Effects of Xinwei granule on expression levels of cyclin D1 and its upstream genes in gastric intraepithelial neoplasia tissues

Purpose: To explore the effects of Xinwei granule (XWG) on low-grade gastric intraepithelial neoplasia (LGIN) and the underlying mechanisms. Methods: To establish LGIN model, Wistar rats were treated with N-methyl-N'-nitrosoguanidine for 3 months. LGIN model rats were randomly grouped into five groups (n = 15), viz, negative control (NC), normal saline (NS) group, Xinwei granule (XWG) group, Weifuchun tablet (WFCT) group, and vatacoenayme tablet (VT) group. Normal rats (n = 17) served as negative control. Histological evaluation of gastric mucosa was undertaken using hematoxylin and eosin staining. Quantitative realtime polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), western blot, and immunohistochemical assays were performed to determine mRNA expressions, protein expression, and the distribution of cyclin D1, kruppel-like factor 4 (KLF4), and p21-WAF1-CIP1, respectively. Results: Compared with LGIN group, the body weight of the rats increased in XWG, WFCT, and VT groups. The pathological characteristics of LGIN group were alleviated by XWG, WFCT and VT treatments. The positive expression of cyclin D1 was enhanced in LGIN group, but reduced in XWG, WFCT and VT groups. The expression levels of KLF4 and p21-WAF1-CIP1, upstream regulators of cyclin D1 reduced in LGIN groups. However, administration of XWG, WFCT and VT strengthened the expressions of KLF4 and p21-WAF1-CIP1. More importantly, the protective effects of XWG against LGIN were superior to those of WFCT and VT. Conclusion: Xinwei granules alleviate LGIN in vivo by inhibiting cyclin D1 expression and enhancing KLF4 and p21-WAF1-CIP1 expression

MVA2023 Small Object Detection Challenge for Spotting Birds: Dataset, Methods, and Results

Small Object Detection (SOD) is an important machine vision topic because (i) a variety of real-world applications require object detection for distant objects and (ii) SOD is a challenging task due to the noisy, blurred, and less-informative image appearances of small objects. This paper proposes a new SOD dataset consisting of 39,070 images including 137,121 bird instances, which is called the Small Object Detection for Spotting Birds (SOD4SB) dataset. The detail of the challenge with the SOD4SB dataset is introduced in this paper. In total, 223 participants joined this challenge. This paper briefly introduces the award-winning methods. The dataset, the baseline code, and the website for evaluation on the public testset are publicly available.Comment: This paper is included in the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Machine Vision Applications (MVA2023). It will be officially published at a later date. Project page : https://www.mva-org.jp/mva2023/challeng

Baicalin Depresses the Sympathoexcitatory Reflex Induced by Myocardial Ischemia via the Dorsal Root Ganglia

Myocardial ischemia (MI) is one of the major causes of death in cardiac diseases. Purinergic signaling is involved in bidirectional neuronal-glial communication in the primary sensory ganglia. The sensory neuritis of cardiac afferent neurons in cervical dorsal root ganglion (cDRG) interacts with cardiac sympathetic efferent postganglionic neurons, forming feedback loops. The P2Y12 receptor is expressed in satellite glial cells (SGCs) of DRG. Baicalin is a major active ingredient extracted from natural herbal medicines, which has anti-inflammatory and strong anti-oxidation properties. In this study we investigated the effect of baicalin on P2Y12 receptor in the cervical DRG SGC-mediated sympathoexcitatory reflex, which is increased during MI. The results showed that the expression of P2Y12 receptor mRNA and protein in DRG, and the co-localization values of P2Y12 receptor and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) in cDRG SGCs were increased after MI. The activated SGCs increased IL-1β protein expression and elevated Akt phosphorylation in cDRG. Baicalin treatment inhibited the upregulation of the P2Y12 receptor, GFAP protein and Akt phosphorylation in cDRG neurons/SGCs. The stellate ganglia (SG) affect cardiac sympathetic activity. Baicalin treatment also decreased the upregulation of the P2Y12 receptor, GFAP protein in the SG. The P2Y12 agonist, 2Me-SADP, increased [Ca2+]i in HEK293 cells transfected with the P2Y12 receptor plasmid and SGCs in cDRG. These results indicate that application of baicalin alleviates pathologic sympathetic activity induced by MI via inhibition of afferents in the cDRG

Understanding Recessive Transition of Cultivated Land Use in Jilin Province, China (1990–2020): From Perspective of Productive-Living-Ecological Functions

Jilin Province is an important commercial grain production base in northeast China, and it has seen significant transition in cultivated land use in recent years. This study constructed a measurement system for the recessive transition of cultivated land use in Jilin Province based on the perspective of “three-function synergy” (productive, living, and ecological functions). It discussed the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of the recessive transition of cultivated land use from 1990 to 2020, identified the turning point of the cultivated land transition trend, and built a model of recessive transition of cultivated land in Jilin Province. After analyzing the results, we came to the following conclusions: (1) The turning point of the “three-function synergy” of the recessive morphology of cultivated land in Jilin Province occurred earlier than the mutation point of the recessive transition of cultivated land, and there was a certain temporality in the recessive transition of cultivated land compared with the functional change of cultivated land; (2) the degree of recessive transition of cultivated land in Jilin Province showed a spatial distribution characteristic of being higher in the west and lower in the east; (3) the recessive transition of cultivated land use in Jilin Province could be divided into transition stages characterized by “low stage slow rise period”, “middle stage significant increase period”, and “high stage steady growth period”; (4) Jilin Province should adopt differentiated and diversified management of cultivated land to achieve a comprehensive management model that emphasizes quantity, quality, and ecology

The Spatio-Temporal Pattern and Transition Mode of Recessive Cultivated Land Use Morphology in the Huaibei Region of the Jiangsu Province

Examining land use transition is a new way of building on the comprehensive research on Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC). Research on transition law and characteristics is important for improving the theory of land use transition and the practice of land resource management, and for being able to provide a basis and reference for promoting socio-economic transformation. Based on the relevant statistical data concerning cultivated land use in the Huaibei area of the Jiangsu Province from 1995 to 2020, and by understanding the county as a unit to be measured, this paper constructed a multi-dimensional (economic–social–ecological) functional index system of recessive morphology, analyzed the spatio-temporal pattern of the transition of cultivated land use, identified transition point mutations, and established the transition mode by adopting multi-dimensional time series point mutation detection and the piecewise linear regression method. The findings suggest that the index of recessive cultivated land use morphology in the Huaibei region of the Jiangsu Province presents a trend of “slow decline to significant growth to stable growth”. Moreover, the index presented evolutionary characteristics such as “high in the middle and east while low in the west”, as well as “the relatively balanced distribution between counties”, thus indicating that the degree of transition deepened, it showed a homogeneous development trend, and the transition process presented obvious “ladder” stage characteristics; therefore, the authors suggest making scientific use of cultivated land resources, in accordance with local conditions, in order to make the land use transition of cultivated land efficient, green, and sustainable

Correction: Li, et al. LncRNA NEAT1 Silenced miR-133b Promotes Migration and Invasion of Breast Cancer Cells. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20, 3616

The author wishes to make the following correction to this paper [...

Storage Management Strategy in Mobile Phones for Photo Crowdsensing

In mobile crowdsensing, some users jointly finish a sensing task through the sensors equipped in their intelligent terminals. In particular, the photo crowdsensing based on Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) collects pictures for some specific targets or events and uploads them to nearby edge servers, which leads to richer data content and more efficient data storage compared with the common mobile crowdsensing; hence, it has attracted an important amount of attention recently. However, the mobile users prefer uploading the photos through Wifi APs (PoIs) rather than cellular networks. Therefore, photos stored in mobile phones are exchanged among users, in order to quickly upload them to the PoIs, which are actually the edge services. In this paper, we propose a utility-based Storage Management strategy in mobile phones for Photo Crowdsensing (SMPC), which makes a sending/deleting decision on a user’s device for either maximizing photo delivery ratio (SMPC-R) or minimizing average delay (SMPC-D). The decision is made according to the photo’s utility, which is calculated by measuring the impact of reproducing or deleting a photo on the above performance goals. We have done simulations based on the random-waypoint model and three real traces: roma/taxi, epfl, and geolife. The results show that, compared with other storage management strategies, SMPC-R gets the highest delivery ratio and SMPC-D achieves the lowest average delay

Storage Management Strategy in Mobile Phones for Photo Crowdsensing

In mobile crowdsensing, some users jointly finish a sensing task through the sensors equipped in their intelligent terminals. In particular, the photo crowdsensing based on Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) collects pictures for some specific targets or events and uploads them to nearby edge servers, which leads to richer data content and more efficient data storage compared with the common mobile crowdsensing; hence, it has attracted an important amount of attention recently. However, the mobile users prefer uploading the photos through Wifi APs (PoIs) rather than cellular networks. Therefore, photos stored in mobile phones are exchanged among users, in order to quickly upload them to the PoIs, which are actually the edge services. In this paper, we propose a utility-based Storage Management strategy in mobile phones for Photo Crowdsensing (SMPC), which makes a sending/deleting decision on a user’s device for either maximizing photo delivery ratio (SMPC-R) or minimizing average delay (SMPC-D). The decision is made according to the photo’s utility, which is calculated by measuring the impact of reproducing or deleting a photo on the above performance goals. We have done simulations based on the random-waypoint model and three real traces: roma/taxi, epfl, and geolife. The results show that, compared with other storage management strategies, SMPC-R gets the highest delivery ratio and SMPC-D achieves the lowest average delay

LncRNA NEAT1 Silenced miR-133b Promotes Migration and Invasion of Breast Cancer Cells

Breast cancer, the most prevalent cancer type among women worldwide, remains incurable once metastatic. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) and microRNA (miRNA) play important roles in breast cancer by regulating specific genes or proteins. In this study, we found miR-133b was silenced in breast cancer cell lines and in breast cancer tissues, which predicted poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. We also confirmed that lncRNA NEAT1 was up-regulated in breast cancer and inhibited the expression of miR-133b, and identified the mitochondrial protein translocase of inner mitochondrial membrane 17 homolog A (TIMM17A) that serves as the target of miR-133b. Both miR-133b knockdown and TIMM17A overexpression in breast cancer cells promoted cell migration and invasion both in vitro and in vivo. In summary, our findings reveal that miR-133b plays a critical role in breast cancer cell metastasis by targeting TIMM17A. These findings may provide new insights into novel molecular therapeutic targets for breast cancer

Identifying the Determinants of Distribution of <i>Oncomelania hupensis</i> Based on Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression Model along the Yangtze River in China

Background: As the unique intermediate host of Schistosoma japonicum, the geographical distribution of Oncomelania hupensis (O. hupensis) is an important index in the schistosomiasis surveillance system. This study comprehensively analyzed the pattern of snail distribution along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province and identified the dynamic determinants of the distribution of O. hupensis. Methods: Snail data from 2017 to 2021 in three cities (Nanjing, Zhenjiang, and Yangzhou) along the Yangtze River were obtained from the annual cross-sectional survey produced by the Jiangsu Institute of Parasitic Diseases. Spatial autocorrelation and hot-spot analysis were implemented to detect the spatio–temporal dynamics of O. hupensis distribution. Furthermore, 12 factors were used as independent variables to construct an ordinary least squares (OLS) model, a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model, and a geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model to identify the determinants of the distribution of O. hupensis. The adjusted coefficients of determination (adjusted R2, AICc, RSS) were used to evaluate the performance of the models. Results: In general, the distribution of O. hupensis had significant spatial aggregation in the past five years, and the density of O. hupensis increased eastwards in the Jiangsu section of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Relatively speaking, the distribution of O. hupensis wase spatially clustered from 2017 to 2021, that is, it was found that the border between Yangzhou and Zhenjiang was the high density agglomeration area of O. hupensis snails. According to the GTWR model, the density of O. hupensis was related to the normalized difference vegetation index, wetness, dryness, land surface temperature, elevation, slope, and distance to nearest river, which had a good explanatory power for the snail data in Yangzhou City (adjusted R2 = 0.7039, AICc = 29.10, RSS = 6.81). Conclusions: The distribution of O. hupensis and the environmental factors in the Jiangsu section of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River had significant spatial aggregation. In different areas, the determinants affecting the distribution of O. hupensis were different, which could provide a scientific basis for precise prevention and control of O. hupensis. A GTWR model was prepared and used to identify the dynamic determinants for the distribution of O. hupensis and contribute to the national programs of control of schistosomiasis and other snail-borne diseases