 has dealt an unprecedented blow to the aviation industry since 2020. This paper applies the Interval Epsilon-Based Measure (IEBM) model to evaluate the optimal quarterly environmental efficiency of 14 global airlines of passenger and cargo subsystems during 2018-2020. Then, the Time Series Prediction method is applied to forecast the interval data of inputs and outputs from 2021 to 2022 and calculate the quarterly efficiency. Thus, the future development trends of airlines can be predicted. Furthermore, the results accord with reality can verify the credibility and accuracy of the model. Furthermore, the results show that: 1. COVID-19 has hit the passenger subsystem harder, while the freight subsystem has become more efficient; 2. The efficiency of the freight subsystem has inevitably declined in the post-epidemic era; 3. Therefore, the airlines will have a “√” shaped recovery curve in the next few years.

In urban areas, vertical axis wind turbines have been installed on both sides of the road and rooftop. Compared with rooftop, vertical axis wind turbines mounted on the side of a building have a larger swept area with longer blades, and the effect of tip vortices can be reduced at the same time. Around the building, there are several high wind speed regions that can provide more wind energy. In this paper, a high-resolution numerical method composed of overset grid and adaptive mesh refinement techniques is adopted to verify the feasibility of vertical axis wind turbines mounted on the side of the building. Firstly, the complex flow field around the building is simplified into the flow field around the cylindrical building. Five typical flow regions with different flow conditions are determined: windward zone, crosswind zone, tailwind zone, recirculation zone and leeward zone. Secondly, wind turbines are installed evenly around the building. The simulation results show that the energy output of wind turbines in tailwind zone can be increased by 120% compared with the reference value. Thirdly, multiple wind turbines are coupled with the building. In order to get the optimal arrangement, power outputs of four arrangements are compared for the best choice. The results indicate that the arrangement with six wind turbines in crosswind zone and tailwind zone can achieve the best performance. Through changing the rotational directions, the forward blades of wind turbines can be close to the wall, and the energy output of all the wind turbines around the building can be improved.

BACKGROUND: To validate the feasibility of generating high-resolution intravascular 3.0 Tesla (T) magnetic resonance imaging of the coronary artery wall to further plaque imaging. METHODS: A receive-only 0.014-inch diameter magnetic resonance imaging guidewire (MRIG) was manufactured for intravascular imaging within a phantom experiment and the coronary artery wall of the swine. For coronary artery wall imaging, both high-resolution images and conventional resolution images were acquired. A 16-channel commercial surface coil for magnetic resonance imaging was employed for the control group. RESULTS: For the phantom experiment, the MRIG showed a higher signal-to-noise ratio than the surface coil. The peak signal-to-noise ratio of the MRIG and the surface coil-generated imaging were 213.6 and 19.8, respectively. The signal-to-noise ratio decreased rapidly as the distance from the MRIG increased. For the coronary artery wall experiment, the vessel wall imaging by the MRIG could be identified clearly, whereas the vessel wall imaging by the surface coil was blurred. The average signal-to-noise ratio of the artery wall was 21.1±5.40 by the MRIG compared to 8.4±2.19 by the surface coil, where the resolution was set at 0.2 mm × 0.2 mm × 2 mm. As expected, the high-resolution sequence clearly showed more details than the conventional resolution sequence set at 0.7 mm × 0.7 mm × 2.0 mm. Histological examination showed no evidence of mechanical injuries in the target vessel walls. CONCLUSIONS: The study validated the feasibility of generating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 0.2 mm × 0.2 mm × 2 mm for the coronary artery wall using a 0.014 inch MRIG.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been widely applied in current communication systems. The artificial intelligence (AI)-aided OFDM receivers are currently brought to the forefront to replace and improve the traditional OFDM receivers. In this study, we first compare two AI-aided OFDM receivers, namely, data-driven fully connected deep neural network and model-driven ComNet, through extensive simulation and real-time video transmission using a 5G rapid prototyping system for an over-the-air (OTA) test. We find a performance gap between the simulation and the OTA test caused by the discrepancy between the channel model for offline training and the real environment. We develop a novel online training system, which is called SwitchNet receiver, to address this issue. This receiver has a flexible and extendable architecture and can adapt to real channels by training only several parameters online. From the OTA test, the AI-aided OFDM receivers, especially the SwitchNet receiver, are robust to real environments and promising for future communication systems. We discuss potential challenges and future research inspired by our initial study in this paper., Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible

The incidence of posterior pilon variant fractures has been underestimated. The purpose was to study the characteristics of posteromedial (PM) and posterolateral (PL) fragments in CT imaging of posterior pilon variant fractures, and to provide help for clinical diagnosis and treatment. CT imaging data of 109 cases of posterior pilon variant fractures in our hospital from January 2013 to December 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. According to Mason and Molloy classification, PM fragments were further divided into pilon subtypes and avulsed subtypes. The largest actual area of fragments in axial and sagittal were selected as the study plane, and the maximum axial lengths of X, Y and Z, α angle, β angle, fragment area (S1–7) and fragment area ratio (FAR1-4), interfragmentary (IF) angle, and back of tibia (BT) angle were measured. A total of 109 cases were included in this study, 61 of whom were pilon subtypes [90.16% were supination-external rotation (SER) injuries]. 48 cases were avulsed subtypes [81.25% were pronation-external rotation (PER) injuries]. Pilon subtypes were larger than avulsed subtypes in X, Y, Z, α2 Angle, β2 Angle, fragment area and ratio, and IF and BT angle (P 0.05). The morphology of pilon subtype was larger than that of avulsion subtype. According to fragment size, morphology, and injury mechanism, two fragments of pilon subtype should be anatomic reduction and fixation. However, the PL fragment of avulsion subtype should to be fixed, while PM fragment may only need conservative treatment.

Iodine plays a key role in maintaining thyroid homeostasis, which is influenced by hormones through almost all nucleated cells and is essential for growth and metabolism. The most common kinds of thyroid dysfunction, hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, are markedly related to iodine intake. In addition, the prevalence and incidence of hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism are much higher in women than in men. However, the association between thyroid homeostasis and the gut microbiota is not yet completely clear, especially when comparing women and men. In this study, differences in the gut microbiota compositions, metabolic syndromes, and molecular mechanisms of female and male mice were investigated after iodine supplementation. The gut microbiota in male mice was changed more than that of female mice. The abundances of Muribacium intestinale, Barnesiella, Alloprevotella, Enterococcus, Desulfovibrionaceae, and Clostridium were significantly increased in female mice. This finding indicates that the high risk of thyroid disease in women could be related to the gut microbiota composition.

PURPOSE To investigate the corneal endothelium damage in Graves ophthalmopathy (GO) and its role as a promising quantitative index to evaluate GO activity. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. METHODS This study included 128 eyes of 64 patients with GO. All subjects underwent ophthalmologic examinations, including proptosis, tear break-up time (BUT), corneal fluorescein staining, and Schirmer test. Corneal endothelium was measured by noncontact specular microscope and ocular biometric parameters were measured by IOLMaster 700. Each eye was assigned a specific clinical activity score (CAS), then grouped as active (CAS ≥3 points) or inactive (CAS

Obesity-related glomerulopathy (ORG) is a secondary glomerular disease caused by obesity, with clinical manifestations such as proteinuria and glomerulomegaly. Currently, the high incidence of obesity brings a change in the spectrum of kidney diseases across the globe, including China. ORG has become another important secondary nephropathy leading to end-stage renal disease (ESRD), and its incidence has increased significantly. This trend is bound to bring about a serious socioeconomic burden. Therefore, it is urgent to study its pathogenesis and intervention measures. Currently, the occurrence and development mechanisms in ORG are complicated by many factors, which are still unclear. In the past 20 years, with the continuous intensive research on mechanisms such as hypoxia in the metabolic process, immune inflammation, and pyroptosis, there have been new advances in the mechanism of ORG, especially the important role of inflammation in podocyte injury and its impact on the progress of ORG. Here, we briefly review the possible pathogenic role of the inflammasome in the podocyte damage in ORG and summarize the possible therapeutical strategies targeting inflammasome.

Vertical axis wind turbines can harvest wind energy from every direction, and they are suitable for the complex flow conditions in urban areas. The flow field around buildings consists some high speed regions, and the blockage effect can provide higher wind velocity. Meanwhile, they can be installed at a certain altitude with no interference to pedestrians and vehicles. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of wind turbines in an array by arranging them between two buildings. For this aim, a high-resolution numerical simulation method is adopted to simulate the accurate flow field and force coefficients. The high-resolution numerical simulation method is composed of adaptive mesh refinement and overset grid techniques. Firstly, there are two array types with wind turbines uniformly arranged in a line, which is perpendicular to the free stream. The result shows that array type A with asymmetric wake achieves a greater mean power coefficient. It reveals that the wake matching phenomenon of array type B causes a loss of wind energy between each couple. Secondly, five column positions between the two buildings are arranged in different positions. The five positions correspond to different flow conditions, and they belong to three typical processes: contraction acceleration process, uniform velocity process, and expansion deceleration process. When mounting array type A in contraction acceleration or expansion deceleration regions, the velocity profile is non-uniform along with the array. The power coefficients of wind turbines in one array are significantly different from each other. The array in the contraction acceleration region reaches the maximum mean power coefficient. Thirdly, in order to evaluate the influence of wind directions in urban area, there are four cases with different wind directions. The simulation results show that the array at α ∞ = 15 ∘ obtains the maximum mean power coefficient. In summary, the mean output power of the wind turbine array in urban areas is always greater than that of a single wind turbine.

Since optical links are easily blocked by obstacles in the environment, they have been considered difficult to directly perform wireless communications. However, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), as a new type of digital coding meta-materials, can significantly improve the coverage of optical communication by establishing new links. We propose a controllable multi-branch wireless optical communication system based on optical RISs. By setting up multiple optical RISs in the environment, multiple artificial channels are built to improve the system performance and to reduce the outage probability. In this paper, we investigate three factors affecting channel coefficients, including beam jitter, RIS jitter, and obstruction probability. We derive closed-form probability density function of channel coefficients, asymptotic average bit-error rate (BER), and the outage probability for systems with multiple branches. Our analysis reveals that the probability density function contains an impulse function, which causes irreducible error rate and outage probability floors. Based on our numerical results, the BER and outage probability floor of the multi-branch system are significantly reduced compared with the single direct path system. Therefore, the optical RIS assisted multi-branch wireless communication is a promising solution against obstacles of optical channel.

In application scenarios such as Internet of Things, a large number of energy receivers (ERs) exist and line-of-sight (LOS) propagation could be common. Considering this, we investigate wireless energy transfer (WET) in extra-large massive MIMO Rician channels. We derive analytical expressions of the received net energy for different schemes, including 1) training-based WET, where the ER sends beacon signal for channel training and the energy transmitter (ET) uses the channel estimate for energy beamforming, 2) LOS beamforming, where the ET transmits to the LOS direction of the ER, and 3) energy harvesting, which allows an ER to harvest the training energy from the other ERs. We derive a path loss threshold for switching between training and LOS beamforming-based WET. We further show that the WET scheme selection of one ER is not affected by the other ERs, and the energy harvested from training is minimal in practice. With these insights, we propose an algorithm for the multi-ER scenario, which minimizes the power consumption by iteratively updating the WET scheme selection and power allocation for all ERs. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm achieves near-optimal performance as compared to exhaustive searching, while with much lower implementation complexity.

The recent development in machine learning, especially in deep neural networks (DNN), has enabled learning-based end-to-end communication systems, where DNNs are employed to substitute all modules at the transmitter and receiver. In this article, two end-to-end frameworks for frequency-selective channels and multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) channels are developed, where the wireless channel effects are modeled with an untrainable stochastic convolutional layer. The end-to-end framework is trained with mini-batches of input data and channel samples. Instead of using pilot information to implicitly or explicitly estimate the unknown channel parameters as in current communication systems, the transmitter DNN learns to transform the input data in a way that is robust to various channel conditions. The receiver consists of two DNN modules used for channel information extraction and data recovery, respectively. A bilinear production operation is employed to combine the features extracted from the channel information extraction module and the received signals. The combined features are further utilized in the data recovery module to recover the transmitted data. Compared with the conventional communication systems, performance improvement has been shown for frequency-selective channels and MIMO channels. Furthermore, the end-to-end system can automatically leverage the correlation in the channels and in the source data to improve the overall performance.

Identification of clinically applicable molecular subtypes of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is crucial to improving patient outcomes. However, the traditional tissue-dependent transcriptional subtyping strategies are invasive and not amenable to routine clinical evaluation. In this study, we developed a circulating extracellular vesicle (cEV) long RNA (exLR)-based PDAC subtyping method and provided exLR-derived signatures for predicting immunogenic features and clinical outcomes in PDAC. We enrolled 426 individuals, among which 227 PDACs served as an internal cohort, 118 PDACs from two other medical centers served as an independent validation cohort, and 81 healthy individuals served as the control. ExLR sequencing was performed on all plasma samples. We found that PDAC could be categorized into three subtypes based on plasma exLR profiles. Each subpopulation showed its own molecular features and was associated with patient clinical prognosis. The immunocyte-derived cEV fractions were altered among PDAC subtypes and interconnected with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in cancerous tissue. Additionally, we found a significant concordance of immunoregulators between tissue and blood EVs, and we harvested potential PDAC therapeutic targets. Most importantly, we constructed a nine exLR-derived, tissue-applicable signature for prognostic assessment of PDAC. The circulating exLR-based features may offer an attractive platform for personalized treatment and predicting patient outcomes in multiple types of cancer., Graphical abstract, This is the first study to use large-scale cEV transcriptome analysis for cancer risk stratification and uncover a complex interaction network of immunogenic components with clinical implications between circulatory particles and primary nidus from PDAC cases.

In order to improve the efficiency of early imaging diagnosis of patients with osteosarcoma and the effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy based on the results of imaging examinations, 48 patients with suspected osteosarcoma were selected as the research objects and their diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI)-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images were regularized in this study. Then, a DWI-MRI image discrimination model was established based on the class-structured deep convolutional neural network (CSDCNN) algorithm. The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), mean square error (MSE), and edge preserve index (EPI) were applied to evaluate the image quality after processing by the CSDCNN algorithm; the accuracy, recall rate, precise rate, and F1 score were employed to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of CSDCNN algorithm; the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) was adopted to evaluate the therapeutic effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy based on the CSDCNN algorithm, and SegNet, LeNet, and AlexNet algorithms were introduced for comparison. The results showed that the PSNR, MSE, and EPI values of DWI-MRI images of patients with osteosarcoma were 29.1941, 0.0016, and 0.9688, respectively, after using the CSDCNN algorithm to process the DWI-MRI images. The three indicators were significantly better than other algorithms, and the difference was statistically significant ( P < 0.05 ). According to the results of imaging diagnosis of patients with osteosarcoma, there was no significant difference between the assisted diagnosis effect of the CSDCNN algorithm and the pathological examination results ( P > 0.05 ). The results of adjuvant chemotherapy based on the CSDCNN algorithm found that the ADCmean value of the patients after chemotherapy was 1.66 ± 0.17 and the ADCmin value was 1.33 ± 0.15; the two indicators were significantly higher than other algorithms, and the difference was statistically significant ( P < 0.05 ). In conclusion, the CSDCNN algorithm had a good effect on DWI-MRI image processing of patients with osteosarcoma, which could improve the diagnostic accuracy of patients with osteosarcoma. Moreover, the diagnosis results based on this algorithm could achieve better neoadjuvant chemotherapy effects and assist clinicians in imaging diagnosis and clinical treatment of patients with osteosarcoma.

In the practice of various Internet-based sharing economies, environmental issues of shared products become more prominent and urgent. By analysing the relationship among government, enterprises, and consumers, this paper develops a system dynamics model based on the evolutionary game theory to explore the quantity change pattern of environment-friendly products in a sharing industry. A discrete dynamic system simulation of the quantity change process takes shared bikes in Beijing as a case study. The simulation results are consistent with the analysis of evolutionary game theory. The results show that government subsidies to both enterprises and consumers can lead to higher quantities of environment-friendly shared products, while consumer subsidy is better than enterprise subsidy. In addition, governments and enterprises need to ensure moderate investments to improve consumer experience and environmental awareness.

Multi-terminal hybrid high-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems have been developed quickly in recent years in power transmission area. However, for voltage-source converter (VSC) stations in hybrid HVDC systems, no direct current (DC) filters are required. In addition, the DC reactor is also not installed at the line end because the DC fault can be limited by the converter itself. This means that the boundary element at the line end is absent, and the single-ended protections used in line commutated converter (LCC) based HVDC (LCC-HVDC) systems or VSC-HVDC systems cannot distinguish the fault line in multi-terminal hybrid HVDC systems. This paper proposes a novel single-ended DC protection strategy suitable for the multi-terminal hybrid HVDC system, which mainly applies the transient information and active injection concept to detect and distinguish the fault line. Compared with the single-ended protections used in LCC-HVDC and VSC-HVDC systems, the proposed protection strategy is not dependent on the line boundary element and is thus suitable for the multi-terminal hybrid HVDC system. The corresponding simulation cases based on power systems computer aided design (PSCAD)/electromagnetic transients including DC (EMTDC) are carried out to verify the superiority of the proposed protection.

Sesquiterpenes are a large variety of terpene natural products, widely existing in plants, fungi, marine organisms, insects, and microbes. Value-added sesquiterpenes are extensively used in industries such as: food, drugs, fragrances, and fuels. With an increase in market demands and the price of sesquiterpenes, the biosynthesis of sesquiterpenes by microbial fermentation methods from renewable feedstocks is acquiring increasing attention. Synthetic biology provides robust tools of sesquiterpene production in microorganisms. This review presents a summary of metabolic engineering strategies on the hosts and pathway engineering for sesquiterpene production. Advances in synthetic biology provide new strategies on the creation of desired hosts for sesquiterpene production. Especially, metabolic engineering strategies for the production of sesquiterpenes such as: amorphadiene, farnesene, bisabolene, and caryophyllene are emphasized in: Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and other microorganisms. Challenges and future perspectives of the bioprocess for translating sesquiterpene production into practical industrial work are also discussed.

Background aims Distraction osteogenesis (DO) is a surgical technique to promote bone regeneration that requires a long time for bone healing. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been applied to accelerate bone formation in DO. Allogeneic MSCs are attractive, as they could be ready to use in clinics. Whether allogeneic MSCs would have an effect similar to autologous MSCs with regard to promoting bone formation in DO is still unknown. This study compares the effect of autologous MSCs versus allogeneic MSCs on bone formation in a rat DO model. Methods Rat bone marrow-derived MSCs were isolated, characterized and expanded in vitro. Adult rats were subjected to right tibia transverse osteotomy. On the third day of distraction, each rat received one injection of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), autologous MSCs or allogeneic MSCs at the distraction site. Tibiae were harvested after 28 days of consolidation for micro-computed tomography examination, mechanical test and histological analysis. Results Results showed that treatment with both allogeneic and autologous MSCs promoted bone formation, with significantly higher bone mass, mechanical properties and mineral apposition rate as well as expression of angiogenic and bone formation markers at the regeneration sites compared with the PBS-treated group. No statistical difference in bone formation was found between the allogeneic and autologous MSC treatment groups. Conclusions This study indicates that allogeneic and autologous MSCs have a similar effect on promoting bone consolidation in DO. MSCs from an allogeneic source could be used off-the-shelf with DO to achieve early bone healing.

Background and purpose Neuropathic pain places a devastating health burden, with effective therapies or drugs being scarce. We aimed to investigate the potential antiallodynic and antihyperalgesic effects of apigenin, a natural flavonoid with monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitory activity, against neuropathic pain and probe mechanism(s). Experimental approach The neuropathic pain model was produced by chronic constriction injury (CCI) of sciatic nerves in male C57BL/6J mice, with pain-related behaviours being assayed by von-Frey test and Hargreaves test. The 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and 5-HT1A receptor related mechanisms were investigated in vivo and in vitro. Key results Repeated apigenin treatment (p.o., once per day for two weeks) ameliorated allodynia and hyperalgesia in CCI mice in a dose-associated manner (3, 10 and 30 mg·kg-1 ). These pain-relieving effects seem serotonergically dependent, because (I) the antihyperalgesia and antiallodynia were attenuated by chemical depletion of 5-HT with p-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA), but potentiated by 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), (II) apigenin-treated CCI mice displayed increased level of spinal 5-HT, with diminished MAO activity. In vivo antagonist tests revealed that apigenin-evoked antiallodynia and antihyperalgesia were offset by 5-HT1A receptor antagonist WAY-100635 delivered spinally or systematically. In vitro, apigenin behaved as a positive allosteric modulator (PAM) to increase the efficacy (stimulation of [35 S] GTPγS binding) of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist 8-OH-DPAT. Beneficially, apigenin confered neuroprotection by attenuating neuronal derangement of sciatic nerve in CCI mice, without causing hypertensive crisis. Conclusions and implications These findings demonstrate the antiallodynic and antihyperalgesic efficacies of apigenin against neuropathic pain, with spinal 5-HT1A receptors being crucially involved.

In this paper, we investigate the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) to allow multiple user pairs to communicate simultaneously over the same channel. We propose a Riemannian manifold optimization approach to solve the problem of configuring the RIS passive reflection coefficients to minimize the total interference under constant modulus constraints. We compare the proposed approach to the widely-used semidefinite relaxation approach (SDR) for dealing with the constant modulus constraints. We investigate, using extensive numerical simulations, the effects of various system parameters, such as the number of users, the number of RIS elements, and the fraction of power received through the RIS. Our results demonstrate that RISs can substantially minimize interference allowing multiple user pairs to simultaneously communicate over the same channel and that the proposed approach vastly outperforms the semidefinite relaxation-based approach, which fails to find satisfactory solutions.

Atmospheric ducting has a significant impact on electromagnetic wave propagation. Radio signals that are trapped and guided by the atmospheric duct can travel a much longer distance over the horizon with lower attenuation since the signal power does not spread isotropically through the atmosphere. Atmospheric ducting brings both challenges and opportunities to wireless communications. On one hand, the signals propagating in the atmospheric duct may interfere with a receiver far away as remote co-channel interference. On the other hand, a point-to-point link can be established directly through the atmospheric duct to enable beyond line-of-sight communications. In this article, the formation of the atmospheric duct and its effects on radio wave propagation are first overviewed. Then solutions and standardization activities in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to mitigate atmospheric duct induced remote interference are presented. Finally, the applications and design challenges of atmospheric duct enabled beyond line-of-sight communications are reviewed and future research directions are suggested.

Objectives This study aimed to explore whether icarrin (ICA) can protect cardiomyocytes from hypertension-induced damage by inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS). Methods Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) were orally administered water or ICA at 10, 20 and 40 mg/kg once daily for 12 weeks, and Wistar–Kyoto (WKY) rats were used as control. Changes in the growth and blood pressure of rats were assessed. Cardiac function was determined by ultrasound and the left ventricle mass was calculated. Myocardial tissue structure was assessed by haematoxylin and eosin staining, cardiomyocyte apoptosis was observed by TUNEL staining and the expression of ERS-related proteins was determined by western blotting. Results In the SHR group, blood pressure was significantly high, left ventricular function decreased and left ventricular mass index increased. Additionally, left ventricular cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, disordered myofilament arrangement and increased cardiomyocyte apoptosis were observed by histological staining. ERS-induced proteins associated with apoptosis, including GRP78, PERK, ATF-6, ATF-4, CHOP, DR5, Caspase 12, c-JUN and ASK-1 were found to be highly expressed. ICA treatment reduced blood pressure and regulated the expression of proteins induced by ERS. Cardiomyocyte apoptosis decreased and left ventricular function improved. Conclusions ICA can inhibit ERS-induced apoptosis of cardiomyocytes and protect ventricular function in SHR.

Facing with COVID-19 epidemic such a catastrophic health emergency, the mental health status of medical staff deserves attention. We conducted a two-stage of psychological status monitoring after the end of the assistance and 14 days of isolation, further targeted the vulnerable groups in need of intervention. The study is a cross-sectional survey on 1156 Yunnan medical staff aid to Hubei. Used Cluster sampling method to collect data at 2 time points (at the end of returning from Wuhan and the 14th day of isolation), from March 18, 2020 to April 6, 2020. Female and nurse had higher rates of depressive symptoms than male and doctors and other occupations. The proportion of female with mild and above moderate anxiety levels (22.91%, 2.61%) was higher than male (17.35%, 1.03%) (p

Objectives The objectives of this study were to explore the effect of Osthole (Ost) on apoptosis in pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) and investigate the potential mechanism of this effect. Methods Rats were injected subcutaneously with monocrotaline (MCT) to establish a PAH model, and Ost were intragastrically administrated from day 1 to day 35. After 35 days administration, the mean pulmonary artery pressure and lung weight index were measured. HE and TUNEL staining were used to observe the morphology of pulmonary artery and the apoptosis of PASMCs. In addition, the apoptosis of PASMCs were detected by flow cytometry in cultured PASMCs. The proteins of Bax and Bcl-2, and the levels of p-ASK1 and cleaved caspase 3 were measured by Western blot. Key findings Ost decreased the mean pulmonary artery pressure and lung weight index in MCT-induced rats, and promoted apoptosis in PASMCs in MCT-induced rats and PDGF-BB stimulated PASMCs. Ost increased the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 and the levels of p-ASK1, cleaved caspase 3 in MCT-induced rats and PDGF-BB stimulated PASMCs. Conclusion Ost promoted apoptosis in PASMCs in vivo and in vitro, and the mechanism may be associated with upregulation of ASK1 and the Bax/Bcl-2-caspase 3 signalling pathway.

Face detection remains a challenging problem due to the high variability of scale and occlusion despite the strong representational power of deep convolutional neural networks and their implicit robustness. To handle hard face detection under extreme circumstances especially tiny faces detection, in this paper, we proposed a multiscale Hybrid Pyramid Convolutional Network (HPCNet), which is a one-stage fully convolutional network. Our HPCNet consists of three newly presented modules: firstly, we designed the Hybrid Dilated Convolution (HDC) module to replace the fully connected layers in VGG16, which enlarges receptive field and reduces its loss of local information; secondly, we constructed the Hybrid Feature Pyramid (HFP) to combine semantic information from higher layers together with details from lower layers; and thirdly, to deal with the problem of occlusion and blurring effectively, we introduced Context Information Extractor (CIE) in HPCNet. In addition, we presented an improved Online Hard Example Mining (OHEM) strategy, which can enhance the average precision of face detection by balancing the number of positive and negative samples. Our method has achieved an accuracy of 0.933, 0.924, and 0.848 on the Easy, Medium, and Hard subset of WIDER FACE, respectively, which surpasses most of the advanced algorithms.

Background Patients who improve following cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) have left ventricular (LV) remodeling and improved cardiac output (CO). Effects on the systemic circulation are unknown. Objective To explore the effects of CRT on aortic and pulmonary blood flow and systemic afterload. Methods At CRT implant patients underwent a noninvasive assessment of central hemodynamics, including wave intensity analysis (n = 28). This was repeated at 6 months after CRT. A subsample (n = 11) underwent an invasive electrophysiological and hemodynamic assessment immediately following CRT. CRT response was defined as reduction in LV end-systolic volume ≥15% at 6 months. Results In CRT responders (75% of those in the noninvasive arm), there was a significant increase in CO (from 3 ± 2 L/min to 4 ± 2 L/min, P = .002) and LV dP/dtmax (from 846 ± 162 mm Hg/s to 958 ± 194 mm Hg/s, P = .001), immediately after CRT in those in the invasive arm. They demonstrated a significant increase in aortic forward compression wave (FCW) both acutely and at follow-up. The relative change in LV dP/dtmax strongly correlated with changes in the aortic FCW (Rs 0.733, P = .025). CRT responders displayed a significant reduction in afterload, and a decrease in systemic vascular resistance and pulse wave velocity acutely; there was a significant decrease in acute pulmonary afterload measured by the pulmonary FCW and forward expansion wave. Conclusion Improved cardiac function following CRT is attributable to a combination of changes in the cardiac and cardiovascular system. The relative importance of these 2 mechanisms may then be important for optimizing CRT., Graphical abstract

Desire for improved aesthetic contour of the lower third of the face has resulted in an increase in chin augmentation. Although many fillers, including hyaluronic acid (HA), autologous fat and stromal vascular fraction gel (SVF-gel), have been used to improve facial morphology, chin augmentation requires fillers that provide greater support. The elastic and viscous moduli of SVF-gel and Coleman fat were assessed in vitro by rheological testing, whereas their elasticity were evaluated in vivo by ultrasonic elastography. Results in vitro were compared with those of highly elastic HA (HE-HA) and highly viscous HA (HV-HA), whereas results in vivo were compared with HE-HA. Changes in chin volume, SVF-gel retention rate and absorptivity for at least 12 months were measured by 3D white light scanning. Questionnaires were administered to assess patient satisfaction. The elastic and viscous modulus of SVF-gel was, respectively, slightly lower than HE-HA and HV-HA but higher than the other two in vitro, with the elasticity of the three layers of SVF-gel lower than HE-HA but slightly higher than normal control in vivo. The average retention rate was 62.34±3.34% at 12 months. The absorptivity of 90% of the samples was

Many elderly individuals suffer from Alzheimer's disease (AD), which causes a growing concern. We investigated the mechanism underlying the effects of vitamin D (VD) as a prophylactic treatment. A mouse model of okadaic-acid-induced AD-like pathology was used in vivo and in vitro. Morris water maze and field trials were used to assess cognitive function. The expression levels of VDR, MTHFR, LCMT-1, PP2A, p-TAU (Thr396), and T-TAU and the methylation level of PP2A were measured by Western blotting, and a reversal of the increase in the levels of these proteins in an AD cell model was observed. We used MTHFR-knockdown SH-SY5Y cells to further test the effects of VD, treated these cells with cycloheximide and MG132, and used RT-PCR to explore the mechanism underlying MTHFR targeting. We found that the effects of VD on AD were impaired by MTHFR knockdown through a pretranscriptional mechanism. In addition, VD attenuated AD-induced cognitive impairment and significantly suppressed the expression of TAU. Our findings indicated that VD treatment alleviated TAU accumulation and rescued methylated PP2A by increasing the expression of LCMT-1 and MTHFR.

Software development process ambidexterity (SDPA) is the ability to demonstrate both process alignment and process adaptability simultaneously. Realizing process ambidexterity has recently been suggested as an effective approach to improving the performance of software development (SD) projects. To understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of ambidexterity, we focus in this study on the mediating effects of coordination, one of the most important activity in SD projects. Specifically, we hypothesize a mediating effect of coordination costs and coordination effectiveness on the relationship between SDPA and project performance. We conducted a quantitative study involving 104 SD projects across 10 firms to test the model. The results strongly suggest that the positive relationship between SDPA and project performance is negatively mediated by coordination costs and positively mediated by coordination effectiveness. We validate our research model with a case study in an organization employing several hundred IT professionals and derive several practical implications on this basis.

Background The United Kingdom (UK) and Canada use the same acellular pertussis vaccine and both experienced large pertussis outbreaks in the past, occurring in the 1980s in the UK and 1990s in Canada, yet current epidemiology differs. A national outbreak with infant deaths occurred in the UK in 2012, yet outbreaks remain localized and death from pertussis rare in Canada. Aim We explored whether past outbreaks in children may influence future risk when those children become parents. Methods We conducted an ecological within-country birth cohort analysis in women of childbearing age of the relative risk of ever having pertussis infection by two points in time, 2002 and 2012, comparing with 1992 as the baseline. We used notified cases of pertussis in England and Wales and Canada to compare trends in relative risk. We projected forward to 2022 in Canada assuming incidence remained stable. Results In Canada, the cumulative risk of previous pertussis was similar in 2002 and 2012 and, in both periods, was higher than in 1992. In England and Wales, the cumulative risk of pertussis fell stepwise from 1992 to 2012. Projecting forwards, the pattern of risk in Canada becomes similar to England and Wales in 2022. Conclusions Widespread pertussis outbreaks in children may reduce the risk of pertussis in infants when those children become parents. Further research is needed to determine the mechanism. As birth cohorts that experienced outbreaks grow past childbearing age, pertussis burden in infants in Canada may increase, following trends observed in England and Wales.

Mining the shared features of same identity in different scene, and the unique features of different identity in same scene, are most significant challenges in the field of person re-identification (ReID). Online Instance Matching (OIM) loss function and Triplet loss function are main methods for person ReID. Unfortunately, both of them have drawbacks. OIM loss treats all samples equally and puts no emphasis on hard samples. Triplet loss processes batch construction in a complicated and fussy way and converges slowly. For these problems, we propose a Triplet Online Instance Matching (TOIM) loss function, which lays emphasis on the hard samples and improves the accuracy of person ReID effectively. It combines the advantages of OIM loss and Triplet loss and simplifies the process of batch construction, which leads to a more rapid convergence. It can be trained on-line when handle the joint detection and identification task. To validate our loss function, we collect and annotate a large-scale benchmark dataset (UESTC-PR) based on images taken from surveillance cameras, which contains 499 identities and 60,437 images. We evaluated our proposed loss function on Duke, Marker-1501 and UESTC-PR using ResNet-50, and the result shows that our proposed loss function outperforms the baseline methods by a maximum of 21.7%, including Softmax loss, OIM loss and Triplet loss.

Objective. To demonstrate whether KT is better than placebo taping, nonelastic taping, or no taping in reducing pain. Methods. PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Central Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov were systematically searched up to 20 October 2020 for randomized controlled studies that used KT to treat chronic knee pain according to PRISMA guidelines. We extracted the mean differences and SD in pretreatment and posttreatment for selected outcomes measured in the experimental and control groups for subsequent meta-analyses. Results. In total, 8 studies involving 416 participants fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Our results indicated that KT is better than other tapings (placebo taping or nonelastic taping) in the early four weeks. The mean difference was −1.44 (95% CI: −2.04–−0.84, I2 = 49%, P ≤ 0.01 ). Treatment methods which were performed for more than six weeks (0.16 (95% CI: −0.35–0.68, I2 = 0%, P = 0.53 )) show no significant difference in reducing pain. In studies in which visual analogue scale was measured, a positive effect was observed for KT combined with exercise program training (−3.27 (95% CI: −3.69–2.85, I2 = 0%, P < 0.05 )). Conclusion. KT exhibited significant but temporary pain reduction.

In a large wind farm, the wakes of upstream and downstream wind turbines can interfere with each other, affecting the overall power output of the wind farm. To further improve the numerical accuracy of the turbine wake dynamics under atmosphere turbulence, this work proposes some improvements to the actuator line-large-eddy simulation (AL-LES) method. Based on the dynamic k-equation large-eddy simulation (LES), this method uses a precursor method to generate atmospheric inflow turbulence, models the tower and nacelle wakes, and improves the body force projection method based on an anisotropic Gaussian distribution function. For these three improvements, three wind tunnel experiments are used to validate the numerical accuracy of this method. The results show that the numerical results calculated in the far-wake region can reflect the characteristics of typical onshore and offshore wind conditions compared with the experimental results. After modeling the tower and nacelle wakes, the wake velocity distribution is consistent with the experimental result. The radial migration velocity of the tip vortex calculated by the improved blade body force distribution model is 0.32 m/s, which is about 6% different from the experimental value and improves the prediction accuracy of the tip vortex radial movement. The method proposed in this paper is very helpful for wind turbine wake dynamic analysis and wind farm power prediction.

Current detection networks usually struggle to detect small-scale object instances due to spatial information loss and lack of semantics. In this paper, we propose a one-stage detector named LocalNet, which pays specific attention to the detailed information modeling. LocalNet is built upon our redesigned detection-oriented backbone called long neck ResNet, which aims to preserve more detailed information in the early stage to enhance the representation of small objects. Furthermore, to enhance the semantics in the detection layers, we propose a local detail-context module, which reintroduces the detailed information lost in the network and exploits the local context within a restricted receptive field range. Moreover, we explore a method for training detectors nearly or totally from scratch, which provides the potential to design network structures with more freedom. With nearly $$94\%$$ of the pretrained parameters randomly reinitialized in the backbone, our model improves the mAP of our baseline model from 75.0 to $$82.3\%$$ on the PASCAL VOC dataset with an input size of $$300\times 300$$ and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy. Even when trained from scratch, our model achieves $$80.8\%$$ mAP, which is $$5.8\%$$ greater than the mAP of our baseline model with a fully pretrained backbone.

Background The vulnerability of cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients’ health abilities, combined with the severity of the disease and the overlapping risk factors, leads such people to bear the economic burden of the disease due to the medical services. We estimated the economic burden of CVD and identified the weak link in the design of the medical insurance. Methods Data from 5610 middle-aged and elderly with CVD were drawn from the 2015 wave of “China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study” (CHARLS). The recommended method of the “World Health Organization” (WHO) was adopted to calculate “catastrophic health expenditure” (CHE), “impoverishment by medical expenses” (IME), and applied the treatment-effect model to analyze the determinants of CHE. Results The incidence of CHE was 19.9% for the elderly families with CVD members, which was 3.6% higher than for uninsured families (16.3%). Families with CVD combined with > 3 other chronic diseases (38.88%) were the riskiest factor for the high CHE in the new rural cooperative medical system (NCMS). Moreover, families with members > 75 years old (33.33%), having two chronic disease (30.74%), and families having disabled members (33.33%), hospitalization members (32.41%) were identified as the high risky determinants for the high CHE in NCMS. Conclusions Elderly with physical vulnerabilities were more prone to CHE. The medical insurance only reduced barriers to accessing health resources for elderly with CVD; however it lacked the policy inclination for high-utilization populations, and had poorly accurate identification of the vulnerable characteristics of CVD, which in turn affects the economic protection ability of the medical insurance. The dispersion between the multiple medical security schemes leads to the existence of blind spots in the economic risk protection of individuals and families.

Although persistent efforts have identified and characterized a few candidate genes and related biological processes with potential functions in the adaptation of many species to extreme environments, few works have been conducted to determine the genomic basis of adaptation in endangered livestock breeds that have been living in extreme conditions for more than thousands of years. To fill this gap, we sequenced the whole genomes of nine individuals from three Chinese native endangered cattle breeds that are living in high‐altitude or arid environments. Phylogenetic and evolutionary history analyses of these three and other six breeds showed that the genetic structure of the cattle populations is primarily related to geographic location. Interestingly, we identified pervasive introgression from the yak to Zhangmu cattle (ZMC) that cover several genes (e.g., NOS2, EGLN1 and EPAS1) involved in the hypoxia response and previously identified as positive selection genes in other species, which suggested that the adaptive introgression from yak may have contributed to the adaptation of ZMC to high‐altitude environments. In addition, by contrasting the breeds in opposite living conditions, we revealed a set of candidate genes with various functions from hypoxia response, water metabolism, immune response and body shape change to embryo development and skeletal system development, etc., that may be related to high‐altitude or arid adaptation. Our research provides new insights into the recovery and adaptation of endangered native cattle and other species in extreme environments and valuable resources for future research on animal husbandry to cope with climate change.

Background Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is a non-inflammatory autoimmune disorder induced by antiphospholipid antibodies, which occurs exceedingly rarely in pediatric population and even more rarely reported in HIV positive children. Case summary A case of 11 years old boy had a sudden onset of swelling in his left lower leg along with pain which were worsening gradually. Initially, topical ointment was applied for 1 month which were ineffective in reducing pain and swelling. Instead, the symptoms were aggravated and suddenly spread to the proximal thigh, accompanied by dyskinesia of left lower leg. Both color doppler ultrasonography and vascular CT scan of left lower leg revealed deep venous thrombosis. His serum anti-phospholipid antibodies (aPLs) were tested positive. He was a known case of HIV virological failure with substantial HIV viral load (VL) despite receiving regular antiretroviral therapy (ART). His symptoms improved after giving aggressive antithrombotic and high dose corticosteroid treatments. Conclusion When pediatric patients develop thrombotic disease, APS also needs to be ruled out. The autoantibodies levels should be routinely tested to look for recurrent thrombosis in children with HIV/AIDS.

This paper proposes a new artificial noise (AN) scheme that combines with the relay selection techniques to improve the physical layer security for a wiretap full-duplex decode-and-forward cooperative network. The communication consists of two phases. In the first phase, the source transmits a message to the selected full-duplex relay, which simultaneously injects AN to mitigate eavesdropping attacks. In the second phase, the selected relay decodes the source message, XORs the source message and AN, and then broadcasts the mixed-signal to the destination. Different form existing schemes, the proposed AN scheme makes the eavesdropper fail in obtaining any information about the source message directly in the second phase. We take into account the correlation of the channel coefficients for the same link during different phases in the performance analysis of AN-aided max-min (MM) and partial (Par) relay selection schemes, and characterize the security-reliability trade-off (SRT) of the proposed schemes by the closed-form expressions of outage probability and intercept probability. Numerical results show that the proposed AN-aided MM/Par relay selection achieves a better SRT performance than the corresponding full-duplex mode assisted AN-aided relay selection scheme in existing literature. Furthermore, the MM scheme outperforms the Par scheme in terms of the SRT, and the SRT of the MM scheme can be substantially improved by increasing the number of relays, while the improvement of the Par scheme is limited.

With the fast development of wearable IoT devices, their applications are becoming more and more pervasive, ranging from social networking, payment, and navigation to health and activity monitoring. The security of the communication between these devices is essential to protect the transmitted sensitive information from tampering and eavesdropping. With the integration of accelerometers into wearable IoT devices, the gait-based biometric cryptography technology has emerged as a data securing tool for wearables. This article proposes a lightweight noise-based group key generation method, which utilizes the noise signals imposed on the raw acceleration signals to generate an M-bit key with high randomness and bit generation rate. Moreover, a signed sliding window coding (SSWC)-based common feature extraction method was designed to extract the common feature for sharing the generated M-bit key among devices worn on different body parts. Finally, a fuzzy vault-based group key distribution system was implemented and evaluated using a public data set. The performed comprehensive analysis of the proposed key generation and distribution method proved that the binary keys generated via the introduced noise-based procedure have high entropy and can pass both the NIST and Dieharder statistical tests with high efficiency. The experimental results obtained prove the robustness of the proposed SSWC-based common feature extraction method in terms of the similarity and discriminability of intra- and inter-class features, respectively.

We consider an uplink multi-user scenario and investigate the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) to optimize spatial multiplexing performance when a linear receiver is used. We study two different formulations of the problem, namely maximizing the effective rank and maximizing the minimum singular value of the RIS-augmented channel. We employ gradient-based optimization to solve the two problems and compare the solutions in terms of the sum-rate achievable when a linear receiver is used. Our results show that the proposed criteria can be used to optimize the RIS to obtain effective channels with favorable properties and drastically improve performance even when the propagation through the RIS contributes a small fraction of the received power., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Wireless Communications Letters

Kallistatin is a multiple functional serine protease inhibitor that protects against vascular injury, organ damage and tumor progression. Kallistatin treatment reduces inflammation and fibrosis in the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the molecular mechanisms underlying this protective process and whether kallistatin plays an endogenous role are incompletely understood. In the present study, we observed that renal kallistatin levels were significantly lower in patients with CKD. It was also positively correlated with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and negatively correlated with serum creatinine level. Unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) in animals also led to down-regulation of kallistatin protein in the kidney, and depletion of endogenous kallistatin by antibody injection resulted in aggravated renal fibrosis, which was accompanied by enhanced Wnt/β-catenin activation. Conversely, overexpression of kallistatin attenuated renal inflammation, interstitial fibroblast activation and tubular injury in UUO mice. The protective effect of kallistatin was due to the suppression of TGF-β and β-catenin signaling pathways and subsequent inhibition of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in cultured tubular cells. In addition, kallistatin could inhibit TGF-β-mediated fibroblast activation via modulation of Wnt4/β-catenin signaling pathway. Therefore, endogenous kallistatin protects against renal fibrosis by modulating Wnt/β-catenin-mediated EMT and fibroblast activation. Down-regulation of kallistatin in the progression of renal fibrosis underlies its potential as a valuable clinical biomarker and therapeutic target in CKD.

The intestine is considered the key organ in stress response to severe burns and injury to the intestine after severe burns can be fatal. However, the injury and subsequent repair of intestinal tissues after severe burns at the genetic level are poorly understood. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have important functions in regulating many biological processes, including gene transcription and translation. Autophagy is a process of intracellular degradation and reutilization of cytoplasmic proteins and organelles. We herein analyzed the genome-wide expression profile of lncRNAs and mRNAs after severe burns in the intestines of mice by lncRNA microarray. Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction was performed to verify the reliability of microarray analysis results, and Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis were used for bioinformatics analysis of differentially expressed mRNAs. The common regulatory network between the top 10 differentially expressed lncRNAs and trans-related mRNAs were visualized by Cytoscape (v3.7.2). Next, we hypothesized that H19 is the key gene for intestinal mucosal repair. After H19 was overexpressed, the changes in downstream autophagy protein expression levels were observed. GO and KEGG analysis indicated that the differentially expressed mRNAs were mainly enriched in a cell cycle- and mitosis-related genes. Overexpression of lncRNA-H19 showed that the autophagy-related gene Trim21 was upregulated, while HIF1α was downregulated. LncRNA-H19 played a key role in repairing the intestinal mucosa, and overexpression of lncRNA-H19 activated autophagy and migration of intestinal epithelial cells (IEC-6).

Objectives To assess the effect of sildenafil on monocrotaline-induced right ventricular (RV) remodeling and investigate the possible mechanism. Methods Rats were subcutaneously injected with monocrotaline to establish an RV remodeling model and then administered sildenafil (25 mg/kg) from days 1 to 28. After 28 days of administration, the RV systolic pressure and the RV hypertrophy index (RVHI) were measured. The morphology of the right ventricle was observed by H&E staining. The ultrastructure of the right ventricle was observed using a transmission electron microscope. The myocardial apoptosis of the right ventricle was evaluated by TUNEL staining. The protein expression of apoptosis-related proteins and PPARs were examined by western blotting. Key findings The results indicated that sildenafil decreased the RV systolic pressure and RVHI, and improved the microstructure and ultrastructure of the right ventricle in monocrotaline-induced rats. In addition, sildenafil suppressed myocardial apoptosis and promoted the protein expression of PPARs of the right ventricle in monocrotaline-induced rats. Conclusion Sildenafil inhibits RV remodeling in monocrotaline-induced rats, which might be partially mediated by reducing myocardial apoptosis and activating PPARs.