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The necessity to increase the efficiency of organ preservation has pushed researchers to consider the mechanisms to minimize cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Hence, we evaluated the role of the miR-92b-3p/NOX4 pathway in cerebral I/R injury. A cerebral I/R injury model was established by blocking the left middle cerebral artery for 2 h and reperfusion for 24 h, and a hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) model was established. Thereafter, cerebral I/R increased obvious neurobiological function and brain injury (such as cerebral infarction, apoptosis, and cell morphology changes). In addition, we noted a significant decrease in the expression of miR-92b-3p, as well as increases in apoptosis and oxidative stress and an increase in NOX4. Furthermore, overexpression of miR-92b-3p blocked the inhibitory effect of miR-92b-3p on the expression of NOX4 and the accumulation of oxygen-free radicals. Bioinformatics analysis found that NOX4 may be the target gene regulated by miR-92b-3p. In conclusion, the involvement of the miR-92b-3p/NOX4 pathway ameliorated cerebral I/R injury through the prevention of apoptosis and oxidative stress. The miR-92b-3p/NOX4 pathway could be considered a potential therapeutic target to alleviate cerebral I/R injury.

Due to the poor compatibility caused by the large difference in hydrophilicity and interface between polylactic acid (PLA) and cellulose acetate (CA), the blending of the two materials is difficult and the application is limited. To solve this problem, a type of polyamide amine (PAMAM) dendrimer was introduced to modify PLA/CA blends in this work. The results showed that PAMAM could improve the compatibility of PLA/CA blends, promote the distribution of CA and crystallization of PLA. At the same time, adding PAMAM could enhance the mechanical properties of the blend material, and the toughness and tear strength were increased by 551% and 141%, respectively. In addition, the incorporation of PAMAM increased hydrophobicity and oxygen permeability of PLA/CA blends, and the oxygen permeability could be increased by up to three orders of magnitude. Degradation test results showed that the blend exhibited good biodegradability. The overall performance of the PLA/CA blend film was optimal when the content of PAMAM was 3 phr. The biodegradable blend films with excellent performance provided wide application prospect in the food green packaging fields.

The upward progress in Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) has advanced manufacturing from digitalization to networking in Industry 3.0, and to intelligence and even wisdom in Industry 4.0, which reveals the inevitable trend of manufacturing evolution from “Computer Plus” to "Internet Plus" to "Knowledge Plus" and towards "Wisdom Plus". Wisdom manufacturing is the further development of intelligent/smart manufacturing in the form of social-cyber-physical system by integrating Internet of Things, Internet of Services, Internet by and for People, and Internet of Contents and Knowledge in manufacturing as a whole.

This study aims to explore the nephrotoxicity due to use of combination of cyclosporine A and hormone in the treatment of nephrotic syndrome. From January 2018 to November 2019, 100 patients with primary nephrotic syndrome were divided into experimental and control groups, with 50 patients per group. The experimental group took oral cyclosporine A and prednisone tablets, while the control group received oral cyclosporine A combined with shock therapy. The contents of white blood cells, triglycerides, urine protein and cholesterol in the experimental group were lower than those in the control group, while their albumin content was significantly higher than the control values. Blood concentrations of cyclosporine A were significantly lower in non-nephrotoxic patients than in nephrotoxic patients. The high blood cyclosporine A level in patients (200ng/mL) may be a factor for inducement of nephrotoxicity. Basal serum creatinine levels in nephrotoxic patients were significantly higher than those in non-nephrotoxic patients. Therefore, high basal creatinine level may be a contributing factor to nephrotoxicity. The combination of cyclosporine A and hormone is effective in the treatment of nephrotic syndrome. Blood cyclosporine A levels greater than 200ng/ml or elevated basal serum creatinine may be the cause of nephrotoxicity.

Many species are shifting their ranges to keep pace with climate change, but habitat fragmentation and limited dispersal could impede these range shifts. In the case of climate-vulnerable foundation species such as tropical reef corals and temperate forest trees, such limitations might put entire communities at risk of extinction. Restoring connectivity through corridors, stepping-stones or enhanced quality of existing patches could prevent the extinction of several species, but dispersal-limited species might not benefit if other species block their dispersal. Alternatively, managers might relocate vulnerable species between habitats through assisted migration, but this is generally a species-by-species approach. To evaluate the relative efficacy of these strategies, we simulated the climate-tracking of species in randomized competitive metacommunities with alternative management interventions. We found that corridors and assisted migration were the most effective strategies at reducing extinction. Assisted migration was especially effective at reducing the extinction likelihood for short-dispersing species, but it often required moving several species repeatedly. Assisted migration was more effective at reducing extinction in environments with higher stochasticity, and corridors were more effective at reducing extinction in environments with lower stochasticity. We discuss the application of these approaches to an array of systems ranging from tropical corals to temperate forests. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ecological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 years’.

In order to achieve enhanced physical performance of polylactic acid (PLA), the hyperbranched polyamide (HBPA) was synthesized by "one-step" as raw materials, and added as a modifier to the PLA matrix. The HBPA/PLA blend was prepared through the twin screw extrusion process and the injection molding process. The results showed that, compared with pure PLA, the tensile strength of HBPA/PLA blends increased by 41.8% while the elongation at break and the impact strength basically unchanged. The addition of HBPA does not affect the glass transition temperature (Tg) and crystallization of PLA significantly, but can improve the thermal deformation temperature of PLA. HBPA acted as a nucleant for PLA during iso-temperature crystallization. HBPA could form hydrogen bonds and chemical crosslinks with PLA, thus exhibits excellent reinforcing effect for PLA.

Due to the poor compatibility caused by the large difference in hydrophilicity and interface between polylactic acid (PLA) and cellulose acetate (CA), the blending of the two materials is difficult and the application is limited. To solve this problem, a type of polyamide amine (PAMAM) dendrimer was introduced to modify PLA / CA blends in this work. The results showed that PAMAM could improve the compatibility of PLA / CA blends, promote the distribution of CA and crystallization of PLA. At the same time, adding PAMAM could enhance the mechanical properties of the blend material, and the toughness and tear strength were increased by 551% and 141%, respectively. In addition, the incorporation of PAMAM increased hydrophobicity and oxygen permeability of PLA/ CA blends, and the oxygen permeability could be increased by up to 3 orders of magnitude. Degradation test results showed that the blend exhibited good biodegradability. The overall performance of the PLA/ CA blend film was optimal when the content of PAMAM was 3 phr. The biodegradable blend films with excellent performance provided wide application prospect in the food green packaging fields.

Damaged road extraction is a challenging task in the field of remote sensing. Some existing methods include the step to extract road from pre- and post-disaster remote sensing images of the same area. In practice, it often occurs that one of these two images is missing. To solve this problem, we use CoCosNet, the model for exemplar-based image translation, to translate pre-disaster images to simulated post-disaster ones. Then we use D-LinkNet, the state-of-the-art method in road extraction, to extract road from the pre- and post-disaster images of the same area. We extract damaged road area by comparing pre-disaster road masks with post-disaster ones and output the damage level by calculating the proportion of the damaged road area. Finally, we evaluate the damaged road extraction accuracy. Experimental results on simulated post-disaster images prove the effectiveness of the simulation method and the framework for damaged road extraction and damage level evaluation.

Background MYO18B has been identified as a novel tumor suppressor gene in several cancers. However, its specific roles in the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not been well defined. Methods We firstly identified the expression and prognostic values of MYO18B in HCC using TCGA cohort and our clinical data. Then, MYO18B knockdown by RNA inference was implemented to investigate the effects of MYO18B on HCC cells. Quantitative RT-PCR and Western blot were used to determine gene and protein expression levels. CCK-8 and colony formation assays were performed to examine cell proliferation capacity. Wound healing and transwell assays were used to evaluate the migration and invasion of HepG2 cells. Results MYO18B was overexpressed and correlated with poor prognosis in HCC. MYO18B expression was an independent risk factor for overall survival. Knockdown of MYO18B significantly inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of HepG2 cells. Meanwhile, MYO18B knockdown could effectively suppress the phosphorylation of PI3K, AKT, mTOR and P70S6K, suggesting that MYO18B might promote HCC progression by targeting PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway. Conclusions MYO18B promoted tumor growth and migration via the activation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway. MYO18B might be a promising target for clinical intervention of HCC.

Humans express feelings or emotions via different channels. Take language as an example, it entails different sentiments under different visual-acoustic contexts. To precisely understand human intentions as well as reduce the misunderstandings caused by ambiguity and sarcasm, we should consider multimodal signals including textual, visual and acoustic signals. The crucial challenge is to fuse different modalities of features for sentiment analysis. To effectively fuse the information carried by different modalities and better predict the sentiments, we design a novel multi-head attention based fusion network, which is inspired by the observations that the interactions between any two pair-wise modalities are different and they do not equally contribute to the final sentiment prediction. By assigning the acoustic-visual, acoustic-textual and visual-textual features with reasonable attention and exploiting a residual structure, we attend to attain the significant features. We conduct extensive experiments on four public multimodal datasets including one in Chinese and three in English. The results show that our approach outperforms the existing methods and can explain the contributions of bimodal interaction in multiple modalities., 12 pages, 4 figures, content and journal information updated

Copper homeostasis can be altered by inflammation. This study aimed to investigate the alteration of serum copper homeostasis and to explore its clinical significance in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Thirty-two patients with CHB and 10 aged- and sex-matched healthy controls were recruited. Analyses included serum levels of total copper (TCu), copper ions (Cu+), small molecule copper (SMC), ceruloplasmin (CP), Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), urinary copper, and the activities of serum CP and SOD1. The serum TCu and urinary copper levels in patients with CHB were significantly higher than the controls (P = .04 and .003), while the serum Cu+ was lower than the controls (P = .0002). CP and SOD1 activities in the serum were significantly lower in patients with CHB compared to controls (P = .005) despite higher serum concentrations. In addition, serum alanine aminotransferase inversely correlated with serum CP activity (P = .0318, r = −0.4065). Serum copper homeostasis was altered in this cohort of patients with CHB. The results suggest increased oxidative stress and impaired antioxidant capability in patients with CHB, in addition to necroinflammation. These results may provide novel insights into the diagnosis and treatment of patients with CHB.

This study uses a large eddy simulation (LES) model to investigate the turbulence processes in the ocean surface boundary layer at Zhangzi Island offshore. Field measurements at Zhangzi Island (39 degrees N, 122 degrees E) during July 2009 are used to drive the LES model. The LES results capture a clear diurnal cycle in the oceanic turbulence boundary layer. The process of the heat penetration and heat distribution characteristics are analyzed through the heat flux results from the LES and their differences between two diurnal cycles are discussed as well. Energy balance and other dynamics are investigated which show that the tide-induced shear production is the main source of the turbulence energy that balanced dissipation. Momentum flux near the surface shows better agreement with atmospheric data computed by the eddy correlation method than those computed by bulk formula.

Six parameterization schemes of roughness or drag coefficient are evaluated on the basis of the data from six experiments. They present great consistency with measurement when friction velocity u(*) = 0.5 m/s (approximately U-10 >= 12 m/s). In order to improve the deviation, a new parameterization of drag coefficient is derived on the basis of the similarity theory, Charnock relationship and Toba 3/2 power law. Wave steepness and wind-sea Reynolds number are considered in the new parameterization. Then it is tested on the basis of the measurements and shows significant improvement when u(*) >= 0.5 m/s. Its standard errors are much smaller than the ones of the other six parameterizations. However, the new parameterization still needs more tests especially for high winds.

A flux system deployed on a moored buoy has been described, which is capable of directly estimating the air-sea fluxes after removing the contamination in the signal due to buoy motion. A triple loop fitting method has been demonstrated for determining the three angular offsets between measurement axes of the sonic anemometer and motion pack. The data collected in an experiment in the Northern Huanghai Sea is used to correct the three sonic anemometer measurements of turbulent wind for buoy motion. The effective removal of wave-scale motion from the spectra and cospectra are demonstrated. Estimates of along-wind momentum flux, sensible heat flux and latent heat flux calculated by the eddy correlation method based on data obtained by sonic anemometer 81000V are shown to be in the same trend and scale with those determined by the bulk aerodynamic method after motion correction. The motion correction not only greatly improve the estimation of the momentum flux but also has a great impact on the calculated sensible heat flux.

The Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT) is applied to analyzing the turbulent time series obtained within the atmospheric boundary layer over the ocean. A method based on the HHT is introduced to reduce the influence of non-turbulent motions on the eddy-covariance based flux by removing non-turbulent modes from the time series. The scale dependence of the flux is examined and a gap mode is identified to distinguish between turbulent modes and non-turbulent modes. To examine the effectiveness of this method it is compared with three conventional methods (block average, moving-window average, and multi-resolution decomposition). The data used are from three sonic anemometers installed on a moored buoy at about 6, 4 and 2.7 m height above the sea surface. For each method, along-wind and cross-wind momentum fluxes and sensible heat fluxes at the three heights are calculated. According to the assumption of a constant-flux layer, there should be no significant difference between the fluxes at the three heights. The results show that the fluxes calculated using HHT exhibit a smaller difference and higher correlation than the other methods. These results support the successful application of HHT to the estimation of air-sea turbulent fluxes.

Precise measurements of the CO2 gas transfer across the air-sea interface provide a better understanding of the global carbon cycle. The air-sea CO2 fluxes are obtained by the eddy covariance method and the bulk method from a buoy observation in the northern Huanghai sea. The effects of buoy motion on flux calculated by the eddy covariance method are demonstrated. The research shows that a motion correction can improve the correlation coefficient between the CO2 fluxes estimated from two different levels. Without the CO2-H2O cross-correlation correction which is termed as PKT correction, the air-sea CO2 fluxes estimated by eddy covariance method using the motion corrected data are nearly an order of magnitude larger than those estimated by the bulk method. After the CO2-H2O cross-correlation correction, some eddy covariance CO2 fluxes indeed become closer to the bulk CO2 flux, whereas some are overcorrected which are in response to small water vapor flux.

An approximate steady solution of the wave-modified Ekman current is presented for gradually varying eddy viscosity by using the WKB method with the variation of parameters technique. The parameters involved in the solution can be determined by the two-dimensional wavenumber spectrum of ocean waves, wind speed, the Coriolis parameter and the densities of air and water. The solution reduces to the exact solution when the eddy viscosity is taken as a constant. As illustrative examples, for a fully developed wind-generated sea with different wind speeds and a few proposed gradually varying eddy viscosities, the current profiles calculated from the approximate solutions are compared with those of the exact solutions or numerical ones by using the Donelan and Pierson wavenumber spectrum, the WAM wave model formulation for wind input energy to waves, and wave energy dissipation converted to currents. It is shown that the approximate solution presented has an elegant form and yet would be valid for any given gradually varying eddy viscosity. The applicability of the solution method to the real ocean is discussed following the comparisons with published observational data and with the results from a large eddy simulation of the Ekman layer. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.