Macrophage inhibits the osteogenesis of fibroblasts in ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) wear particle-induced osteolysis

Background In the ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) prosthetic environment, fibroblasts affected by wear particles have the capacity of osteogenesis to reduce osteolysis. We aimed to assess the effects of macrophages on the osteogenic capability of fibroblasts treated with UHMWPE wear particles. Methods The effect of different concentrations of UHMWPE (0, 0.01, 0.1, and 1 mg/ml, respectively) on macrophage proliferation were validated by MTT assay to determine the optimum one. The fibroblasts viability was further determined in the co-culture system of UHMWPE particles and macrophage supernatants. The experiment was designed as seven groups: (A) fibroblasts only; (B) fibroblasts + 1 mg/ml UHMWPE particles; and (C1–C5) fibroblasts + 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, and 1/1 supernatants of macrophage cultures stimulated by 1 mg/ml UHMWPE particles vs. fibroblast complete media, respectively. Alizarin red staining was used to detect calcium accumulation. The expression levels of osteogenic proteins were detected by Western blot and ELISA, including alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and osteocalcin (OCN). Results The concentration of 0.1 mg/ml was considered as the optimum concentration for macrophage proliferation due to the survival rate and was highest among the four concentrations. Fibroblast viability was better in the group of fibroblasts + 1/16 ratio of macrophage supernatants stimulated by 1 mg/ml of UHMWPE particles than the other groups (1:8, 1:4, 1:2, 1:1). ALP and OCN expressions were significantly decreased in the group of fibroblasts + 1/4, 1/2, and 1/1 supernatants stimulated by 1 mg/ml of UHMWPE particles compared with other groups (1/8, 1/16) and the group of fibroblasts + 1 mg/ml UHMWPE (p < 0.5). Conclusions Macrophages are potentially involved in the periprosthetic osteolysis by reducing the osteogenic capability of fibroblasts treated with wear particles generated from UHMWPE materials in total hip arthroplasty.China Sholarship Council (Grant 201506370173)China. National Natural Science Foundation (Grant 31200739)China. National Natural Science Foundation (Grant 31470948

Inducing lasing in organic materials with low optical gain by three-dimensional plasmonic nanocavity arrays

Lasing in organic media with very low gain has been pursued for a long time in optoelectronics. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that plasmonic lasing in the visible regime at room temperature can be achieved by hybridizing active media of very low optical gain such as ionic liquid and polymethylmethacrylate with three-dimensional (3D) plasmonic metamaterials. The 3D nanostructure consists of a double-layer N-shaped silver wire-hole array with strongly coupled multiple hot spots densely packed in each unit cell. These hot spots overlap perfectly with the gain media, allowing efficient gain-plasmon coupling in subwavelength volumes. The periodic arrangement of hot spots, as the metal and dielectric are distributed in an alternate manner along both transverse and vertical directions, results in ultrastrong suppression of scattering losses. In addition, the lasing characteristics, including threshold, intensity and polarization can be controlled by the lattice constant and geometry of metamaterials. Such a plasmonic nanolaser proves to be of low threshold and low gain requirement, providing an essential step towards easy-processing organic based optoelectronics. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreemen

IDLS: Inverse Depth Line based Visual-Inertial SLAM

For robust visual-inertial SLAM in perceptually-challenging indoor environments,recent studies exploit line features to extract descriptive information about scene structure to deal with the degeneracy of point features. But existing point-line-based SLAM methods mainly use Pl\"ucker matrix or orthogonal representation to represent a line, which needs to calculate at least four variables to determine a line. Given the numerous line features to determine in each frame, the overly flexible line representation increases the computation burden and comprises the accuracy of the results. In this paper, we propose inverse depth representation for a line, which models each extracted line feature using only two variables, i.e., the inverse depths of the two ending points. It exploits the fact that the projected line's pixel coordinates on the image plane are rather accurate, which partially restrict the line. Using this compact line presentation, Inverse Depth Line SLAM (IDLS) is proposed to track the line features in SLAM in an accurate and efficient way. A robust line triangulation method and a novel line re-projection error model are introduced. And a two-step optimization method is proposed to firstly determine the lines and then to estimate the camera poses in each frame. IDLS is extensively evaluated in multiple perceptually-challenging datasets. The results show it is more accurate, robust, and needs lower computational overhead than the current state-of-the-art of point-line-based SLAM methods

Knowledge-Assisted Dual-Stage Evolutionary Optimization of Large-Scale Crude Oil Scheduling

With the scaling up of crude oil scheduling in modern refineries, large-scale crude oil scheduling problems (LSCOSPs) emerge with thousands of binary variables and non-linear constraints, which are challenging to be optimized by traditional optimization methods. To solve LSCOSPs, we take the practical crude oil scheduling from a marine-access refinery as an example and start with modeling LSCOSPs from crude unloading, transportation, crude distillation unit processing, and inventory management of intermediate products. On the basis of the proposed model, a dual-stage evolutionary algorithm driven by heuristic rules (denoted by DSEA/HR) is developed, where the dual-stage search mechanism consists of global search and local refinement. In the global search stage, we devise several heuristic rules based on the empirical operating knowledge to generate a well-performing initial population and accelerate convergence in the mixed variables space. In the local refinement stage, a repair strategy is proposed to move the infeasible solutions towards feasible regions by further optimizing the local continuous variables. During the whole evolutionary process, the proposed dual-stage framework plays a crucial role in balancing exploration and exploitation. Experimental results have shown that DSEA/HR outperforms the state-of-the-art and widely-used mathematical programming methods and metaheuristic algorithms on LSCOSP instances within a reasonable time

Psychological mechanisms of English academic stress and academic burnout: the mediating role of rumination and moderating effect of neuroticism

IntroductionAcademic stress is a significant and prevalent phenomenon among college students. According to the Demands-Resources Model, when individuals are unable to cope with stress that exceeds their capacity, burnout may occur. Although English courses hold a significant position in university education, there has been limited research on the mechanisms linking English academic stress to English academic burnout.MethodsThis study recruited 1,130 undergraduate students taking English courses. Participants completed online questionnaires assessing English academic stress, rumination, English academic burnout, and neuroticism traits. A moderated mediation model was constructed to examine the relationship among these variables.ResultsThe results indicate that (1) Rumination serves as a mediator in the relationship between English academic stress and burnout; (2) neuroticism significantly moderates the pathway between English academic stress and rumination. Specifically, students with high neuroticism tendencies are more prone to developing rumination when faced with high levels of English academic stress.ConclusionThese findings offer valuable insights into the psychological mechanisms underlying the association between English learning stress and academic burnout. They emphasize the importance of addressing rumination as a mediator and considering individuals’ levels of neuroticism in interventions aimed at preventing and alleviating academic burnout among university students

Adsorption Properties and Mechanism of Cd2+ in Water by Zr-containing Silica Residue Purification

Zirconium (Zr)-containing silica residue purification (ZSR-P) discharged from industrial production of ZrOCl2 was used as an adsorbent, and CdCl2 solution was used as the simulated wastewater containing cadmium ions (Cd2+). The properties and mechanisms of ZSR-P absorbing Cd2+ were studied. The results showed that ZSR-P had a good effect on the adsorption and removal of Cd2+ in water. The adsorption time, initial concentration of Cd2+, and pH of the solution had a significant effect on the adsorption behavior, whilst the pH value had the greatest effect amongst them. Under optimal conditions, the amount of Cd2+ adsorbed by ZSR-P was 43.1 mg/g. The isothermal adsorption conformed to the Langmuir adsorption model, and the adsorption kinetics conformed to the secondary adsorption rate model. In ZSR-P-Cd, Cd2+ was uniformly distributed on the surface of SiO2 particles and in the pores formed by the accumulation of particles. Adsorption of Cd2+ by ZSR-P was achieved through the reaction between Si-OH on the surface of SiO2 and Cd2+ hydroxyl compounds

Effects of 1-MCP on the genes related to wax anabolism in pear peel based on transcriptomics

[Objective] According to the investigation and laboratory research of our study group for several years, it has been found that the main pear cultivar Yuluxiang was easy to become greasy in the early stage of shelf life at room temperature, and also in the middle and late stage of cold storage. Previous researchers have reported that the expression levels of genes related to wax anabolism in the peel and ethylene synthesis are related closely to the degree of oiliness in the peel. Moreover, the inhibitive effect of 1-MCP on ethylene release has been widely reported, and thus the regulation mode of 1-MCP on the wax synthesis and metabolism genes in pear peel during shelf life at room temperature was studied, which provided a theoretical basis for a preliminary exploration of the molecular mechanism of 1-MCP regulation of pear peel greasiness. [Methods] Yuluxiang pear was used as the experimental material, and fruits with uniform size and without pests, diseases and bumps were selected as experimental samples, which were fumigated with 1.0 μL·L-1 1-MCP for 24 h, and the untreated fruit was used as the control. Then, the appearance changes of the fruit were observed on the shelf at 20 ℃ for 14 days. At the same time, the fruit surface brightness L value was detected. RNA was extracted from frozen peel samples every 7 days for transcriptome sequencing and data analysis, and RT-qPCR technology was used to verify the significant difference genes. [Results] During the whole shelf life, the appearance quality of fruit treated with 1-MCP was better than that of the control. On the 14th day of shelf life, it could still maintain a better green fruit surface, and a lower L value of fruit surface brightness, and there was no greasy phenomenon on the fruit surface at this time. Through transcriptome sequencing and data analysis, a total of 103283229900 clean reads were obtained, and the data quality was high. The results of reference genome alignment showed that the sequencing data of the Yuluxiang fruit peel were well aligned with the pear reference genome. Compared with the control, there were 2463 differentially expressed genes up-regulated and 599 differentially expressed genes down-regulated in the 1-MCP group on the 7th day of shelf life. On the 14th day of shelf life, there were 786 differentially expressed genes up-regulated and 284 differentially expressed genes down-regulated in the 1-MCP group. The number of differentially expressed genes in two groups was the highest on the 7th day of shelf life, indicating that the difference between the two groups was large. Therefore, the significant differential genes of two groups of fruits on the 7th day of shelf life were enriched into the lipid metabolism pathway through KEGG, a total of 95 significant differential genes, and 13 secondary lipid metabolism pathways were enriched into this pathway. The secondary metabolic pathways directly related to wax biosynthesis were biosynthesis of cutin, suberine, wax, fatty acid elongation, fatty acid biosynthesis and fatty acid degradation. In this study, a total of 7 significantly different genes (PyKCS1, PyKCS20, PyKCR1, PyPLDALPHA4, Py-LACS9, PyFAD2 and PyCER1) were enriched in lipid metabolism pathways, which were involved in lipid secondary metabolic pathways such as fatty acid extension, synthesis and degradation, and PyKCS20, PyKCR1, PyPLDALPHA4, PyLACS9, PyFAD2 and PyCER1 were down-regulated and PyKCS1 was up-regulated in the 1-MCP-treated group. The results of RT-qPCR showed that 1-MCP treatment significantly inhibited the up-regulated expression of PyLACS9, PyKCS20 and PyCER1 genes during the whole shelf life, and inhibited the up-regulated expression of PyPLDALPHA4 and PyFAD2 genes in the first 7 days of shelf life, which verified the regulation of 1-MCP on the expression pattern of wax anabolism genes in the peel of Yuluxiang pear. The results of correlation analysis showed that PyLACS9 was significantly and positively correlated with the L value of fruit surface brightness (p < 0.05), and the L value was strongly positively correlated with PyKCS20, strongly negatively correlated with PyPLDALPHA4 and PyACS-1, negatively correlated with PyKCS1, and weakly correlated with PyKCR1, PyCER1 and PyACO2, but not significantly (p≥0.05). In addition, the correlation between different differential genes showed that LACS9 was strongly negatively correlated with PyACS-1, PyKCR1 and PyCER1 were strongly positively correlated with PyACO2, PyPLDALPHA4 was strongly positively correlated with PyACS-1, PyFAD2 was strongly positively correlated with PyACO2 and PyACS-1, and they were not significant (p≥0.05), so it was speculated that PyLACS9 may be the key gene leading to the greasiness of Yuluxiang fruit peel. [Conclusion] In summary, 1-MCP treatment could maintain the good appearance quality and low L value of Yuluxiang fruit during shelf life at room temperature, which may affect the greasiness of peel by affecting the expression level of wax anabolism genes in Yuluxiang fruit peel. Exploring the regulatory effect of 1-MCP on the waxy synthesis and metabolism genes in the peel of Yuluxiang pear during shelf life provides a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of post-harvest greasiness of pear fruit

miR‐155 promotes macrophage pyroptosis induced by Porphyromonas gingivalis through regulating the NLRP3 inflammasome

ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to detect pyroptosis in macrophages stimulated with Porphyromonas gingivalis and elucidate the mechanism by which P. gingivalis induces pyroptosis in macrophages.MethodsThe immortalized human monocyte cell line U937 was stimulated with P. gingivalis W83. Flow cytometry was carried out to detect pyroptosis in macrophages. The expression of miR‐155 was detected by real‐time PCR and inhibited using RNAi. Suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) 1, cleaved GSDMD, caspase (CAS)‐1, caspase‐11, apoptosis‐associated speck‐like protein (ASC), and NOD‐like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) were detected by Western blotting, and IL‐1β and IL‐18 were detected by ELISA.ResultsThe rate of pyroptosis in macrophages and the expression of miR‐155 increased upon stimulation with P. gingivalis and pyroptosis rate decreased when miR‐155 was silenced. GSDMD‐NT, CAS‐11, CAS‐1, ASC, NLRP3, IL‐1β, and IL‐18 levels increased, but SOCS1 decreased in U937 cells after stimulated with P. gingivalis. These changes were weakened in P. gingivalis‐stimulated U937 macrophages transfected with lentiviruses carrying miR‐155 shRNA compared to those transfected with non‐targeting control sequence. However, there was no significant difference in ASC expression between P. gingivalis‐stimulated shCont and shMiR‐155 cells.ConclusionsPorphyromonas gingivalis promotes pyroptosis in macrophages during early infection. miR‐155 is involved in this process through regulating the NLRP3 inflammasome.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152887/1/odi13198_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152887/2/odi13198.pd

Different evasion strategies in multiple myeloma

Multiple myeloma is the second most common malignant hematologic malignancy which evolved different strategies for immune escape from the host immune surveillance and drug resistance, including uncontrolled proliferation of malignant plasma cells in the bone marrow, genetic mutations, or deletion of tumor antigens to escape from special targets and so. Therefore, it is a big challenge to efficiently treat multiple myeloma patients. Despite recent applications of immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDS), protease inhibitors (PI), targeted monoclonal antibodies (mAb), and even hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), it remains hardly curable. Summarizing the possible evasion strategies can help design specific drugs for multiple myeloma treatment. This review aims to provide an integrative overview of the intrinsic and extrinsic evasion mechanisms as well as recently discovered microbiota utilized by multiple myeloma for immune evasion and drug resistance, hopefully providing a theoretical basis for the rational design of specific immunotherapies or drug combinations to prevent the uncontrolled proliferation of MM, overcome drug resistance and improve patient survival

Tele-supervised home-based transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) for Alzheimer's disease : a pilot study

Over 55 million people worldwide are currently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and live with debilitating episodic memory deficits. Current pharmacological treatments have limited efficacy. Recently, transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has shown memory improvement in AD by normalizing high-frequency neuronal activity. Here we investigate the feasibility, safety, and preliminary effects on episodic memory of an innovative protocol where tACS is administered within the homes of older adults with AD with the help of a study companion (HB-tACS). Eight participants diagnosed with AD underwent multiple consecutive sessions of high-definition HB-tACS (40 Hz, 20-min) targeting the left angular gyrus (AG), a key node of the memory network. The Acute Phase comprised 14-weeks of HB-tACS with at least five sessions per week. Three participants underwent resting state electroencephalography (EEG) before and after the 14-week Acute Phase. Subsequently, participants completed a 2-3-month Hiatus Phase not receiving HB-tACS. Finally, in the Taper phase, participants received 2-3 sessions per week over 3-months. Primary outcomes were safety, as determined by the reporting of side effects and adverse events, and feasibility, as determined by adherence and compliance with the study protocol. Primary clinical outcomes were memory and global cognition, measured with the Memory Index Score (MIS) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), respectively. Secondary outcome was EEG theta/gamma ratio. Results reported as mean ± SD. All participants completed the study, with an average of 97 HB-tACS sessions completed by each participant; reporting mild side effects during 25% of sessions, moderate during 5%, and severe during 1%. Acute Phase adherence was 98 ± 6.8% and Taper phase was 125 ± 22.3% (rates over 100% indicates participants completed more than the minimum of 2/week). After the Acute Phase, all participants showed memory improvement, MIS of 7.25 ± 3.77, sustained during Hiatus 7.00 ± 4.90 and Taper 4.63 ± 2.39 Phases compared to baseline. For the three participants that underwent EEG, a decreased theta/gamma ratio in AG was observed. Conversely, participants did not show improvement in the MoCA, 1.13 ± 3.80 after the Acute Phase, and there was a modest decrease during the Hiatus −0.64 ± 3.28 and Taper −2.56 ± 5.03 Phases. This pilot study shows that the home-based, remotely-supervised, study companion administered, multi-channel tACS protocol for older adults with AD was feasible and safe. Further, targeting the left AG, memory in this sample was improved. These are preliminary results that warrant larger more definite trials to further elucidate tolerability and efficacy of the HB-tACS intervention. NCT04783350. , identifier NCT04783350