Effects of Clinostat Culture on Morphology and Gene Expression of MLO-Y4 Osteocyte-Like Cells

Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of 2D clinostat-simulated weightlessness on biological characteristics of MLO-Y4 osteocyte-like cells. MLO-Y4 cells were incubated for 24 h and rotated using a 2D clinostat for 2 h. The bioeffects of clinostat culture on cellular morphology, cytoskeleton, and gene expression were investigated. The results show that 2D clinostat-simulated weightlessness induce actin cytoskeleton rearrangement, but unaffected the cellular morphology and number of processes/cell. Also, after 2 h of clinostat culture, expression of RANKL and IL-6 decreased by 19%±5% and 20%±4%, respectively, while cox-2 level increased by 65%±8%. These results provide some clue to explore the cellular mechanism of bone loss caused by weightlessness

Oscillatory fluid flow elicits changes in morphology, cytoskeleton and integrin-associated molecules in MLO-Y4 cells, but not in MC3T3-E1 cells

Interstitial fluid flow stress is one of the most important mechanical stimulations of bone cells under physiological conditions. Osteocytes and osteoblasts act as primary mechanosensors within bones, and in vitro are able to respond to fluid shear stress, both morphologically and functionally. However, there is little information about the response of integrin-associated molecules using both osteoblasts and osteocytes. In this study, we investigated the changes in response to 2 hours of oscillatory fluid flow stress in the MLO-Y4 osteocyte-like cell line and the MC3T3-E1 osteoblast-like cell line. MLO-Y4 cells exhibited a significant increase in the expression of integrin-associated molecules, including OPN, CD44, vinculin and integrin avp3. However, there was no or limited increase observed in MC3T3-E1 osteoblast-like cells. Cell area and fiber stress formation were also markedly promoted by fluid flow only in MLO-Y4 cells. But the numbers of processes per cell remain unaffected in both cell lines

Evolutionary Analysis of Structural Protein Gene VP1 of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Serotype Asia 1

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) serotype Asia 1 was mostly endemic in Asia and then was responsible for economically important viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals, but the study on its selection and evolutionary process is comparatively rare. In this study, we characterized 377 isolates from Asia collected up until 2012, including four vaccine strains. Maximum likelihood analysis suggested that the strains circulating in Asia were classified into 8 different groups (groups I–VIII) or were unclassified (viruses collected before 2000). On the basis of divergence time analyses, we infer that the TMRCA of Asia 1 virus existed approximately 86.29 years ago. The result suggested that the virus had a high mutation rate (5.745 × 10−3 substitutions/site/year) in comparison to the other serotypes of FMDV VP1 gene. Furthermore, the structural protein VP1 was under lower selection pressure and the positive selection occurred at many sites, and four codons (positions 141, 146, 151, and 169) were located in known critical antigenic residues. The remaining sites were not located in known functional regions and were moderately conserved, and the reason for supporting all sites under positive selection remains to be elucidated because the power of these analyses was largely unknown

Research on Three-Dimensional Porous Composite Nano-Assembled α-MnO₂/Reduced Graphene Oxides and Their Super-Capacitive Performance

A series of three-dimensional porous composite α-MnO2/reduced graphene oxides (α-MnO2/RGO) were prepared by nano-assembly in a hydrothermal environment at pH 9.0–13.0 using graphene oxide as the precursor, KMnO4 and MnCl2 as the manganese sources and F− as the control agent of the α-MnO2 crystal form. The α-MnO2/RGO composites prepared at different hydrothermal pH levels presented porous network structures but there were significant differences in these structures. The special pore structure promoted the migration of ions in the electrolyte in the electrode material, and the larger specific surface area promoted the contact between the electrode material and the electrolyte ions. The introduction of graphene solved the problem of poor conductivity of MnO2, facilitated the rapid transfer of electrons, and significantly improved the electrochemical performance of materials. When the pH was 12.0, the specific surface area of the 3D porous composite material αMGs-12.0 was 264 m2·g−1, and it displayed the best super-capacitive performance; in Na2SO4 solution with 1.0 mol·L−1 electrolyte, the specific capacitance was 504 F·g−1 when the current density was 0.5 A·g−1 and the specific capacitance retention rate after 5000 cycles was 88.27%, showing that the composite had excellent electrochemical performance

simple power analysis attacks using chosen message against ecc hardware implementations

Chosen-message simple power analysis (SPA) attacks were powerful against public-key cryptosystem based on modular exponentiation, due to the special results of modular square and modular multiplication for input pair X and - X. However, the characteristics can not be applied to public-key cryptosystems based on scalar multiplications. This paper proposes novel chosen-message side-channel analysis attacks for public-key cryptosystems based on scalar multiplications, where special input point P is chosen close to X-axis to generate noticeable variations for point doubling and point addition. The proposed attack can be applied to all standard implementations of the binary algorithms, both for left-to-right and right-to-left methods. This chosen-message method can also circumvent typical countermeasures such as the double-and-add-always algorithm. © 2011 WorldCIS

Efficient Uncertainty Propagation in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning Unmanned Surface Vehicle Using Unscented Kalman Filter

This article tackles the computational burden of propagating uncertainties in the model predictive controller-based policy of the probabilistic model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) system for an unmanned surface vehicles system (USV). We proposed filtered probabilistic model predictive control using the unscented Kalman filter (FPMPC-UKF) that introduces the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) for a more efficient uncertainty propagation in MBRL. A USV control system based on FPMPC-UKF is developed and evaluated by position-keeping and target-reaching tasks in a real USV data-driven simulation. The experimental results demonstrate a significant superiority of the proposed method in balancing the control performance and computational burdens under different levels of disturbances compared with the related works of USV, and therefore indicate its potential in more challenging USV scenarios with limited computational resources

Identifying the inflammatory and fibrotic bowel stricture: MRI diffusion-weighted imaging in Crohn's disease

Purpose: To identify inflammatory and fibrotic mural stricture in Crohn's disease (CD) using MR diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and to compare DWI findings with those of enteroscope and histological markers. Method and materials: Thirty-one patients with CD (18 males, 13 females; mean age, 38.9 years) were recruited in this approved retrospective study and an informed consent was obtained from each subject. All subjects underwent bowel MRI examination with conventional and DWI sequences at 3.0 T. Colonoscopy results were distributed within 24 h after examination. According to the endoscopic manifestations and pathological results, the patients were divided into two groups: inflammatory (21/31) and fibrotic (10/31). Results: In the group of inflammatory stricture, the mean ADC value of stricture bowel was 1.4 ± 0.23 × 10−3 mm2/s, whereas 0.8 ± 0.16 × 10−3 mm2/s in the group of fibrotic stricture. Inter-group independent sample t-test was performed. A statistically significant difference was observed (t = 7.403, P < 0.05). The area under receiver-operating characteristic curve was 0.981 (95% confidence interval, 0.943–1.000), with 1.11 × 10−3 mm2/s as the cutoff point. The sensitivity of low ADC values in detecting inflammatory bowels was 90.5%, and the specificity of high ADC values in excluding inflammatory bowels was 100%. Conclusion: Decreased ADC values in inflammatory stricture bowel may be resulted from multiple factors, including an increase in cellularity, presence of edema, micro-abscesses and increased perfusion. Meanwhile, fibrotic tissue deposition was indicated to lead to restrictions in diffusion. Distinguishable ADCs were observed between inflammatory and fibrotic bowel stricture, where DWI sequence could contribute to the identification