Hydrogen sulfide, a cardioprotective agent in ischemic heart

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Position: reinforcement learning in dynamic treatment regimes needs critical reexamination

In the rapidly changing healthcare landscape, the implementation of offline reinforcement learning (RL) in dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) presents a mix of unprecedented opportunities and challenges. This position paper offers a critical examination of the current status of offline RL in the context of DTRs. We argue for a reassessment of applying RL in DTRs, citing concerns such as inconsistent and potentially inconclusive evaluation metrics, the absence of naive and supervised learning baselines, and the diverse choice of RL formulation in existing research. Through a case study with more than 17,000 evaluation experiments using a publicly available Sepsis dataset, we demonstrate that the performance of RL algorithms can significantly vary with changes in evaluation metrics and Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulations. Surprisingly, it is observed that in some instances, RL algorithms can be surpassed by random baselines subjected to policy evaluation methods and reward design. This calls for more careful policy evaluation and algorithm development in future DTR works. Additionally, we discussed potential enhancements toward more reliable development of RL-based dynamic treatment regimes and invited further discussion within the community. Code is available at https://github.com/GilesLuo/ReassessDTR

The fabrication of electrochemical geophone based on FPCB process technology

The subject of the studies presented in this paper is the fabrication of electrochemical geophone, especially the electrochemical transducer with symmetrical four-electrode cell by FPCB process technology. The geophone assembled by transducer, dumbbell-shaped tube, highly-flexible membranes, electrolyte solution and signal-amplification circuit, is calibrated using a standard vibration platform, and the results show a good consistency of each geophone parameters. Coupled with low cost, the electrochemical geophone by FPCB shows a good potential application prospect

Guanylate-binding protein 1 participates in cellular antiviral response to dengue virus

BACKGROUND: Dengue virus (DENV), the causative agent of human Dengue hemorrhagic fever, is a mosquito-borne virus found in tropical and sub-tropical regions around the world. Vaccines against DENV are currently unavailable. Guanylate-binding protein 1 (GBP1) is one of the Interferon (IFN) stimulated genes (ISGs) and has been shown important for host immune defense against various pathogens. However, the role of GBP1 during DENV infection remains unclarified. In this study, we evaluated the relevance of GBP1 to DENV infection in in vitro model. FINDINGS: Quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) and Western blot showed that the expression of mouse Gbp1 was dramatically upregulated in DENV-infected RAW264.7 cells. The intracellular DENV loads were significantly higher in Gbp1 silenced cells compared with controls. The expression levels of selective anti-viral cytokines were decreased in Gbp1 siRNA treated cells, while the transcription factor activity of NF-κB was impaired upon GBP1 silencing during infection. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggested that GBP1 plays an antiviral role during DENV infection

Dietary choline supplementation attenuated high-fat diet-induced inflammation through regulation of lipid metabolism and suppression of NFKB activation in juvenile black seabream (Acanthopagrus schlegelii)

The present study aimed to investigate whether dietary choline can regulate lipid metabolism and suppress NFκB activation and, consequently, attenuate inflammation induced by a high-fat diet in black sea bream (Acanthopagrus schlegelii). An 8-week feeding trial was conducted on fish with an initial weight of 8·16 ± 0·01 g. Five diets were formulated: control, low-fat diet (11 %); HFD, high-fat diet (17 %); and HFD supplemented with graded levels of choline (3, 6 or 12 g/kg) termed HFD + C1, HFD + C2 and HFD + C3, respectively. Dietary choline decreased lipid content in whole body and tissues. Highest TAG and cholesterol concentrations in serum and liver were recorded in fish fed the HFD. Similarly, compared with fish fed the HFD, dietary choline reduced vacuolar fat drops and ameliorated HFD-induced pathological changes in liver. Expression of genes of lipolysis pathways were up-regulated, and genes of lipogenesis down-regulated, by dietary choline compared with fish fed the HFD. Expression of nfκb and pro-inflammatory cytokines in liver and intestine was suppressed by choline supplementation, whereas expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines was promoted in fish fed choline-supplemented diets. In fish that received lipopolysaccharide to stimulate inflammatory responses, the expression of nfκb and pro-inflammatory cytokines in liver, intestine and kidney were all down-regulated by dietary choline compared with the HFD. Overall, the present study indicated that dietary choline had a lipid-lowering effect, which could protect the liver by regulating intrahepatic lipid metabolism, reducing lipid droplet accumulation and suppressing NFκB activation, consequently attenuating HFD-induced inflammation in A. schlegelii

Synthesis and Immobilization of Pt Nanoparticles on Amino-Functionalized Halloysite Nanotubes toward Highly Active Catalysts

A simple and effective method for the preparation of platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) grown on amino-functionalized halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) was developed. The nanostructures were synthesized through the functionalization of the HNTs, followed by an in situ approach to generate Pt NPs with diameter of approximately 1.5 nm within the entire HNTs. The synthesis process, composition and morphology of the nanostructures were characterized. The results suggest PtNPs/NH2-HNTs nanostructures with ultrafine PtNPs were successfully synthesized by green chemically-reducing H2PtCl6 without the use of surfactant. The nanostructures exhibit promising catalytic properties for reducing potassium hexacyanoferrate(III) to potassium hexacyanoferrate(II). The presented experiment for novel PtNPs/NH2-HNTs nanostructures is quite simple and environmentally benign, permitting it as a potential application in the future field of catalysts

Effect of Low-Temperature Plasma on Cell Wall Metabolism and Softening Characteristics of Xiaobai Apricot

Objective: To investigate the effect of dielectric barrier discharge cold plasma (DBD) treatment on the cell wall metabolism and softening characteristics of Xiaobai apricot during storage. Methods: Xinjiang-grown Xiaobai apricot fruits were treated with DBD for 40 s (voltage of 90 kV), and stored at 4 ℃ and 95% relative humidity for up to 42 days. The contents of cell wall components, cell wall metabolic enzyme activities, and quality indicators of apricot fruits were measured every seven days. Results: DBD treatment improved the quality of apricot, reduced the contents of malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide, and significantly inhibited cell wall-degrading enzymes. It also delayed the dissolution of pectin and the degradation of cellulose, and inhibited the migration and loss of water in apricot fruits. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that DBD treatment helped to maintain the cell wall structure, thus making it more uniform and complete. Conclusion: DBD treatment can effectively inhibit the activities of cell wall-degrading enzymes of apricot fruits during storage, thereby enhancing the cell wall structure and delaying fruit softening

DyVGRNN: DYnamic mixture variational graph recurrent neural networks

Although graph representation learning has been studied extensively in static graph settings, dynamic graphs are less investigated in this context. This paper proposes a novel integrated variational framework called DYnamic mixture Variational Graph Recurrent Neural Networks (DyVGRNN), which consists of extra latent random variables in structural and temporal modelling. Our proposed framework comprises an integration of Variational Graph Auto-Encoder (VGAE) and Graph Recurrent Neural Network (GRNN) by exploiting a novel attention mechanism. The Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and the VGAE framework are combined in DyVGRNN to model the multimodal nature of data, which enhances performance. To consider the significance of time steps, our proposed method incorporates an attention-based module. The experimental results demonstrate that our method greatly outperforms state-of-the-art dynamic graph representation learning methods in terms of link prediction and clustering

Continuous Synthesis of Ag/TiO 2

A facile and environmental friendly synthesis strategy based on pulsed laser ablation has been developed for potential mass production of Ag-loaded TiO2 (Ag/TiO2) nanoparticles. By sequentially irradiating titanium and silver target substrates, respectively, with the same 1064 nm 100 ns fiber laser, Ag/TiO2 particles can be fabricated. A postannealing process leads to the crystallization of TiO2 to anatase phase with high photocatalytic activity. The phase composition, microstructure, and surface state of the elaborated Ag/TiO2 are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques. The results suggest that the presence of silver clusters deposited on the surface of TiO2 nanoparticles. The nanostructure is formed through laser interaction with materials. Photocatalytic activity evaluation shows that silver clusters could significantly enhance the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 in degradation of methylene blue (MB) under UV light irradiation, which is attributed to the efficient electron traps by Ag clusters. Our developed Ag/TiO2 nanoparticles synthesized via a straightforward, continuous, and green pathway could have great potential applications in photocatalysis