Soft mechanical sensors for wearable and implantable applications

Wearable and implantable sensing of biomechanical signals such as pressure, strain, shear, and vibration can enable a multitude of human-integrated applications, including on-skin monitoring of vital signs, motion tracking, monitoring of internal organ condition, restoration of lost/impaired mechanoreception, among many others. The mechanical conformability of such sensors to the human skin and tissue is critical to enhancing their biocompatibility and sensing accuracy. As such, in the recent decade, significant efforts have been made in the development of soft mechanical sensors. To satisfy the requirements of different wearable and implantable applications, such sensors have been imparted with various additional properties to make them better suited for the varied contexts of human-integrated applications. In this review, focusing on the four major types of soft mechanical sensors for pressure, strain, shear, and vibration, we discussed the recent material and device design innovations for achieving several important properties, including flexibility and stretchability, bioresorbability and biodegradability, self-healing properties, breathability, transparency, wireless communication capabilities, and high-density integration. We then went on to discuss the current research state of the use of such novel soft mechanical sensors in wearable and implantable applications, based on which future research needs were further discussed. This article is categorized under: Diagnostic Tools > Biosensing Diagnostic Tools > Diagnostic Nanodevices Implantable Materials and Surgical Technologies > Nanomaterials and Implants</p

DetectGPT-SC: Improving Detection of Text Generated by Large Language Models through Self-Consistency with Masked Predictions

General large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have shown remarkable success, but it has also raised concerns among people about the misuse of AI-generated texts. Therefore, an important question is how to detect whether the texts are generated by ChatGPT or by humans. Existing detectors are built on the assumption that there is a distribution gap between human-generated and AI-generated texts. These gaps are typically identified using statistical information or classifiers. In contrast to prior research methods, we find that large language models such as ChatGPT exhibit strong self-consistency in text generation and continuation. Self-consistency capitalizes on the intuition that AI-generated texts can still be reasoned with by large language models using the same logical reasoning when portions of the texts are masked, which differs from human-generated texts. Using this observation, we subsequently proposed a new method for AI-generated texts detection based on self-consistency with masked predictions to determine whether a text is generated by LLMs. This method, which we call DetectGPT-SC. We conducted a series of experiments to evaluate the performance of DetectGPT-SC. In these experiments, we employed various mask scheme, zero-shot, and simple prompt for completing masked texts and self-consistency predictions. The results indicate that DetectGPT-SC outperforms the current state-of-the-art across different tasks.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

PseudoFuN: Deriving functional potentials of pseudogenes from integrative relationships with genes and microRNAs across 32 cancers

BACKGROUND: Long thought "relics" of evolution, not until recently have pseudogenes been of medical interest regarding regulation in cancer. Often, these regulatory roles are a direct by-product of their close sequence homology to protein-coding genes. Novel pseudogene-gene (PGG) functional associations can be identified through the integration of biomedical data, such as sequence homology, functional pathways, gene expression, pseudogene expression, and microRNA expression. However, not all of the information has been integrated, and almost all previous pseudogene studies relied on 1:1 pseudogene-parent gene relationships without leveraging other homologous genes/pseudogenes. RESULTS: We produce PGG families that expand beyond the current 1:1 paradigm. First, we construct expansive PGG databases by (i) CUDAlign graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated local alignment of all pseudogenes to gene families (totaling 1.6 billion individual local alignments and >40,000 GPU hours) and (ii) BLAST-based assignment of pseudogenes to gene families. Second, we create an open-source web application (PseudoFuN [Pseudogene Functional Networks]) to search for integrative functional relationships of sequence homology, microRNA expression, gene expression, pseudogene expression, and gene ontology. We produce four "flavors" of CUDAlign-based databases (>462,000,000 PGG pairwise alignments and 133,770 PGG families) that can be queried and downloaded using PseudoFuN. These databases are consistent with previous 1:1 PGG annotation and also are much more powerful including millions of de novo PGG associations. For example, we find multiple known (e.g., miR-20a-PTEN-PTENP1) and novel (e.g., miR-375-SOX15-PPP4R1L) microRNA-gene-pseudogene associations in prostate cancer. PseudoFuN provides a "one stop shop" for identifying and visualizing thousands of potential regulatory relationships related to pseudogenes in The Cancer Genome Atlas cancers. CONCLUSIONS: Thousands of new PGG associations can be explored in the context of microRNA-gene-pseudogene co-expression and differential expression with a simple-to-use online tool by bioinformaticians and oncologists alike

Urban and Regional Cooperation and Development

This is an open access book. This book, first of all, introduces the new unveiled Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone with details as a special mode of the regional collaborative development that is committed to be mutually beneficial to both sides with different political and economic systems. China's central authorities have recently issued a masterplan for constructing the Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone at Hengqin Island in September 2021. As China's first and last European colony and one of China’s two special administrative regions (SARs), Macao has developed the gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. However, the problem of the homogeneous industrial structure and the urgent need to promote sustainable economic growth by regional cooperation have been important theoretical and practical issues discussed by scholars and policy-makers. The Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone (ICZ) is managed under special customs supervision between two boarder lines and expected to diversify Macao’s economy. Then, this book dissects the theory of regional synergistic development and its applications in a number of international comparative and cross-interdisciplinary case studies worldwide. Finally, from the perspective of land use, transportation connection, and social service, this book thoroughly explores the challenges and strategies to implement the new cooperation model within the framework of one country, two systems, two customs, and two currencies to achieve a win–win situation using updated first-hand data collected by literature review, case study, field survey, spatial analysis, and interview

Urban and Regional Cooperation and Development

This is an open access book. This book, first of all, introduces the new unveiled Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone with details as a special mode of the regional collaborative development that is committed to be mutually beneficial to both sides with different political and economic systems. China's central authorities have recently issued a masterplan for constructing the Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone at Hengqin Island in September 2021. As China's first and last European colony and one of China’s two special administrative regions (SARs), Macao has developed the gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. However, the problem of the homogeneous industrial structure and the urgent need to promote sustainable economic growth by regional cooperation have been important theoretical and practical issues discussed by scholars and policy-makers. The Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone (ICZ) is managed under special customs supervision between two boarder lines and expected to diversify Macao’s economy. Then, this book dissects the theory of regional synergistic development and its applications in a number of international comparative and cross-interdisciplinary case studies worldwide. Finally, from the perspective of land use, transportation connection, and social service, this book thoroughly explores the challenges and strategies to implement the new cooperation model within the framework of one country, two systems, two customs, and two currencies to achieve a win–win situation using updated first-hand data collected by literature review, case study, field survey, spatial analysis, and interview

Periodic Heat Shock Accelerated the Chondrogenic Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Pellet Culture

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of diseases that seriously affect elderly people\u27s quality of life. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) offer a potential promise for the joint repair in OA patients. However, chondrogenic differentiation from hMSCs in vitro takes a long time (∼6 weeks) and differentiated cells are still not as functionally mature as primary isolated chondrocytes, though chemical stimulations and mechanical loading have been intensively studied to enhance the hMSC differentiation. On the other hand, thermal stimulations of hMSC chondrogenesis have not been well explored. In this study, the direct effects of mild heat shock (HS) on the differentiation of hMSCs into chondrocytes in 3D pellet culture were investigated. Periodic HS at 41°C for 1 hr significantly increased sulfated glycosaminoglycan in 3D pellet culture at Day 10 of chondrogenesis. Immunohistochemical and Western Blot analyses revealed an increased expression of collagen type II and aggrecan in heat-shocked pellets than non heat-shocked pellets on Day 17 of chondrogenesis. In addition, HS also upregulated the expression of collagen type I and X as well as heat shock protein 70 on Day 17 and 24 of differentiation. These results demonstrate that HS accelerated the chondrogenic differentiation of hMSCs and induced an early maturation of chondrocytes differentiated from hMSCs. The results of this study will guide the design of future protocols using thermal treatments to facilitate cartilage regeneration with human mesenchymal stem cells

Network analysis of pseudogene-gene relationships: from pseudogene evolution to their functional potentials

Pseudogenes are fossil relatives of genes. Pseudogenes have long been thought of as "junk DNAs", since they do not code proteins in normal tissues. Although most of the human pseudogenes do not have noticeable functions, ∼20% of them exhibit transcriptional activity. There has been evidence showing that some pseudogenes adopted functions as lncRNAs and work as regulators of gene expression. Furthermore, pseudogenes can even be "reactivated" in some conditions, such as cancer initiation. Some pseudogenes are transcribed in specific cancer types, and some are even translated into proteins as observed in several cancer cell lines. All the above have shown that pseudogenes could have functional roles or potentials in the genome. Evaluating the relationships between pseudogenes and their gene counterparts could help us reveal the evolutionary path of pseudogenes and associate pseudogenes with functional potentials. It also provides an insight into the regulatory networks involving pseudogenes with transcriptional and even translational activities.In this study, we develop a novel approach integrating graph analysis, sequence alignment and functional analysis to evaluate pseudogene-gene relationships, and apply it to human gene homologs and pseudogenes. We generated a comprehensive set of 445 pseudogene-gene (PGG) families from the original 3,281 gene families (13.56%). Of these 438 (98.4% PGG, 13.3% total) were non-trivial (containing more than one pseudogene). Each PGG family contains multiple genes and pseudogenes with high sequence similarity. For each family, we generate a sequence alignment network and phylogenetic trees recapitulating the evolutionary paths. We find evidence supporting the evolution history of olfactory family (both genes and pseudogenes) in human, which also supports the validity of our analysis method. Next, we evaluate these networks in respect to the gene ontology from which we identify functions enriched in these pseudogene-gene families and infer functional impact of pseudogenes involved in the networks. This demonstrates the application of our PGG network database in the study of pseudogene function in disease context

De novo transcriptome sequencing and comprehensive analysis of the drought-responsive genes in the desert plant Cynanchum komarovii

The figure of an agarose gel with PCR products. (TIFF 11899 kb

Uncertainty Quantification of Collaborative Detection for Self-Driving

Sharing information between connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) fundamentally improves the performance of collaborative object detection for self-driving. However, CAVs still have uncertainties on object detection due to practical challenges, which will affect the later modules in self-driving such as planning and control. Hence, uncertainty quantification is crucial for safety-critical systems such as CAVs. Our work is the first to estimate the uncertainty of collaborative object detection. We propose a novel uncertainty quantification method, called Double-M Quantification, which tailors a moving block bootstrap (MBB) algorithm with direct modeling of the multivariant Gaussian distribution of each corner of the bounding box. Our method captures both the epistemic uncertainty and aleatoric uncertainty with one inference pass based on the offline Double-M training process. And it can be used with different collaborative object detectors. Through experiments on the comprehensive collaborative perception dataset, we show that our Double-M method achieves more than 4X improvement on uncertainty score and more than 3% accuracy improvement, compared with the state-of-the-art uncertainty quantification methods. Our code is public on https://coperception.github.io/double-m-quantification.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure