Hepatitis C: From inflammatory pathogenesis to anti-inflammatory/hepatoprotective therapy

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection commonly causes progressive liver diseases that deteriorate from chronic inflammation to fibrosis, cirrhosis and even to hepatocellular carcinoma. A long-term, persistent and uncontrolled inflammatory response is a hallmark of these diseases and further leads to hepatic injury and more severe disease progression. The levels of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines change with the states of infection and treatment, and therefore, they may serve as candidate biomarkers for disease progression and therapeutic effects. The mechanisms of HCV-induced inflammation involve classic pathogen pattern recognition, inflammasome activation, intrahepatic inflammatory cascade response, and oxidative and endoplasmic reticulum stress. Direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) are the first-choice therapy for effectively eliminating HCV, but DAAs alone are not sufficient to block the uncontrolled inflammation and severe liver injury in HCV-infected individuals. Some patients who achieve a sustained virologic response after DAA therapy are still at a long-term risk for progression to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Therefore, coupling with anti-inflammatory/hepatoprotective agents with anti-HCV effects is a promising therapeutic regimen for these patients during or after treatment with DAAs. In this review, we discuss the relationship between inflammatory mediators and HCV infection, summarize the mechanisms of HCV-induced inflammation, and describe the potential roles of anti-inflammatory/hepatoprotective drugs with anti-HCV activity in the treatment of advanced HCV infection

The practice exploration of case teaching mode in the environmental monitoring course teaching

In view of that short and strong practical nature of the core courses in the environmental monitor, and the shortcomings of the case teaching modes of the project completion environmental protection acceptance case in the present individual application project, the project completion acceptance actual case method is set up in the course of the course of the course of environmental monitoring, and the practical case of the project completion acceptance test for the project completion of the project completion of the project is set up in the practical case, which is proved by the practice of the project completion environmental protection acceptance monitoring report of the packaging material of jiangsu shentai packaging material co., LTD. The project has been done with the study of the environment and the teaching model of the project, and it has been applied to the students as the main subject, and it has been taught to do a better job in monitoring the environment after graduation. Keywords Environmental monitoring; The acceptance of the environmental protection project case; The teaching method DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-6-1

Observation of gapless corner modes in synthetic translation dimensions

The introduction of synthetic dimensions in topological photonic systems enriches the exploration of topological phase of light in higher-dimensional space beyond three-dimensional real-space. Recently, the gapless corner modes of topological photonic crystals under translational deformation have been proposed, but their experimental observation is still absent. Here, we observe the gapless corner modes in a photonic crystal slab under translational deformation. The corner mode exhibits a frequency dependence that can be tuned through the translation of the slab. Importantly, we find that the existence of gapless corner modes is independent of the specific corner configuration. The gapless corner modes are experimentally imaged via the near-field scanning measurement, and validated numerically by full-wave simulations. Our work contributes to the advancement of topological photonics and provides valuable insights into the exploration of gapless corner modes in synthetic dimensions

Ultrathin Acoustic Parity-Time Symmetric Metasurface Cloak

Invisibility or unhearability cloaks have beenmade possible by using metamaterials enabling light or sound to flow around obstacle without the trace of reflections or shadows. Metamaterials are known for being flexible building units that can mimic a host of unusual and extreme material responses, which are essential when engineering artificial material properties to realize a coordinate transforming cloak. Bending and stretching the coordinate grid in space require stringent material parameters; therefore, small inaccuracies and inevitablematerial losses become sources for unwanted scattering that are decremental to the desired effect.These obstacles further limit the possibility of achieving a robust concealment of sizeable objects from either radar or sonar detection. By using an elaborate arrangement of gain and lossy acousticmedia respecting parity-time symmetry, we built a one-way unhearability cloak able to hide objects seven times larger than the acoustic wavelength. Generally speaking, our approach has no limits in terms of working frequency, shape, or size, specifically though we demonstrate how, in principle, an object of the size of a human can be hidden from audible sound