Aging-associated Alteration in the Cardiac MIF-AMPK Cascade in Response to Ischemic Stress

An important role for a macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF)-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) signaling pathway in ameliorating myocardial damage following ischemia/reperfusion has been described. An aging-associated reduction in AMPK activity may be associated with a decline in the ability of cardiac cells to activate the MIF-AMPK cascade, thereby resulting in reduced tolerance to ischemic insults. To test this hypothesis, _in vivo_ regional ischemia was induced by occlusion of the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery in young (4-6 months) and aged (24-26 months) mice. The ischemic AMPK activation response was impaired in aged hearts compared to young ones (p<0.01). Notably, cardiac MIF expression in aged hearts was lower than in young hearts (p<0.01). Dual staining data clearly demonstrated larger infarct size in aged hearts following ischemia and reperfusion compared to young hearts (p<0.05). Ischemia-induced AMPK activation in MIF knock out (MIF KO) hearts was blunted, leading to greater contractile dysfunction of MIF KO cardiomyocytes during hypoxia than that of wild type (WT) cardiomyocytes. Finally exogenous recombinant MIF significantly reversed the contractile dysfunction of aged cardiomyocytes in response to hypoxia. We conclude that an aging-associated reduction in ischemic AMPK activation contributes to ischemic intolerance in aged hearts

A Generic Bamboo-Based Carbothermal Method for Preparing Carbide (SiC, B\u3csub\u3e4\u3c/sub\u3eC, TiC, TaC, NbC, Ti\u3csub\u3ex\u3c/sub\u3eNb\u3csub\u3e1-x\u3c/sub\u3eC, and Ta\u3csub\u3ex\u3c/sub\u3e Nb\u3csub\u3e1-x\u3c/sub\u3eC) Nanowires

Finding a general procedure to produce a whole class of materials in a similar way is a desired goal of materials chemistry. In this work, we report a new bamboo-based carbothermal method to prepare nanowires of covalent carbides (SiC and B4C) and interstitial carbides (TiC, TaC, NbC, TixNb1−xC, and TaxNb1−xC). The use of natural nanoporous bamboo as both the renewable carbon source and the template for the formation of catalyst particles greatly simplifies the synthesis process. Based on the structural, morphological and elemental analysis, volatileoxides or halides assisted vapour–liquid–solid growth mechanism was proposed. This bamboo based carbothermal method can be generalized to other carbide systems, providing a general, one-pot, convenient, low-cost, nontoxic, mass production, and innovative strategy for the synthesis of carbide nanostructures

Performance enhancement of permeable asphalt mixtures with recycled aggregate for concrete pavement application

The incorporation of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) in permeable asphalt mixtures (PAMs) is an efficient method of utilizing construction demolished waste. It not only conforms to the trend of building sponge cities, but also alleviates the problem of overexploitation of natural aggregate resources. As the performance of PAM containing recycled aggregate is not comparable to natural aggregate, modification treatments and the addition of hybrid fibers are adopted as two enhancement methods to improve the performance of PAM with RAC in this study. It is found that replacing natural aggregate with recycled aggregate increases the optimum asphalt content (OAC) but decreases the residual stability. The OAC is increased by 45% when the RCA ratio is 100%, whereas applying silicone resin can give a 16.2% decrease in the OAC. Enhancing RCA with silicone resin can increase the water stability to be comparable with natural aggregate. Moreover, with modification treatment using calcium hydroxide solution, the mechanical strength of PAM is enhanced to even higher than that of natural coarse aggregate mixture alone. Improvements in both mechanical strength and water stability are also achieved by strengthening recycled aggregate with cement slurry, although the performance is less effective than using silicone resin. With the increase in the content of RCA, the permeability coefficients of PAM first decrease and then exhibit an increasing trend. The results indicate that the PAM with RCA and modification treatments can perform satisfactorily as a pavement material in practice. Applying probable modification, PAM incorporating RCA meets the criteria for use in concrete pavement applications

Dysfunctional gut microbiota and relative co-abundance network in infantile eczema

Additional file 1. The representative sequences of OTUs in 33 infants

Acute Colonic Pseudo-Obstruction with Feeding Intolerance in Critically Ill Patients: A Study according to Gut Wall Analysis

Objective. To compare the differences between acute colonic pseudo-obstruction (ACPO) with and without acute gut wall thickening. Methods. ACPO patients with feeding tolerance were divided into ACPO with no obvious gut wall thickening (ACPO-NT) group and ACPO with obvious acute gut wall thickening (ACPO-T) group according to computed tomography and abdominal radiographs. Patients’ condition, responses to supportive measures, pharmacologic therapy, endoscopic decompression, and surgeries and outcomes were compared. Results. Patients in ACPO-T group had a significantly higher APACHE II (11.82 versus 8.25, p=0.008) and SOFA scores (6.47 versus 3.54, p<0.001) and a significantly higher 28-day mortality (17.78% versus 4.16%, p=0.032) and longer intensive care unit stage (4 versus 16 d, p<0.001). Patients in ACPO-NT group were more likely to be responsive to supportive treatment (62.50% versus 24.44%, p<0.001), neostigmine (77.78% versus 17.64%, p<0.001), and colonoscopic decompression (75% versus 42.86%, p=0.318) than those in ACPO-T group. Of the patients who underwent ileostomy, 81.25% gained benefits. Conclusions. ACPO patients with gut wall thickening are more severe and are less likely to be responsive to nonsurgical treatment. Ileostomy may be a good option for ACPO patients with gut wall thickening who are irresponsive to nonsurgical treatment

AI-assisted system improves the work efficiency of cytologists via excluding cytology-negative slides and accelerating the slide interpretation

Given the shortage of cytologists, women in low-resource regions had inequitable access to cervical cytology which plays an pivotal role in cervical cancer screening. Emerging studies indicated the potential of AI-assisted system in promoting the implementation of cytology in resource-limited settings. However, there is a deficiency in evaluating the aid of AI in the improvement of cytologists’ work efficiency. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of AI in excluding cytology-negative slides and improve the efficiency of slide interpretation. Well-annotated slides were included to develop the classification model that was applied to classify slides in the validation group. Nearly 70% of validation slides were reported as negative by the AI system, and none of these slides were diagnosed as high-grade lesions by expert cytologists. With the aid of AI system, the average of interpretation time for each slide decreased from 3 minutes to 30 seconds. These findings suggested the potential of AI-assisted system in accelerating slide interpretation in the large-scale cervical cancer screening

A–D–A'–D–A type nonfused ring electron acceptors for efficient organic solar cells via synergistic molecular packing and orientation control

Nonfused ring electron acceptors (NFREAs) are promising candidates for future commercialization of organic solar cells (OSCs) due to their simple synthesis. Still, the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of NFREA-based OSCs have large room for improvement. In this work, by merging end group halogenation and side chain engineering, we developed four A–D–A'–D–A type NFREAs, which we refer to as EH-4F, C4-4F, EH-4Cl, and C4-4Cl. Single crystal X-ray diffraction revealed that multiple intermolecular S···F interactions between cyclopentadithiophene and 5,6-difluoro-3-(dicyanomethylene)indanone could cause an unfavorable dimer formation, leading to ineffective π–π stackings in EH-4F and C4-4F, whereas no such dimer was found in EH-4Cl and C4-4Cl after replacing with 5,6-dichloro-3-(dicyanomethylene)indanone. Moreover, although the shorter n-butyl side chain resulted in a closer molecular packing in C4-4Cl, EH-4Cl (2-ethylhexyl substitution) with proper crystallinity exhibited enhanced face-on orientation in thin film, which is favorable for vertical charge transport and further reducing charge recombination. As a result, a PCE of 13.0% is obtained for EH-4Cl-based OSC with a fill factor of 0.70. This work highlights the importance of molecular packing and orientation control toward future high-performance A–D–A'–D–A type NFREAs.</p

Alterations of Gut Microbiota in Cholestatic Infants and Their Correlation With Hepatic Function

Cholestasis is a major hepatic disease in infants, with increasing morbidity in recent years. Accumulating evidence has revealed that the gut microbiota (GM) is associated with liver diseases, such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. However, GM alterations in cholestatic infants and the correlation between the GM and hepatic functions remain uninvestigated. In this study, 43 cholestatic infants (IC group) and 37 healthy infants (H group) were enrolled to detect GM discrepancies using 16S rDNA analysis. The diversity in the bacterial community was significantly lower in the IC group than that in the H group (P = 0.013). After determining the top 10 abundant genera of microbes in the IC and H groups, we found that 13 of them were differentially enriched, including Bifidobacterium, Bacteroides, Streptococcus, Enterococcus, and Staphylococcus. As compared with the H group, the IC group had a more complex GM co-occurrence network featured by three core nodes: Phyllobacterium, Ruminococcus, and Anaerostipes. In addition, the positive correlation between Faecalibacterium and Erysipelatoclostridium (r = 0.689, P = 0.000, FDR = 0.009) was not observed in the IC patients. Using the GM composition, the cholestatic patients can be distinguished from healthy infants with high accuracy [areas under receiver operating curve (AUC) &gt; 0.97], wherein Rothia, Eggerthella, Phyllobacterium, and Blautia are identified as valuable biomarkers. Using KEGG annotation, we identified 32 functional categories with significant difference in enrichment of the GM of IC patients, including IC-enriched functional categories that were related to lipid metabolism, biodegradation and metabolism of xenobiotics, and various diseases. In contrast, the number of functions associated with amino acid metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, and vitamins metabolism was reduced in the IC patients. We also identified significant correlation between GM composition and indicators of hepatic function. Megasphaera positively correlated with total bilirubin (r = 0.455, P = 0.002) and direct bilirubin (r = 0.441, P = 0.003), whereas γ-glutamyl transpeptidase was positively associated with Parasutterella (r = 0.466, P = 0.002) and negatively related to Streptococcus (r = -0.450, P = 0.003). This study describes the GM characteristics in the cholestatic infants, illustrates the association between the GM components and the hepatic function, and provides a solid theoretical basis for GM intervention for the treatment of infantile cholestasis

Overlapped tobacco shred image segmentation and area computation using an improved Mask RCNN network and COT algorithm

IntroductionThe classification of the four tobacco shred varieties, tobacco silk, cut stem, expanded tobacco silk, and reconstituted tobacco shred, and the subsequent determination of tobacco shred components, are the primary tasks involved in calculating the tobacco shred blending ratio. The identification accuracy and subsequent component area calculation error directly affect the composition determination and quality of the tobacco shred. However, tiny tobacco shreds have complex physical and morphological characteristics; in particular, there is substantial similarity between the expanded tobacco silk and tobacco silk varieties, and this complicates their classification. There must be a certain amount of overlap and stacking in the distribution of tobacco shreds on the actual tobacco quality inspection line. There are 24 types of overlap alone, not to mention the stacking phenomenon. Self-winding does not make it easier to distinguish such varieties from the overlapped types, posing significant difficulties for machine vision-based tobacco shred classification and component area calculation tasks.MethodsThis study focuses on two significant challenges associated with identifying various types of overlapping tobacco shreds and acquiring overlapping regions to calculate overlapping areas. It develops a new segmentation model for tobacco shred images based on an improved Mask region-based convolutional neural network (RCNN). Mask RCNN is used as the segmentation network’s mainframe. Convolutional network and feature pyramid network (FPN) in the backbone are replaced with Densenet121 and U-FPN, respectively. The size and aspect ratios of anchors parameters in region proposal network (RPN) are optimized. An algorithm for the area calculation of the overlapped tobacco shred region (COT) is also proposed, which is applied to overlapped tobacco shred mask images to obtain overlapped regions and calculate the overlapped area.ResultsThe experimental results showed that the final segmentation accuracy and recall rates are 89.1% and 73.2%, respectively. The average area detection rate of 24 overlapped tobacco shred samples increases from 81.2% to 90%, achieving high segmentation accuracy and overlapped area calculation accuracy.DiscussionThis study provides a new implementation method for the type identification and component area calculation of overlapped tobacco shreds and a new approach for other similar overlapped image segmentation tasks