Methylbenzoxime as a therapeutic agent for glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis in rats

Purpose: To investigate the effect of methylbenzoxime on dexamethasone-induced rat model of osteoporosis. Methods: Osteoporosis rat model was prepared by administration of dexamethasone to rats for sixty days. The rats were then divided into five groups of five animals each: normal control, untreated, and 2, 5 and 10 mg/kg treatment groups. All rats were administered dexamethasone for 60 days. Thereafter, rats in the three treatment groups received daily doses of 2, 5 or 10 mg/kg methylbenzoxime for 15 days, while rats in normal control and untreated groups were given equivalent volumes of normal saline in place of methylbenzoxime. After treatment, the rats were sacrificed, and the femur removed for histological assessment of pathological changes using H&E staining. Expressions of Wntn signalling pathway proteins in osteoblasts were assayed using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western blot assays. Results: Methylbenzoxime inhibited osteoblast proliferation, as revealed from 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2- yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. It increased the expression of osteoprotegerin and downregulated receptor activator for nuclear factor-kappa B ligand. Dexamethasone decreased the expression of Wnt signalling pathway proteins in osteoblasts. However, treatment of the dexamethasone-exposed osteoblasts with methylbenzoxime reversed the inhibition of expressions of Wnt signalling pathway proteins. In vivo studies showed that methylbenzoxime treatment mitigated dexamethasone-induced pathological features in femur. In osteoporotic rats, methylbenzoxime significantly up-regulated the expression of osteocalcin but down-regulated the level of collagen-type I fragments, relative to the untreated group. The effect was significant in the 5 and 10 mg/kg treatment groups, when compared with 2 mg/kg group. Conclusion: Methylbenzoxime prevents dexamethasone-induced osteoporosis in vitro and in rats. Therefore, it is a potential therapeutic agent for the management of osteoporosis

MomentDiff: Generative Video Moment Retrieval from Random to Real

Video moment retrieval pursues an efficient and generalized solution to identify the specific temporal segments within an untrimmed video that correspond to a given language description. To achieve this goal, we provide a generative diffusion-based framework called MomentDiff, which simulates a typical human retrieval process from random browsing to gradual localization. Specifically, we first diffuse the real span to random noise, and learn to denoise the random noise to the original span with the guidance of similarity between text and video. This allows the model to learn a mapping from arbitrary random locations to real moments, enabling the ability to locate segments from random initialization. Once trained, MomentDiff could sample random temporal segments as initial guesses and iteratively refine them to generate an accurate temporal boundary. Different from discriminative works (e.g., based on learnable proposals or queries), MomentDiff with random initialized spans could resist the temporal location biases from datasets. To evaluate the influence of the temporal location biases, we propose two anti-bias datasets with location distribution shifts, named Charades-STA-Len and Charades-STA-Mom. The experimental results demonstrate that our efficient framework consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods on three public benchmarks, and exhibits better generalization and robustness on the proposed anti-bias datasets. The code, model, and anti-bias evaluation datasets are available at https://github.com/IMCCretrieval/MomentDiff.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

The consistency of invasive and non-invasive arterial blood pressure for the assessment of dynamic cerebral autoregulation in NICU patients

BackgroundStudies of the clinical application of dynamic cerebral autoregulation show considerable variations, and differences in blood pressure devices may be one of the reasons for this variation. Few studies have examined the consistency of invasive and non-invasive arterial blood pressure for evaluating cerebral autoregulation. We attempted to investigate the agreement between invasive and non-invasive blood pressure methods in the assessment of dynamic cerebral autoregulation with transfer function analysis.MethodsContinuous cerebral blood flow velocity and continuous invasive and non-invasive arterial blood pressure were simultaneously recorded for 15 min. Transfer function analysis was applied to derive the phase shift, gain and coherence function at all frequency bands from the first 5, 10, and 15 min of the 15-min recordings. The consistency was assessed with Bland–Altman analysis and intraclass correlation coefficient.ResultsThe consistency of invasive and noninvasive blood pressure methods for the assessment of dynamic cerebral autoregulation was poor at 5 min, slightly improved at 10 min, and good at 15 min. The values of the phase shift at the low-frequency band measured by the non-invasive device were higher than those measured with invasive equipment. The coherence function values measured by the invasive technique were higher than the values derived from the non-invasive method.ConclusionBoth invasive and non-invasive arterial blood pressure methods have good agreement in evaluating dynamic cerebral autoregulation when the recording duration reaches 15 min. The phase shift values measured with non-invasive techniques are higher than those measured with invasive devices. We recommend selecting the most appropriate blood pressure device to measure cerebral autoregulation based on the disease, purpose, and design

Distinct Biogeography of Different Fungal Guilds and Their Associations With Plant Species Richness in Forest Ecosystems

Plant pathogens are increasingly considered as important agents in promoting plant coexistence, while plant symbionts like ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) can facilitate plant dominance by helping conspecific individuals to defend against plant pathogens. However, we know little about their relationships with plants at large scales. Here, using soil fungal data collected from 28 forest reserves across China, we explored the latitudinal diversity gradients of overall fungi and different fungal functional guilds, including putative plant pathogens, EMF, and saprotrophic fungi. We further linked the spatial patterns of alpha diversities of putative plant pathogens and EMF to the variation of plant species richness. We found that the relationships between latitude and alpha diversities of putative plant pathogens and EMF were region-dependent with sharp diversity shifts around the mid-latitude (similar to 35 degrees N), which differed from the unimodal diversity distributions of the overall and saprotrophic fungi. The variations in the diversities of putative plant pathogens and EMF were largely explained by the spatial regions (south vs. north/subtropical zone vs. temperate zone). Additionally, the alpha diversities of these two fungal guilds exhibited opposing trends across latitude. EMF could alter the relationship between diversities of putative plant pathogens and plants in the south/subtropical region, but not vice versa. We also found that the ratio of their alpha diversities (EMF to putative plant pathogens) was negatively related to plant species richness across the spatial regions (north to south), and explained similar to 10% of the variation of plant species richness. Overall, our findings suggest that plant-microbe interactions not only shape the local plant diversity but also may have non-negligible contributions to the large-scale patterns of plant diversity in forest ecosystems.National Natural Science Foundation of China [31600403, 31800422, 41673111, U1501232, 41622106]; Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China [2016A030312003]; U.S. National Science Foundation MacroSystems Biology program [NSF EF-1065844]; Candidates at Sun Yat-Sen UniversityOpen access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Transfer path analysis and its application in low-frequency vibration reduction of steering wheel of a passenger vehicle

Abstract(#br)The demands on improving the noise, vibration and harshness of passenger vehicles are growing rapidly. Low-frequency vibration of steering wheel is one of the most important factors leading to the discomfort of drivers. This study proposes a systematic analysis methodology to reduce the low-frequency vibration of steering wheel using classical transfer path analysis (CTPA). The theoretical basics of TPA using dynamic stiffness approach and inverse matrix approach are briefly introduced, and then the experimental apparatus and analysis procedures in performing the TPA are introduced. The static forces in the rubber mounts of the powertrain system are calculated, the dynamic stiffness of the rubber mounts are estimated, and the operational forces are determined. The contributions of different transfer paths to the vibration of steering wheel are analyzed and compared, and the predominant causes are identified. The results show that the vibration of steering wheel along the X direction is protruded at the engine ignition frequency, and the vibration of the exhaust system along the X direction contributes most to the vibration because of large frequency response function. The mounting structure of the exhaust system is modified based on modal analysis results using finite element method to reduce the vibration of steering wheel

Pillar[5]quinone–carbon nanocomposites as high-capacity cathodes for sodium-ion batteries

New organic cathodes to replace inorganic materials for the capacity enhancement of sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are highly desirable. In this research, we described the investigation of pillar[5]quinone (P5Q), which we determined to have a theoretical capacity of 446 mAh g-1, a value that makes it a very promising candidate as a cathode in rechargeable batteries. Inspired by this value, P5Q was encapsulated into CMK-3 to form a composite, and then integrated with sin-gle-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) to generate a film that was used as the cathode in SIBs. The as-assembled SIBs showed an initial capacity up to 418 mAh g-1and maintained 290 mAh g-1after 300 cycles at 0.1 C. Even at 1 C, the capaci-ty could still reach 201 mAh g-1.Ministry of Education (MOE)This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21875206, 21403187), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2015T80229) in Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), Nankai University. Q.Z. acknowledges financial support from AcRF Tier 1 (RG 111/17, RG 2/17, RG 114/16, RG 113/18) and Tier 2 (MOE 2017-T2-1-021 and MOE 2018-T2-1-070), Singapore. Q.Z. also thanks the funding support from State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, Jilin University, P. R. China (sklssm2019036)

A tyrosine-based nanosensor for rapid sensitive detection of copper (II) ions

Most of the chromophores of fluorescent peptides contain aromatic amino acids with conjugated double bonds, among which tyrosine (Y) has become the focus of researches due to its unique physicochemical (optical, redox, and metal chelation) properties. However, there are few studies on the self-assembly and polymerisation of single. This study shows that the phenol group of Y can be oxidized into benzoquinone group in alkaline conditions and then undergoes polymerisation and further self-assembles into nanoparticles (NPs). The product of pYoxNPs have a strong fluorescence emission peak at 463 nm, and Cu2+ can spontaneously bind to it and dramatically quench their fluorescence. Based on these findings, we developed a rapid, sensitive and specific nanosensor for detecting Cu2+. When the concentration of Cu2+ is within the range of 40 μM - 1 mM, we can obtain a good linear correlation between the fluorescence intensity of pYoxNPs and the concentration of copper ions, and the limit of detection (LOD) is determined to 37.26 μM. In comparison to other modern methods for sensing Cu2+, this method has advantages of simplicity of material synthesis, low cost, robust and rapid in sensing reaction, so we envision a good prospect for Cu2+ detection applications in both bulk and harsh environments

Construction of N-doped C@MoS2 heteroshell with the yolk of Sn nanoparticles as high-performance anodes for sodium-ion batteries

Herein, we demonstrate the reasonable design and preparation of yolk-heteroshell Sn@N-doped C@MoS2 nanospheres as anode materials in sodium-ion battery. Through an effective multi-step strategy, Sn nanoparticles are encapsulated in N-doped C nanocage surrounded by ultra-thin MoS2 nanosheets to form Sn@N-doped C@MoS2 nanospheres. In this novel structure, Sn nanoparticles with high theoretical capacity improve the space utilization inside the heteroshell; the N-doped carbon nanocage as the skeleton not only inhibits the mutual accumulation of Sn and MoS2, but also improves conductivity; the outer MoS2 ultra-thin sheets can consolidate C@MoS2 heteroshell, provide numerous active sites and favor the fast diffusion of Na+/e(-). Notably, the combination of carbon nanocage and MoS2 sheets in the yolk-heteroshell structure can effectually buffer the volume expansion of Sn nanoyolks and reinforce C@MoS2 heteroshell while reducing the carbon content. Therefore, the yolk-heteroshell structure plays a crucial role in enhanced reversible capacity and cyclic stability of Sn@N-doped C@MoS2 nanospheres, which activates their sodium storage potential. The yolk-heteroshell Sn@N-doped C@MoS2 nanospheres exhibit high reversible capacity of 488.4 mAh g(-1) at 0.1 A g(-1) after 300 cycles and long-cycle stability of 350.6 mAh g(-1) at 0.5 A g(-1) after 500 cycles. Moreover, their full cell delivers a stable reversible discharge capacity of about 80.1 mAh g(-1) after 30 cycles at 0.5 C. This work provides a feasible yolk-heteroshell strategy for Sn-based composite nanomaterials. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Research on low voltage ride through characteristics of distributed photovoltaic system

The model of distributed PV is constructed firstly, then the characteristics of distributed PV are studied and the electromechanical transient current equations are given. Using the actual PV grid-connected controller, a simulation system based on PSASP simulation platform is built. Through this system, the transient power characteristics of distributed PV during low voltage ride-through period are studied. Through theoretical analysis and experimental verification, the fault characteristics of distributed photovoltaic power supply are comprehensively expounded