Increased recruitment of endogenous stem cells and chondrogenic differentiation by a composite scaffold containing bone marrow homing peptide for cartilage regeneration

Even small cartilage defects could finally degenerate to osteoarthritis if left untreated, owing to the poor self-healing ability of articular cartilage. Stem cell transplantation has been well implemented as a common approach in cartilage tissue engineering but has technical complexity and safety concerns. The stem cell homing-based technique emerged as an alternative promising therapy for cartilage repair to overcome traditional limitations. In this study, we constructed a composite hydrogel scaffold by combining an oriented acellular cartilage matrix (ACM) with a bone marrow homing peptide (BMHP)-functionalized self-assembling peptide (SAP). We hypothesized that increased recruitment of endogenous stem cells by the composite scaffold could enhance cartilage regeneration. Methods: To test our hypothesis, in vitro proliferation, attachment and chondrogenic differentiation of rabbit mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were tested to confirm the bioactivities of the functionalized peptide hydrogel. The composite scaffold was then implanted into full-thickness cartilage defects on rabbit knee joints for cartilage repair, in comparison with microfracture or other sample groups. Stem cell recruitment was monitored by dual labeling with CD29 and CD90 under confocal microcopy at 1 week after implantation, followed by chondrogenic differentiation examined by qRT-PCR. Repaired tissue of the cartilage defects was evaluated by histological and immunohistochemistry staining, microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 3 and 6 months post-surgery. Macroscopic and histological scoring was done to evaluate the optimal in vivo repair outcomes of this composite scaffold. Results: The functionalized SAP hydrogels could stimulate rabbit MSC proliferation, attachment and chondrogenic differentiation during in vitro culture. At 7 days after implantation, increased recruitment of MSCs based on CD29(+)/CD90(+) double-positive cells was found in vivo in the composite hydrogel scaffold, as well as upregulation of cartilage-associated genes (aggrecan, Sox9 and type II collagen). After 3 and 6 months post-surgery, the articular cartilage defect in the composite scaffold-treated group was fully covered with cartilage-like tissue with a smooth surface, which was similar to the surrounding native cartilage, according to the results of histological and immunohistochemistry staining, micro-CT and MRI analysis. Macroscopic and histological scoring confirmed that the quality of cartilage repair was significantly improved with implantation of the composite scaffold at each timepoint, in comparison with microfracture or other sample groups. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated that the composite scaffold could enhance endogenous stem cell homing and chondrogenic differentiation and significantly improve the therapeutic outcome of chondral defects. The present study provides a promising approach for in vivo cartilage repair without cell transplantation. Optimization of this strategy may offer great potential and benefits for clinical application in the future

The large area detector onboard the eXTP mission

The Large Area Detector (LAD) is the high-throughput, spectral-timing instrument onboard the eXTP mission, a flagship mission of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China National Space Administration, with a large European participation coordinated by Italy and Spain. The eXTP mission is currently performing its phase B study, with a target launch at the end-2027. The eXTP scientific payload includes four instruments (SFA, PFA, LAD and WFM) offering unprecedented simultaneous wide-band X-ray timing and polarimetry sensitivity. The LAD instrument is based on the design originally proposed for the LOFT mission. It envisages a deployed 3.2 m2 effective area in the 2-30 keV energy range, achieved through the technology of the large-area Silicon Drift Detectors - offering a spectral resolution of up to 200 eV FWHM at 6 keV - and of capillary plate collimators - limiting the field of view to about 1 degree. In this paper we will provide an overview of the LAD instrument design, its current status of development and anticipated performance

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Construction and application of urban water system connectivity evaluation index system based on PSR-AHP-Fuzzy evaluation method coupling

The connectivity of urban water systems can enhance the connectivity of regional rivers, lakes, and water systems, which can improve the regional water environment and water ecology to a certain extent, and enhance the water disaster prevention capability. To scientifically evaluate the effect of water system connectivity in the comprehensive urban water system management project. In this study, a regional waterlogging model based on the coupling of ArcGis and SWMM is established. At the same time, the evaluation index system of water system connectivity effect of regional town water system comprehensive management project was constructed regarding PSR (“Pressure-Status-Response”) theory with structural connectivity, hydraulic connectivity and ecological and environmental improvement as the criteria, and the fuzzy evaluation method was used for analysis and evaluation. The results show that the improvement in the water environment is obvious after the water system is connected. The total length and area of rivers in the study area increased by 68.98% and 57.51%, respectively. River network density increased from 0.66 km/km2 to 0.69 km/km2, an increase of 4.55%; the regional water surface rate increased from 2.22% to 3.51%, an increase of 58.11%; the river frequency increased from 0.15/km2 to 0.29/km2, an increase of 93.33%. The water exchange capacity increased by 37.5% and the flow rate increased by 30%. All water systems have a better degree of connectivity and a better structure of river network water system. The decay rate of point source pollution increased by 40.61%, the water quality of rivers reached V standard, and the area covered by green areas increased to 32.29%. The evaluation grade of hydraulic characteristics and ecological environment indexes was “excellent”. The total evaluation set D=[0.5417,0.0791,0.2125,0] for the effect of water system connection in the study area. According to the principle of maximum affiliation, the improvement effect of the water system connection project in the study area is “excellent”

Forecasting of runoff in the lower Yellow River based on the CEEMDAN–ARIMA model

Runoff is one of the important hydrological variables of rivers, and its accurate prediction can provide a reliable basis for water resources system characterization and efficient utilization. In this paper, based on the advantages that the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN) model can effectively overcome modal mixing and white noise interference, and the Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model can effectively overcome gradient disappearance and other problems, the coupled CEEMDAN–ARIMA prediction model is established, and the CEEMDAN–ARIMA model is used in the runoff prediction of the Lijin hydrological station in the lower Yellow River. The results show that the coupled CEEMDAN–ARIMA model has an R2 of 0.9398 and a Nash efficiency coefficient (NSE) of 0.918, with a prediction accuracy of Grade A. This shows that the CEEMDAN–ARIMA model has the ability to handle complex information in hydrological factor simulations, providing a new method for non-linear, non-stationary runoff prediction that has broad application prospects. HIGHLIGHTS A novel prediction model with the CEEMDAN–ARIMA method is proposed.; The highest point of the cumulative distance horizon is used as the dividing point between the training data and the predicted data.; The use of CEEMDAN to preprocess the data can effectively reduce the non-smoothness of the time series.; The prediction accuracy of the CEEMDAN–ARIMA model is better than NAR, ARIMA, and CEEMD–ARIMA models.

Iterative Learning-Based Negative Effect Compensation Control of Disturbance to Improve the Disturbance Isolation of System

At present, the cogging torque of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) seriously limits the Los pointing accuracy of aviation photoelectric stabilization platforms based on PMSM, which also restricts the requirements of ultra-long-distance and high-precision aviation reconnaissance and detection. For this problem, an off-line iterative learning control (ILC) was designed, and on this basis, a control method of negative effect compensation of disturbance (NECOD) is proposed. Firstly, the “dominant disturbance torque” in the system, that is, the cogging torque with the characteristics of position periodicity, was suppressed by off-line ILC according to different positions. Then, for the “residual disturbance” after compensation, NECOD was used to suppress it. In the constant speed scanning experiment of the aviation photoelectric stabilization platform, the method of combining the off-line iterative learning controller and the negative effect compensation of disturbance (NECOD + ILC) proposed in this paper significantly improved the Los control accuracy of the platform when compared with the classical active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) and ADRC + ILC methods, and the Los pointing error of the constant speed scanning process had only increased by less than 5% when the system had ±15% parameter perturbation. In addition, NECOD + ILC has fewer parameters and is easy to adjust, which is conducive to engineering application and promotion

Adaptive Decision Making at the Intersection for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Skill Discovery

In urban environments, the complex and uncertain intersection scenarios are challenging for autonomous driving. To ensure safety, it is crucial to develop an adaptive decision making system that can handle the interaction with other vehicles. Manually designed model-based methods are reliable in common scenarios. But in uncertain environments, they are not reliable, so learning-based methods are proposed, especially reinforcement learning (RL) methods. However, current RL methods need retraining when the scenarios change. In other words, current RL methods cannot reuse accumulated knowledge. They forget learned knowledge when new scenarios are given. To solve this problem, we propose a hierarchical framework that can autonomously accumulate and reuse knowledge. The proposed method combines the idea of motion primitives (MPs) with hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL). It decomposes complex problems into multiple basic subtasks to reduce the difficulty. The proposed method and other baseline methods are tested in a challenging intersection scenario based on the CARLA simulator. The intersection scenario contains three different subtasks that can reflect the complexity and uncertainty of real traffic flow. After offline learning and testing, the proposed method is proved to have the best performance among all methods.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and Plannin