Naringenin prevents TGF-β1 secretion from breast cancer and suppresses pulmonary metastasis by inhibiting PKC activation

Presenting the incidence of pulmonary metastasis (mice with metastasis/total mice). Tumor-bearing mice treated with naringenin or 1D11 were imaged on day 24 using bags to avoid the bioluminescence from primary tumor. The mice with pulmonary metastases were numbered based on the bioluminescence signal. (TIF 26 kb

A DAC-CLGD-Danet network based method for defaced image segmentation

Based on the problems of high noise, lower contrast, and complex features in defaced images and the low accuracy of existing defaced image segmentation techniques, this paper proposes a defaced image segmentation algorithm based on DAC-CLGD-Danet. Firstly, a CBDNet asymmetric blind denoising network is used for noise-containing defaced images, and natural and synthetic images are trained together to model the image noise and enhance the denoising ability of natural noise. Secondly, Danet is used as the base network. A Dense Atrous Convolution module (DAC) is added to the dual attention mechanism module to extend the perceptual domain of deep convolution, reduce image feature loss, and enhance the representation of global information and edge features of defaced images; Cross-Level Gating Decoder module (CLGD) is introduced to lighten the segmentation network, enhance image context aggregation, and produce accurate semantic segmentation. The experimental results demonstrated that the method in this paper has a significant effect on the HRF dataset and Cityscapes dataset, with a significant improvement compared with FCN, UNet, and SETR models, with Intersection over Union (IoU) improved by 9.81% and Mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) improved by 3.01% compared with UNet

Genetic determinants of telomere length from 109,122 ancestrally diverse whole-genome sequences in TOPMed

Genetic studies on telomere length are important for understanding age-related diseases. Prior GWAS for leukocyte TL have been limited to European and Asian populations. Here, we report the first sequencing-based association study for TL across ancestrally-diverse individuals (European, African, Asian and Hispanic/Latino) from the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. We used whole genome sequencing (WGS) of whole blood for variant genotype calling and the bioinformatic estimation of telomere length in n=109,122 individuals. We identified 59 sentinel variants (p-value OBFC1indicated the independent signals colocalized with cell-type specific eQTLs for OBFC1 (STN1). Using a multi-variant gene-based approach, we identified two genes newly implicated in telomere length, DCLRE1B (SNM1B) and PARN. In PheWAS, we demonstrated our TL polygenic trait scores (PTS) were associated with increased risk of cancer-related phenotypes

Analytical Solutions of Spherical Cavity Expansion Near a Slope due to Pile Installation

Based on the hypothesis that the penetration of a single pile can be simulated by a series of spherical cavity expansions, this paper presents an analytical solution of cavity expansion near the sloping ground. Compared with the cavity expansion in the half-space, the sloping free boundary has been taken into account as well as the horizontal free boundary. The sloping and horizontal free surfaces are considered by the introduction of a virtual image technique, the harmonic function, and the Boussinesq solution. The results show that the sloping free boundary and the variation of the inclination angle have pronounced influences on the distribution of the stress and displacement induced by the spherical cavity expansion. The present solution provides a simplified and realistic theoretical method to predict the soil behaviors around the spherical cavity near the sloping ground. The approach can also be used for the determination of the inclination angle of the slope according to the maximum permissible displacement

Robot-Environment Interaction Control of a Flexible Joint Light Weight Robot Manipulator

This paper presents a weighted path planning approach for a light weight robot coming into compliant contact with the environment, as well as robot-environment interaction enabled impedance control. Using a joint torque sensor, Cartesian impedance control is introduced to realize the manipulator compliance control. Then the weighted path planning approach is developed to detect the contact condition and to control the interaction. Experiments are carried out on a 5-DOF light weight manipulator. The experimental results validate the developed control approach enhanced by the weighted path planning scheme

Influence of Dielectric Barrier Discharge Treatment on Surface Structure of Polyoxymethylene Fiber and Interfacial Interaction with Cement

Polyoxymethylene (POM) fiber was treated with atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma to enhance the surface activity of the fiber and interfacial interaction with cement. The physical and chemical properties of samples with different DBD plasma treatment durations were tested and analyzed. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) revealed that the surface roughness of the sample increased significantly as a result of the DBD plasma treatment. Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis showed that a large number of –COH and –COOH groups were formed on the surface of the sample after DBD plasma treatment. The hydrophilicity of the POM fiber was greatly improved with the increase in the treatment duration. When the treatment duration was longer than 120 s, the fiber surface contact angle decreased from 90° to 43°. The DBD plasma treatment resulted in a decrease in the tensile strength of the POM fiber, but the increase in the amount of –COH and –COOH on the surface of the POM fiber and the increase in the roughness resulted in an increase in the fiber pull-out bonding strength in cement from 2.15 N to 4.68 N