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Objective To investigate the alleviating effects of alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG) on bile duct ligation (BDL)-induced cholestatic liver injury in mice and its possible mechanism. Methods Thirty-two C57BL/6 male mice were randomly assigned to 4 groups (n=8): sham operation group (Sham), sham operation+AKG group (Sham+AKG), BDL group and BDL+AKG group. Liver and blood samples were collected from all groups in 7 d after operation, and the serum levels of ALT, AST, TBIL, TBA and ALP were measured. HE staining and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the severity of liver injury and the expression of F4/80 and myeloperoxidase (MPO) in each group, respectively. qRT-PCR was adopted to determine the mRNA expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Hepatocyte apoptosis was evaluated by TUNEL assay. Results As compared with the BDL group, the BDL+AKG group showed significantly lower concentrations of ALT, AST, TBIL, TBA and ALP (P < 0.05), obviously relieved liver histologic injury (P < 0.05), reduced expression levels of F4/80 and MPO as well as pro-inflammatory cytokines (P < 0.05), and decreased number of TUNEL positive hepatocytes (P < 0.05). Conclusion AKG alleviates hepatic injury in BDL-induced cholestasis model mice, and its mechanism is possibly related to the inhibition of inflammatory response and hepatic cell apoptosis.

Background: Several treatment modalities are used for the treatment of periorbital rejuvenation with variable results. Recent studies showed that fractional radiofrequency may be an effective treatment modality for periorbital aging. This study aims to determine the efficacy and safety of negative pressure fractional microneedle radiofrequency (NPFMR) as a treatment for periorbital aging. Methods: Twenty‐five patients with periorbital aging were involved in this study. They were treated two times with an interval of 1 month. The patients were evaluated before treatment and 1, 3, and 6 months after the final treatment. Results: The research findings suggest that periorbital wrinkles of the patients were significantly improved by VISIA system (p < 0.05). Physiological indicators detected by MPA10 system showed that compared with before treatment, the hydration increased (p < 0.05) and trans epidermal water loss (TEWL) decreased (p < 0.05) at 3 and 6 months after treatment. The glossiness increased at 1 month after treatment compared to pre‐treatment (p < 0.05) and returned to the baseline level at 3 and 6 months after treatment. There was no significant change in melanin content (p > 0.05). Periorbital dermal thickness of the patients significantly increased at 1, 3, and 6 months after treatment according to skin ultrasound (p < 0.05). A periorbital skin biopsy revealed that the collagen fibers in the dermis were significantly thicker and more orderly after treatment, and the expression of type I collagen fibers and elastic fibers was increased compared with that before treatment. One patient developed post‐inflammatory hyperpigmentation (PIH) at 1 month after the first treatment, which improved after active treatment. No other adverse reactions were observed. Conclusions: NPMFR could be an effective and safe treatment modality for the treatment of periorbital aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, corn straw polysaccharides (CSPs) were successfully isolated from a corn straw medium by cellulose‐degrading actinomyces in complex flora. Response surface methodology was applied to optimize the extraction conditions. Under the optimum conditions of fermentation time of 12 days and initial corn straw concentration of 50 g/L, the polysaccharide yield reached 2159.23 mg/L. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography, and scanning electron microscopy were used to analyze the CSP structure. The results showed that the CSPs consisted of rhamnose, arabinose, xylose, glucose, mannose, and galactose with a molar ratio of 1.0:13.4:16.8:3.0:2.7:8.4, respectively. In addition, the CSP surface was covered with irregular spherical particles. The antioxidant assays suggested that the CSPs have strong scavenging effects of 87.33% and 69.95% on hydroxyl and 1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl radicals at concentrations of 0.80 and 0.40 mg/mL, respectively. Further, CSP demonstrated its potential for development as a natural antioxidant. This work offered an environmentally microbial process for the extraction of polysaccharide from low‐cost corn straw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil transverse isotropy results in different stiffness characteristics in horizontal and vertical directions. However, the effect is usually neglected in seismic motion analysis. In this study, an equivalent linear anisotropic soil model was established based on the finite element method, and we investigated the impact of anisotropic parameters on ground motion at the site under various seismic wave inputs. It was found that the anisotropic parameters have a more significant effect on seismic waves, with the dominant frequency being closer to the fundamental frequency of the site. As an example, the soil dynamic parameters in Shanghai Yangshan Port were calibrated by a series of bending elements, resonance columns, and cyclic triaxial tests. The influences of anisotropy on the peak ground acceleration (PGA) and response spectrum were studied for Yangshan Port. Additionally, the standard design response spectra considering the soil anisotropy were provided. A comparison reveals that the existing isotropic design response spectrum may lead to dangerous seismic design for the structures at Yangshan port. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human pose estimation is a challenging visual task that relies on spatial location information. To improve the performance of human pose estimation, it is important to accurately determine the constraint relationship among keypoints. To address this, we propose MfvPose, a novel hybrid model that leverages rich multi-scale information. The proposed model incorporates the HRFOV module, which uses cascaded atrous convolution to maintain high-resolution representations of the backbone extractor and enrich the multi-scale information. In addition, we introduce learnable scalar weights to the Transformer encoder. In detail, it involves a multiplication by a diagonal matrix with learnable scalar weights on output of each residual block, which improves the dynamics of model training and enhances the accuracy of human pose estimation. It is experimentally shown that our proposed MfvPose achieves promising results on various benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]