Advances in Atomic Time Scale imaging with a Fine Intrinsic Spatial Resolution

Atomic time scale imaging, opening a new era for studying dynamics in microcosmos, is presently attracting immense research interesting on the global level due to its powerful ability. On the atom level, physics, chemistry, and biology are identical for researching atom motion and atomic state change. The light possesses twoness, the information carrier and the research resource. The most fundamental principle of this imaging is that light records the event modulated light field by itself, so called all optical imaging. This paper can answer what is the essential standard to develop and evaluate atomic time scale imaging, what is the optimal imaging system, and what are the typical techniques to implement this imaging, up to now. At present, the best record in the experiment, made by multistage optical parametric amplification (MOPA), is realizing 50 fs resolved optical imaging with a spatial resolution of ~83 lp/mm at an effective framing rate of 10^13 fps for recording an ultrafast optical lattice with its rotating speed up to 10^13 rad/s

TrkA inhibition alleviates bladder overactivity in cyclophosphamide-induced cystitis by targeting hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated channels

Objective(s): To investigate the potential of Tropomyosin receptor kinase A (TrkA) for the treatment of interstitial cystitis/ bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS).Materials and Methods: Sixty-four female rats were randomly assigned to the control and cyclophosphamide (CYP) groups. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was utilized to detect the mRNA level of TrkA. Western blot analysis was used to measure the protein levels of TNF-α, IL-6, and TrkA. Immunostaining was used to detect the expression of TrkA in bladder sections. Contractility studies and urodynamic measurements were utilized to test the spontaneous contractions of detrusor muscle strips and the global bladder activity, respectively.Results: Rat models of chronic cystitis were successfully established. The mRNA and protein levels of TrkA were significantly increased in the bladders of CYP-treated rats. Also, results of immunohistochemical staining and immunofluorescence staining showed that increased TrkA expression in the CYP group was mainly observed in the urothelium layer and bladder interstitial Cajal-like cells (ICC-LCs) but not in the detrusor smooth muscle cells. The specific inhibitor of TrkA, GW441756 (10 μM), significantly suppressed the robust spontaneous contractions of detrusor muscle strips in the CYP group and alleviated the overall bladder overactivity of CYP-treated rats. However, the inhibitory effects of GW441756 (10 μM) on the spontaneous contractions of detrusor muscle strips and the overall bladder activity were eliminated after pretreatments with the specific blocker of hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels, ZD7288 (50 μM).Conclusion: Our results suggested that increased TrkA expression during chronic cystitis promotes the development of bladder overactivity by targeting the HCN channels

Preoperative pelvic floor muscle exercise for continence after radical prostatectomy: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ObjectiveWe performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of preoperative pelvic floor muscle exercise on urinary incontinence after radical prostatectomy.MethodsWe searched the literature for randomized controlled trials evaluating the diagnostic analysis of preoperative pelvic floor muscle exercise (PFME) and postprostatectomy incontinence in the MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PsycINFO, China Biomedical Literature Database, China Journal Full-text Database, Wanfang Database and Weipu Database. The retrieval time limit is from the establishment of the database to January 2023. We used a risk ratio with accompanying 95% confidence interval (CI) to express estimates. Reviewer Manager (RevMan) 5.1.0 was used to complete all statistical analyses.ResultsTwelve studies were included based on the selection criteria. The total number of patients included in the final analysis was 1,365. At 1th month, there was no difference in continence rates between the groups [odds ratio (OR): 0.47; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.22–1.02, p = 0.06]. At 3th month, there was statistically significant difference in PFME group before operation (OR: 0.61; 95% CI, 0.37–0.98, p = 0.04). At 6th and 12th months, there was no difference between groups (OR: 0.57; 95% CI, 0.28–1.17, p = 0.13), (OR: 0.56; 95% CI, 0.27–1.15, p = 0.12).ConclusionPreoperative pelvic floor muscle exercise can improve postoperative urinary incontinence at 3rd months after radical prostatectomy, but it cannot improve urinary incontinence at 6th months or longer after surgery, which indicates that preoperative PFME can improve early continence rate, but cannot improve long-term urinary incontinence continence rate

Coping strategies mediate the relationship between fear of cancer recurrence and quality of life in postoperative patients with prostate cancer: a multicentre survey

Abstract Purpose The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between fear of cancer recurrence and quality of life in patients with prostate cancer. A model based on Lazarus’ and Folkman’s theory tested the specific hypothesis: fear of cancer recurrence has a direct and indirect effect on quality of life mediated by coping strategies. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted on 305 patients with prostate cancer who underwent radical surgery, including demographic information, FoP-Q-SF (Fear of Progression Questionnaire), MCMQ (The Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire), QLQ-C30 (Questionnaire for Quality of Life Assessment in patients with cancer, version 3.0), and a mediator model was tested using the PROCESS macro for SPSS. Results The total FoP-Q-SF score of 305 postoperative prostate cancer patients was 34.3 ± 5.856, with approximately 41.6% of the patients scoring higher than 34. There were significant indirect effects of fear of cancer recurrence on global health status through face [a1b1; 0.0394, Boot CIs 0.0025, 0.0819] and yield [a3b3; -0.1075, Boots CIs − 0.1657, -0.0557] but not for evasive [a2b2; 0.0235; Boots CIs − 0.057, 0.0508]. Conclusions Coping strategies are the most important mediating factors between fear of cancer recurrence and QOL among patients with prostate cancer. Our results support the proposed conceptual model, based on Lazarus’ and Folkman’s theory. Medical personnel need to develop corresponding intervention measures based on the different coping methods of patients, promote disease recovery, and improve postoperative quality of life

Unsupervised SAR Despeckling by Combining Online Speckle Generation and Unpaired Training

Speckle suppression is a crucial preliminary step for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image processing. Supervised despeckling approaches trained on synthetic datasets usually perform poorly in practice due to the unavailability of clean SAR images. Besides, the spatial correlation of speckle is rarely considered in many methods based on the fully developed speckle assumption. In this article, we propose an unsupervised despeckling method to address these issues by combining online speckle generation and unpaired training. The method consists of two branches: the stop-gradient branch and the unpaired branch. First, the stop-gradient branch learns to generate the spatially correlated speckle. Then, the unpaired branch combines the generated speckle with the unpaired optical image to form pairs of training data for network parameter updates. More specifically, in order to generate the more realistic speckle in the stop-gradient branch, we design a speckle correction module with three SAR speckle priors: the threshold prior, the unit mean prior, and the correlation prior coupled with the weighted patch-shuffle. In the unpaired training, a hybrid loss function is employed, which takes spatial smoothness and detail protection into consideration. Afterward, we combine the stop-gradient branch with the unpaired branch by the Siamese network to achieve alternate optimization of speckle generation and speckle removal. Finally, the optimization process in our method is analyzed theoretically. Qualitative and quantitative experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is comparable to the supervised despeckling approaches on synthetic datasets and outperforms several state-of-the-art unsupervised methods on real SAR datasets

Quantifying Cognitive Workload Using a Non-Contact Magnetocardiography (MCG) Wearable Sensor

Quantifying cognitive workload, i.e., the level of mental effort put forth by an individual in response to a cognitive task, is relevant for healthcare, training and gaming applications. However, there is currently no technology available that can readily and reliably quantify the cognitive workload of an individual in a real-world environment at a seamless way and affordable price. In this work, we overcome these limitations and demonstrate the feasibility of a magnetocardiography (MCG) sensor to reliably classify high vs. low cognitive workload while being non-contact, fully passive and low-cost, with the potential to have a wearable form factor. The operating principle relies on measuring the naturally emanated magnetic fields from the heart and subsequently analyzing the heart rate variability (HRV) matrix in three time-domain parameters: standard deviation of RR intervals (SDRR); root mean square of successive differences between heartbeats (RMSSD); and mean values of adjacent R-peaks in the cardiac signals (MeanRR). A total of 13 participants were recruited, two of whom were excluded due to low signal quality. The results show that SDRR and RMSSD achieve a 100% success rate in classifying high vs. low cognitive workload, while MeanRR achieves a 91% success rate. Tests for the same individual yield an intra-subject classification accuracy of 100% for all three HRV parameters. Future studies should leverage machine learning and advanced digital signal processing to achieve automated classification of cognitive workload and reliable operation in a natural environment