Association between genetic polymorphisms of cytochrome P450 2C19 and the risk of cerebral ischemic stroke in Chinese

BACKGROUND: Cytochrome P450 (CYP) 2C19 is a very important drug metabolizing enzyme. Although the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of CYP2C19 G681A and G636A have been suggested that they may increase the incidence of cardiovascular events, the relationship between SNPs in CYP2C19 and cerebral ischemic stroke (CIS) are unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between the distribution of G681A and G636A polymorphisms in CYP2C19 gene and the risk of CIS in Chinese. METHODS: The peripheral blood DNA was extracted from 299 patients with CIS and 295 healthy controls. The genotyping was conducted using the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. The sampled sequencing was applied to verify the correctness of genotyping results. Both the genotype and allele distributions were compared in patients with CIS and healthy controls. RESULTS: The frequencies of CYP2C19 681AA (11.7% vs. 2.7%; P = 0.000), 636AA (4.0% vs. 0.7%; P = 0.007), 636AG (7.0% vs. 2.2%; P = 0.038) genotype, CYP2C19 681A (30.9% vs. 20.8%; P = 0.000) and 636A (13.0% vs. 5.8%; P = 0.000) allele in the CIS group are significantly higher than those in the controls. The frequencies of CYP2C19 681AA (16.7% vs. 8.6%; P = 0.036), CYP2C19 636AA (7.0% vs. 2.2%; P = 0.038) genotype, CYP2C19 681A (36.4% vs. 27.6%; P = 0.023) and CYP2C19 636A (17.5% vs.10.3%; P = 0.010) allele in the recurrent stroke group are significantly higher than those in the first onset group. Multivariate logistic regression analysis of risk factors for cerebral ischemic stroke and recurrent stroke respectively suggests that the CYP2C19 681AA genotype may be an independent risk factor for CIS (OR = 6.179, 95% CI: 2.285 ~ 16.708; P = 0.000) and recurrent stroke (OR = 2.305, 95% CI: 1.121 ~ 4.743; P = 0.023). CONCLUSIONS: The AA genotype and A allele of CYP2C19 G681A may be related to the occurrence and recurrence of cerebral ischemic stroke

Human 3D Avatar Modeling with Implicit Neural Representation: A Brief Survey

A human 3D avatar is one of the important elements in the metaverse, and the modeling effect directly affects people's visual experience. However, the human body has a complex topology and diverse details, so it is often expensive, time-consuming, and laborious to build a satisfactory model. Recent studies have proposed a novel method, implicit neural representation, which is a continuous representation method and can describe objects with arbitrary topology at arbitrary resolution. Researchers have applied implicit neural representation to human 3D avatar modeling and obtained more excellent results than traditional methods. This paper comprehensively reviews the application of implicit neural representation in human body modeling. First, we introduce three implicit representations of occupancy field, SDF, and NeRF, and make a classification of the literature investigated in this paper. Then the application of implicit modeling methods in the body, hand, and head are compared and analyzed respectively. Finally, we point out the shortcomings of current work and provide available suggestions for researchers.Comment: A Brief Surve

Styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene copolymer/carbon nanotubes composite fiber based strain sensor with wide sensing range and high linearity for human motion detection

Flexible strain sensors have attracted extensive attention due to their potential applications in wearable electronics and health monitoring. However, it is still a challenge to obtain flexible strain sensors with both high stretchability and wide linear strain sensing range. In this study, styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene copolymer/carbon nanotubes (SEBS/CNTs) composite fiber which showed both electrical conductivity and high stretchability was fabricated through a scalable wet spinning method. The effect of CNTs content on the strain sensing behavior of the SEBS/CNTs fiber based strain sensor was investigated. The results showed that when the CNTs content reached 7 wt%, the SEBS/CNTs composite fiber was capable of sensing strains as high as 500.20% and showed a wide linear strain sensing range of 0-500.2% with a gauge factor (GF) of 38.57. Combining high stretchability, high linearity and reliable stability, the SEBS/CNTs composite fiber based strain sensor had the ability to monitor the activities of different human body parts including hand, wrist, elbow, shoulder and knee

Security enhanced sentence similarity computing model based on convolutional neural network

Deep learning model shows great advantages in various fields. However, researchers pay attention to how to improve the accuracy of the model, while ignoring the security considerations. The problem of controlling the judgment result of deep learning model by attack examples and then affecting the system decision-making is gradually exposed. In order to improve the security of sentence similarity analysis model, we propose a convolution neural network model based on attention mechanism. First of all, the mutual information between sentences is correlated by attention weighting. Then, it is input into improved convolutional neural network. In addition, we add attack examples to the input, which is generated by the firefly algorithm. In the attack example, we replace the words in the sentence to some extent, which results in the adversarial data with great semantic change but slight sentence structure change. To a certain extent, the addition of attack example increases the ability of model to identify adversarial data and improves the robustness of the model. Experimental results show that the accuracy, recall rate and F1 value of the model are due to other baseline models.This work was supported in part by the Major Scientific and Technological Projects of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) under Grant ZD2019-183-006, in part by the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China, under Grant ZR2020MF006, in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China University of Petroleum (East China) under Grant 20CX05017A, and in part by the Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications) under Grant SKLNST-2021-1-17.Postprint (author's final draft

Epithelial Neoplasia Coincides with Exacerbated Injury and Fibrotic Response in the Lungs of \u3cem\u3eGprc5a\u3c/em\u3e-Knockout Mice Following Silica Exposure

Exposure to crystalline silica is suggested to increase the risk for a variety of lung diseases, including fibrosis and lung cancer. However, epidemiological evidences for the exposure-risk relationship are ambiguous and conflicting, and experimental study from a reliable animal model to explore the relationship is lacking. We reasoned that a mouse model that is sensitive to both lung injury and tumorigenesis would be appropriate to evaluate the exposure-risk relationship. Previously, we showed that, Gprc5a-/- mice are susceptible to both lung tumorigenesis and endotoxin-induced acute lung injury. In this study, we investigated the biological consequences in Gprc5a-/- mouse model following silica exposure. Intra-tracheal administration of fine silica particles in Gprc5a-/- mice resulted in more severe lung injury and pulmonary inflammation than in wild-type mice. Moreover, an enhanced fibrogenic response, including EMT-like characteristics, was induced in the lungs of Gprc5a-/- mice compared to those from wild-type ones. Importantly, increased hyperplasia or neoplasia coincided with silica-induced tissue injury and fibrogenic response in lungs from Gprc5a-/- mice. Consistently, expression of MMP9, TGFβ1 and EGFR was significantly increased in lungs from silica-treated Gprc5a-/- mice compared to those untreated or wild-type ones. These results suggest that, the process of tissue repair coincides with tissue damages; whereas persistent tissue damages leads to abnormal repair or neoplasia. Thus, silica-induced pulmonary inflammation and injury contribute to increased neoplasia development in lungs from Gprc5a-/- mouse model

The morphology and nutrient content drive the leaf carbon capture and economic trait variations in subtropical bamboo forest

Carbon absorption capability and morphological traits are crucial for plant leaf function performance. Here, we investigated the five bamboos at different elevations in Wuyi Mountain to clarify how the leaf trait responds to the elevational gradient and drives the photosynthetic capacity variations. The Standardized Major Axis Regression (SMA) analyses and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) are applied to identify how the bamboo leaf trait, including the ratio of leaf width to length (W/L), leaf mass per area (LMA), photosynthesis rates (Pn), leaf nitrogen, and phosphorus concentration (Leaf N and Leaf P) response to elevation environment, and the driving mechanism of Pn changes. Across the five bamboo species, our results revealed that leaf P scaled isometrically with respect to W/L, leaf N scaled allometrically as the 0.80-power of leaf P, and leaf N and leaf P scaled allometrically to Pn, with the exponents of 0.58 and 0.73, respectively. Besides, the SEM result showed altitude, morphological trait (W/L and LMA), and chemical trait (leaf N and leaf P) could together explain the 44% variations of Pn, with a standard total effect value of 70.0%, 38.5%, 23.6% to leaf P, leaf N, and W/L, respectively. The five bamboo species along the different elevational share an isometric scaling relationship between their leaf P and W/L, providing partial support for the general rule and operating between morphological and chemical traits. More importantly, the leaf W/L and leaf P as the main trait that affects leaf area and P utilization in growth and thus drives bamboo leaf photosynthetic capacity variations in different elevations

Fabrication of astaxanthin-loaded electrospun nanofiber-based mucoadhesive patches with water‐insoluble backing for the treatment of oral premalignant lesions

Oral premalignant lesions (OPL) are one of the most common oral diseases, affecting the quality of life and even leading to oral cancer. Current treatments commonly use steroids/retinoids in mouthwashes, films, or ointments. However, conventional drugs/formulations have significant side effects/limitations. Herein, astaxanthin-loaded polycaprolactone (PCL)/gelatin (GT) nanofiber-based mucoadhesive patches (PGA) with the water‐insoluble PCL nanofiber backing (PCL/PGA) are developed via electrospinning for the management of OPL. The saliva-insoluble PCL backing could greatly prevent drug loss after application in the oral cavity. The prepared PCL/PGA patches exhibit a suitable astaxanthin release rate for achieving high local drug concentration, which permeated into buccal mucosa. In addition, the developed thin patches display excellent wet tissue adhesion and great air permeability due to their high porosity. Notably, the in vivo experiment shows that the bioactive mucoadhesive patches significantly promote the recovery of OPL by suppressing the expression of Ki67 and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), comparable to clinical tretinoin cream formulation. Also, the patches did not induce any side effects (i.e., hair loss and oral ulcers) compared to clinical tretinoin cream formulation. The results demonstrate that this novel electrospun mucoadhesive bilayer patch holds great potential for the treatment of OPL

A Simulation Method Based on Material-Drying Oven Integration for Hot Air Drying of Lentinus edodes and Its Application

In this paper, a simulation method based on material-drying oven integration was developed for the hot air-drying process of Lentinus edodes. First of all, the drying characteristics were investigated under different drying conditions, and drying kinetic models were obtained at different air temperatures, relative humidities (RHs) and air flow rates. Then, drying kinetic derivative models to predict the drying process under different working conditions were obtained and used to calculate water evaporation rate, and the rate of water evaporation was introduced into the heat and mass transfer equations to develop mathematical models based on material-drying oven integration. Using the models, the pattern of temporal changes in air temperature, RH and air flow rate at any position inside the oven and moisture ratio (MR) was obtained. Finally, the drying characteristics were worked out using the integrated models. Overall, significant non-uniformity occurred during the drying process. As drying proceeded, non-uniformity decreased. In the direction of air flow, non-uniformity was more significant at positions closer to the oven’s top and bottom. In the transverse direction, non-uniformity was more significant at positions closer to the middle. In summary, the simulation method for hot air-drying of Lentinus edodes is meaningful for guiding the structural design of the drying chamber, the optimization of the drying process and the improvement of the product quality