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Objective To investigate the role and underlying mechanisms of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the promotion of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Methods Wild type B6 (B6.WT) mice aged 6~8 weeks were randomly divided into 3 groups and fed with normal diet (ND), high-fat diet (HFD) and HFD combined LPS injection (HFD+LPS), respectively. LPS (0111∶B4, 1.25 μg/g body weight) was injected intraperitoneally to the mice of the HFD+LPS group once a week, and normal saline of same amount was given to the mice of the other 2 groups. After 10 weeks' feeding, the levels of triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) in the serum and liver tissue were detected by enzyme based assays. The lipid deposition in the liver was observed by oil red O staining. The levels of IL-1β, TNF-α, CCL5, CCL2 and CCL4 in the serum and liver tissue were measured by ELISA. The mRNA levels of IL-1β, TNF-α, CCL5, CCL2 and CCL4 in the liver tissue were detected by quantitative real time-PCR (RT-qPCR). The pathological changes of liver tissue and inflammatory cell infiltration were detected by HE staining. Infiltration of macrophages and neutrophils, and the expression of TLR4 in the liver tissue was analyzed by immunofluorescence (IF) assay. Proportion of macrophages and neutrophils in the liver was assessed by flow cytometry. Results The serum levels of TG and TC were significantly higher in the HFD group than the ND group (P < 0.05). Their contents in the liver were markedly increased in the HFD+LPS group than the HFD group (P < 0.01). The mice from the HFD+LPS group had more obvious vacuolar degeneration of liver cells, infiltration of inflammatory cells, higher NAS score (P < 0.05) and larger number of infiltrated mononuclear cells (P < 0.01) when compared with the HFD group. IF assay and flow cytometry proved that HFD+LPS treatment induced significantly obvious infiltration of hepatic macrophages and neutrophil accumulation (P < 0.05). ELISA proved that HFD+LPS treatment increased serum levels of IL-1β, TNF-α, CCL5 and CCL2 (P < 0.05), elevated mRNA levels of IL-1β, CCL5 and CCL2 in the liver tissue (P < 0.05). IF revealed that TLR4 showed obvious cell membrane translocation in liver tissue after LPS treatment, and the co localization of TLR4 and macrophages showed that the expression of TLR4 on the surface of macrophages in HFD + LPS group was significantly higher than that in HFD group(P < 0.01). Conclusion LPS mediates intrahepatic infiltration of macrophages and neutrophils and aggravates the process of NASH in mice fed with HFD through upregulating TLR4 expression on macrophages to induce chemokines and inflammatory cytokines.

Gall bladder cancer (GBC) is an insidious but rapidly progressed disease with a poor prognosis and high mortality rate. To explore a novel method for GBC diagnosis, we quantified circulating free DNA (cfDNA) in serum samples from 228 participants, including 83 patients with GBC, 75 patients with cholecystitis, and 70 healthy donors, using a chemiluminescence DNA biosensor system based on DNA G-quadruplex/hemin enzyme. We measured β-actin gene expression to evaluate serum cfDNA levels representing as chemiluminescence intensity with the addition of sufficient probes. We analyzed associations of cfDNA quantities in serum samples and corresponding pathological stages and found that the concentration of cfDNA was significantly higher in GBC group than in the healthy control and cholecystitis groups. The levels of cfDNA were significantly associated with TNM stage, lymph node involvement, metastasis, and jaundice. The ROC curves showed that the diagnostic value of chemiluminescence DNA biosensor system was nearly equivalent to that of qPCR. Our method can distinguish patients with GBC from healthy donors and patients with cholecystitis clearly; however, this method was not available to distinguish patients with cholecystitis from the healthy controls. In summary, cfDNA maybe serve as a new diagnostic and noninvasive marker for the diagnosis of GBC using chemiluminescence DNA biosensor system based on DNA G-quadruplex/hemin enzyme.

The core of language disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the loss of social function in language communication.Futher, the correct use and processing of personal pronouns is the basis of language social function. Therefore, clarifying the mechanism of processing the pronoun reference in children with ASD is a major focus in autism research. Currently, the main contradictory focus of the anaphora processing ability in children with ASD is use of semantic pragmatic information in the process of pronoun processing. Therefore, this study will focus on the effect of semantic cues on pronoun processing in children with autism spectrum disorder. This study uses the Chinese reflexive pronoun "ziji" (eg., himself/herself) as the media, because the Chinese reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)" is relatively flexible, which is not only restricted by the rule of syntactic rules, but also influenced by the semantic information of the antecedent. This study investigated the processing mechanism of Chinese reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)" in children with autism spectrum disorder by manipulating the position of strong semantic cues. The results showed that participants from both the experimental group (children with ASD) and the two control groups (children with typical development and children with intellectual disabilities) were able to process strong semantic cues. When the second person pronoun "you" or the s participant's name appears in the remote subject position, children from both the experimental group and the two control groups could use semantic information to make long distance anaphora of the reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)". Conversely, when the second person pronoun "you" appeared in the close subject position, the children with autism spectrum disorder and the two control groups would both make close anaphora with the reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)". This study found that children with autism spectrum disorder can process semantic information normally during pronoun anaphora when the semantic cues are sufficiently prominence. The results of this study provide a more comprehensive understanding of the language processing mechanism of individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Self-esteem is associated with adaptive adolescent outcomes but tends to decline in adolescence. Parent-teen warmth has been linked to concurrent increases in adolescents' self-esteem while adolescents' conflict with parents is detrimental to their self-esteem in cross-sectional or longitudinal studies. However, it is unknown how adolescents experience of maternal warmth and conflict with mothers are correlated with their daily self-esteem, and whether these associations vary in adolescents' gender, age and family subjective socioeconomic status (SES) from the perspective of Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT) theory. To address this gap, 293 adolescents (M.sub.age = 13.88 years, SD = .62) were recruited from a school, reporting their daily experience of maternal warmth, conflict with mothers and self-esteem by answering checklists for up to 7 days. Multilevel analysis showed that adolescents reported significantly higher self-esteem on days they experienced more warmth or less conflict with mothers than usual. Moreover, maternal warmth was linked to next-day self-esteem positively, yet mother-teen conflict not shown this spill-over effect. Gender, age and subjective SES did not moderate all the daily associations among mother-teen warmth, conflict and self-esteem. Findings suggest that mother-teen interactions play both protective and detrimental role in adolescents' daily self-image and that 'good' interaction goes a longer way than 'bad' one., Author(s): Yingshengnan Wu [sup.1] , Rong Yuan [sup.1] , Yanhong Wu [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/02v51f717, grid.11135.37, 0000 0001 2256 9319, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, [...]

Based on the idea of the waveform agility in cognitive radars，the waveform libraries for maneuvering target tracking are discussed. LFM-waveform libraries are designed according to different combinations of chirp parameters and FrFT rotation angles. By applying the interact multiple model (IMM) algorithm in tracking maneuvering targets, transmitted waveform is called real time from the LFM-waveform libraries. The waveforms are selected from the library according to the criterion of maximum mutual information between the current state of knowledge of the model and the measurement. Simulation results show that waveform library containing certain amount LFM-waveforms can improve the performance of cognitive tracking radar.

The cross-eye jamming technique is a common method for monopulse tracking radar, which can cause a displacement towards the wrong direction and result in an angle deception. This paper proposes a modification of the traditional cross-eye jamming system, and the phase diversity processing of the received signal is introduced, and its precise expression of the offset is derived. The phase difference between the two branches of the signal processing is controllable, which is in the vicinity of 180 ° phase shift, reducing the coordination requirements of the two branches. Simulation with different parameters is conducted so as to prove the conclusion, and the flexible control of the jamming effort is realized by this new cross-eye jamming technique.