Umbilical cord derived mesenchymal stem cell therapy for osteoarthritis: a consolidated review

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a leading cause of degenerative disease and is the most common persistent condition worldwide. The common burden imposed by OA significantly damages the articular cartilage, which results in pain and seriously impacts the quality of life in the affected people. Disease progression is assumed to increase with obesity and aging. The current therapies include weight loss, activity adjustment, traditional pain management and replacement of the affected joint. To overcome these limitations, recently, cell-based therapies mainly Umbilical cord derived Mesenchymal stem cell (UC-MSC) have become an attractive cell source for an allogeneic mesenchymal stem cell to repair and regenerate the structure and function of articular tissues. Although the mechanism is not clearly defined, it is believed that the paracrine signaling, inflammatory response, and immunomodulatory role of UC-MSCs play a crucial role in developing a treatment approach of OA. The purpose of this review was to outline the advantages of using UC-MSCs in treating OA. This review also discusses the possible hurdles that stand in the way of successful implementation of UC-MSC as a routine treatment regimen for OA

Theoretical Investigation of the Black-body Zeeman Shift for Microwave Atomic Clocks

With the development of microwave atomic clocks, the Zeeman shifts for the spectral lines of black-body radiation need to be investigated carefully. In this Letter, the frequency shifts of hyperfine splittings of atomic ground states due to the magnetic field of black-body radiation are reported. The relative frequency shifts of different alkali atoms and alkali-like ions, which could be candidates of microwave atomic clocks, were calculated. The results vary from $-0.977\times10^{-17}[T(K)/300]^{2}$ to $-1.947\times10^{-17}[T(K)/300]^{2}$ for different atoms considered. These results are consistent with previous work but with greater precision, detailed derivations, and a clear physical picture

Pelvic floor MRI segmentation based on semi-supervised deep learning

The semantic segmentation of pelvic organs via MRI has important clinical significance. Recently, deep learning-enabled semantic segmentation has facilitated the three-dimensional geometric reconstruction of pelvic floor organs, providing clinicians with accurate and intuitive diagnostic results. However, the task of labeling pelvic floor MRI segmentation, typically performed by clinicians, is labor-intensive and costly, leading to a scarcity of labels. Insufficient segmentation labels limit the precise segmentation and reconstruction of pelvic floor organs. To address these issues, we propose a semi-supervised framework for pelvic organ segmentation. The implementation of this framework comprises two stages. In the first stage, it performs self-supervised pre-training using image restoration tasks. Subsequently, fine-tuning of the self-supervised model is performed, using labeled data to train the segmentation model. In the second stage, the self-supervised segmentation model is used to generate pseudo labels for unlabeled data. Ultimately, both labeled and unlabeled data are utilized in semi-supervised training. Upon evaluation, our method significantly enhances the performance in the semantic segmentation and geometric reconstruction of pelvic organs, Dice coefficient can increase by 2.65% averagely. Especially for organs that are difficult to segment, such as the uterus, the accuracy of semantic segmentation can be improved by up to 3.70%

Improvement of Liquid Fructose-Induced Adipose Tissue Insulin Resistance by Ginger Treatment in Rats Is Associated with Suppression of Adipose Macrophage-Related Proinflammatory Cytokines

Adipose tissue insulin resistance (Adipo-IR) results in excessive release of free fatty acids from adipose tissue, which plays a key role in the development of “lipotoxicity.” Therefore, amelioration of Adipo-IR may benefit the treatment of other metabolic abnormalities. Here we found that treatment with the alcoholic extract of ginger (50 mg/kg/day, by oral gavage) for five weeks attenuated liquid fructose-induced hyperinsulinemia and an increase in the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) index in rats. More importantly, ginger reversed the increases in the Adipo-IR index and plasma nonesterified fatty acid concentrations during the oral glucose tolerance test assessment. Adipose gene/protein expression profiles revealed that ginger treatment suppressed CD68 and F4/80, two important macrophage accumulation markers. Consistently, the macrophage-associated cytokines tissue necrosis factor alpha and interleukin-6 were also downregulated. In contrast, insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1, but not IRS-2, was upregulated. Moreover, monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1 and its receptor chemokine (C-C motif) receptor-2 were also suppressed. Thus these results suggest that amelioration of fructose-induced Adipo-IR by ginger treatment in rats is associated with suppression of adipose macrophage-related proinflammatory cytokines

Three-dimensional structure determination from a single view

The ability to determine the structure of matter in three dimensions has profoundly advanced our understanding of nature. Traditionally, the most widely used schemes for 3D structure determination of an object are implemented by acquiring multiple measurements over various sample orientations, as in the case of crystallography and tomography (1,2), or by scanning a series of thin sections through the sample, as in confocal microscopy (3). Here we present a 3D imaging modality, termed ankylography (derived from the Greek words ankylos meaning 'curved' and graphein meaning 'writing'), which enables complete 3D structure determination from a single exposure using a monochromatic incident beam. We demonstrate that when the diffraction pattern of a finite object is sampled at a sufficiently fine scale on the Ewald sphere, the 3D structure of the object is determined by the 2D spherical pattern. We confirm the theoretical analysis by performing 3D numerical reconstructions of a sodium silicate glass structure at 2 Angstrom resolution and a single poliovirus at 2 - 3 nm resolution from 2D spherical diffraction patterns alone. Using diffraction data from a soft X-ray laser, we demonstrate that ankylography is experimentally feasible by obtaining a 3D image of a test object from a single 2D diffraction pattern. This approach of obtaining complete 3D structure information from a single view is anticipated to find broad applications in the physical and life sciences. As X-ray free electron lasers (X-FEL) and other coherent X-ray sources are under rapid development worldwide, ankylography potentially opens a door to determining the 3D structure of a biological specimen in a single pulse and allowing for time-resolved 3D structure determination of disordered materials.Comment: 30 page

Some New Generalized Retarded Gronwall-Like Inequalities and Their Applications in Nonlinear Systems

The Gronwall inequalities are of significance in mathematics and engineering. This paper generalizes the Gronwall-like inequalities from different perspectives. Using the proposed inequalities, the difficulties to discuss the controllability of integrodifferential systems of mixed type can be solved. Meanwhile, two examples as their applications are also given to show the effectiveness of our main results

5G-based smart airport network security scheme design and security analysis

To meet the security requirements of smart airports, a 5G-based smart airport network security solution was proposed.The security characteristics and security requirements of the 5G scenario in smart airport were analyzed, and the pain points of security requirements in the current scenario were summarized in five aspects:unified security management and control, network slicing security, security monitoring and early warning, edge computing security, and IoT-aware node security.And then a 5G network security system was designed for smart airports.The functional components of this system included 5G network unified security management and control functions for ubiquitous networks, lightweight 5G network identity authentication and authentication functions, 5G network slice security protection for multi-service requirements, 5G network security monitoring and early warning based on big data analysis, integrated security protection function based on edge computing, and sensory node security protection function based on device behavior analysis.This comprehensive approach built an all-in-one security platform covering business encryption, network security, terminal trustworthiness, identity trustworthiness, and security management and control.Additionally, the potential counterfeit base station attacks in the existing 5G authentication and key agreement (AKA) were analyzed.Due to the lack of authenticity verification of the messages forwarded by the SN, the attacker can pretend to be the real SN to communicate with the UE and the HN, thus carrying out the base station masquerading attack.This kind of attack may lead to the leakage of smart airport network data, and encounter problems such as tampering and deception by opponents.Aiming at the network security requirements of smart airports and the security issues of 5G authentication and key agreement protocol, an improved 5G authentication and key agreement protocol was designed.Formal security models, security goal definitions, and analysis were performed to ensure the robustness and effectiveness of the protocol against attacks

Existence and Controllability Results for Fractional Impulsive Integrodifferential Systems in Banach Spaces

We firstly study the existence of PC-mild solutions for impulsive fractional semilinear integrodifferential equations and then present controllability results for fractional impulsive integrodifferential systems in Banach spaces. The method we adopt is based on fixed point theorem, semigroup theory, and generalized Bellman inequality. The results obtained in this paper improve and extend some known results. At last, an example is presented to demonstrate the applications of our main results

Structural Basis for Processivity and Single-Strand Specificity of RNase II

RNase II is a member of the widely distributed RNR family of exoribonucleases, which are highly processive 3′→5′ hydrolytic enzymes that play an important role in mRNA decay. Here, we report the crystal structure of E. coli RNase II, which reveals an architecture reminiscent of the RNA exosome. Three RNA-binding domains come together to form a clamp-like assembly, which can only accommodate single-stranded RNA. This leads into a narrow, basic channel that ends at the putative catalytic center that is completely enclosed within the body of the protein. The putative path for RNA agrees well with biochemical data indicating that a 3′ single strand overhang of 7–10 nt is necessary for binding and hydrolysis by RNase II. The presence of the clamp and the narrow channel provides an explanation for the processivity of RNase II and for why its action is limited to single-stranded RNA