Could Inflammaging and Its Sequelae Be Prevented or Mitigated?

Aged humans display a chronic and low-grade inflammation, termed "inflammaging", which has been potentially linked to the subsequent development of some aging-associated systemic disorders, including type 2 diabetes, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and obesity. Though the origin of aging-associated systemic inflammation is uncertain, epidemiological studies show that inflammatory dermatoses (psoriasis and eczema) are risk factors for some aging-associated systemic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Moreover, recent studies demonstrate that epidermal dysfunction in aged skin not only causes cutaneous inflammation, but also a subsequent increase in circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines, suggesting that the skin could be a major contributor to inflammaging. This hypothesis is further supported by reductions in circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines in both aged humans and murine, following improvements in epidermal function with topical emollients. Therefore, correction of epidermal dysfunction could be a novel approach for the prevention and mitigation of certain inflammation-associated chronic disorders in aged humans

Rapid Invasion of Spartina Alterniflora in the Coastal Zone of Mainland China: Spatiotemporal Patterns and Human Prevention

Given the extensive spread and ecological consequences of exotic Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora) over the coast of mainland China, monitoring its spatiotemporal invasion patterns is important for the sake of coastal ecosystem management and ecological security. In this study, Landsat series images from 1990 to 2015 were used to establish multi-temporal datasets for documenting the temporal dynamics of S. alterniflora invasion. Our observations revealed that S. alterniflora had a continuous expansion with the area increasing by 50,204 ha during the considered 25 years. The largest expansion was identified in Jiangsu Province during the period of 1990-2000, and in Zhejiang Province during the periods 2000-2010 and 2010-2015. Three noticeable hotspots for S. alterniflora invasion were Yancheng of Jiangsu, Chongming of Shanghai, and Ningbo of Zhejiang, and each had a net area increase larger than 5000 ha. Moreover, an obvious shrinkage of S. alterniflora was identified in three coastal cities including the city of Cangzhou of Hebei, Dongguan, and Jiangmen of Guangdong. S. alterniflora invaded mostly into mudflats (>93%) and shrank primarily due to aquaculture (55.5%). This study sheds light on the historical spatial patterns in S. alterniflora distribution and thus is helpful for understanding its invasion mechanism and invasive species management

Framework to Guide Rail type Adhesive Lifting Scaffolding in the Design and Application of High-rise Residential Buildings

As to combine with specific engineering practice, this paper presents a framework to guide rail type adhesive lifting scaffolding in high-rise residential building design and constructions well as changed the traditional characteristics of steel pipe scaffold by using new standard truss and scaffold board design All the connecting parts are connected by bolt, using electric wrench to install, and implementing the overall tools, systematic design and installation. Engineering practice proved that the frame rail type adhesive lifting scaffold can not only speed up the construction progress, control costs and improve economic efficiency, but also be popularized in similar engineering

Anti-ulcerogenic efficacy and mechanisms of edible and natural ingredients in NSAID-induced animal models

Background: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are a class of the most commonly used medicines and proven to be effective for certain disorders. Some people use NSAIDs on daily basis for preventive purpose. But a variety of severe side effects can be induced by NSAIDs. Studies have shown that edible natural ingredients exhibit preventive benefit of gastric ulcer. This paper reviews the efficacy and safety of edible natural ingredients in preventing the development of gastric ulcer induced by NSAIDs in animal models.Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted on PubMed, using the terms “herbal medicines” and “gastric ulcer”, “herbal medicines” and “peptic ulcer”, “food” and “peptic ulcer”, “food” and “gastric ulcer”, “natural ingredient” and “peptic ulcer”, “natural ingredient” and “gastric ulcer”, “alternative medicine” and “peptic ulcer”, “alternative medicine” and “gastric ulcer”, “complementary medicine” and “peptic ulcer”, “complementary medicine” and “gastric ulcer” in papers published in English between January 1, 1960 and January 31, 2016, resulting in a total of 6146 articles containing these terms. After exclusion of studies not related prevention, not in NSAID model or using non-edible natural ingredients, 54 articles were included in this review.Results: Numerous studies have demonstrated that edible natural ingredients exhibit antiulcerogenic benefit in NSAIDinduced animal models. The mechanisms by which edible, ingredient-induced anti-ulcerogenic effects include stimulation of mucous cell proliferation, antioxidation, inhibition of gastric acid secretion, as well as inhibition of H(+), K(+)- ATPase activities. Utilization of edible, natural ingredients could be a safe, valuable alternative to prevent the development of NSAID-induced gastric ulcer, particularly for the subjects who are long-term users of NSAIDs.Keywords: Food, Gastric ulcer, Prevention, Animal models，Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug

Cluster-Guided Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Deep Speaker Embedding

Recent studies have shown that pseudo labels can contribute to unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) for speaker verification. Inspired by the self-training strategies that use an existing classifier to label the unlabeled data for retraining, we propose a cluster-guided UDA framework that labels the target domain data by clustering and combines the labeled source domain data and pseudo-labeled target domain data to train a speaker embedding network. To improve the cluster quality, we train a speaker embedding network dedicated for clustering by minimizing the contrastive center loss. The goal is to reduce the distance between an embedding and its assigned cluster center while enlarging the distance between the embedding and the other cluster centers. Using VoxCeleb2 as the source domain and CN-Celeb1 as the target domain, we demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve an equal error rate (EER) of 8.10% on the CN-Celeb1 evaluation set without using any labels from the target domain. This result outperforms the supervised baseline by 39.6% and is the state-of-the-art UDA performance on this corpus

BIOMECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WRIST JOINT MUSCLE IN CHINESE ADULTS

The purpose of this study was to (1) establish the biomechanical characteristics of the wrist muscle in normal Chinese adults, (2) provide scientific information for the evaluation of sports techniques, strength training, sports injuries, and rehabilitation, (3) provide basic data for muscle building, injury and rehabilitation in the general population. A total of 69 adults cross-country participated in this study. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) With increasing angular velocity, peak torque and total work declined, but average power increased, (2) Peak torque, total work and average power of wrist flexion were greater than wrist extension

Graphene nanocomposites modified electrochemical aptamer sensor for rapid and highly sensitive detection of prostate specific antigen

Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a widely used marker for the diagnosis of prostate cancer, and the increasing attention has been attracted on the development of rapid assay using biosensing technology. However, it remains challenging for the sensitive and selective detection of PSA in clinical samples. Here, we report a label-free microfluidic paper-based analytical device for highly sensitive electrochemical detection of PSA. The paper device was fabricated with wax printing to generate hydrophobic and hydrophilic layers for the construction of microfluidic channel, followed by screen-printing of three electrodes including working, counter and reference electrode. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)/reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/thionine (THI) nano composites were synthesized and characterized, which were coated onto working electrodes for the immobilization of DNA aptamer probe. THI servers as the electrochemical mediator to transduce the biological recognition between DNA aptamer and PSA, and the excellent conductivity of AuNPs and rGO also play a significant role of electron transfer, leading to a sensitive detection for PSA, able to detect PSA as low as 10 pg mL , with a linear range from 0.05 to 200 ng mL . We demonstrated that our electrochemical sensor for the detection of clinical serum samples, indicating that our sensor would provide a new platform for low cost, sensitive and point-of-care diagnosis of prostate cancer