A bibliometric profile of optogenetics: quantitative and qualitative analyses

IntroductionOptogenetics is a rapidly developing field combining optics and genetics, with promising applications in neuroscience and beyond. However, there is currently a lack of bibliometric analyses examining publications in this area.MethodPublications on optogenetics were gathered from the Web of Science Core Collection Database. A quantitative analysis was conducted to gain insights into the annual scientific output, and distribution of authors, journals, subject categories, countries, and institutions. Additionally, qualitative analysis, such as co-occurrence network analysis, thematic analysis, and theme evolution, were performed to identify the main areas and trends of optogenetics articles.ResultsA total of 6,824 publications were included for analysis. The number of articles has rapidly grown since 2010, with an annual growth rate of 52.82%. Deisseroth K, Boyden ES, and Hegemann P were the most prolific contributors to the field. The United States contributed the most articles (3,051 articles), followed by China (623 articles). A majority of optogenetics-related articles are published in high-quality journals, including NATURE, SCIENCE, and CELL. These articles mainly belong to four subjects: neurosciences, biochemistry and molecular biology, neuroimaging, and materials science. Co-occurrence keyword network analysis identified three clusters: optogenetic components and techniques, optogenetics and neural circuitry, optogenetics and disease.ConclusionThe results suggest that optogenetics research is flourishing, focusing on optogenetic techniques and their applications in neural circuitry exploration and disease intervention. Optogenetics is expected to remain a hot topic in various fields in the future

Heat Transfer Analysis of Passive Residual Heat Removal Heat Exchanger under Natural Convection Condition in Tank

Aiming at the heat transfer calculation of the Passive Residual Heat Removal Heat Exchanger (PRHR HX), experiments on the heat transfer of C-shaped tube immerged in a water tank were performed. Comparisons of different correlation in literatures with the experimental data were carried out. It can be concluded that the Dittus-Boelter correlation provides a best-estimate fit with the experimental results. The average error is about 0.35%. For the tube outside, the McAdams correlations for both horizontal and vertical regions are best-estimated. The average errors are about 0.55% for horizontal region and about 3.28% for vertical region. The tank mixing characteristics were also investigated in present work. It can be concluded that the tank fluid rose gradually which leads to a thermal stratification phenomenon

Upper urinary dilatation and treatment of 26 patients with diabetes insipidus: A single-center retrospective study

ObjectiveTo describe the urinary tract characteristics of diabetes insipidus (DI) patients with upper urinary tract dilatation (UUTD) using the video-urodynamic recordings (VUDS), UUTD and all urinary tract dysfunction (AUTD) systems, and to summarize the experience in the treatment of DI with UUTD.MethodsThis retrospective study analyzed clinical data from 26 patients with DI, including micturition diary, water deprivation tests, imaging data and management. The UUTD and AUTD systems were used to evaluate the urinary tract characteristics. All patients were required to undergo VUDS, neurophysiologic tests to confirm the presence of neurogenic bladder (NB).ResultsVUDS showed that the mean values for bladder capacity and bladder compliance were 575.0 ± 135.1 ml and 51.5 ± 33.6 cmH2O in DI patients, and 42.3% (11/26) had a post-void residual >100 ml. NB was present in 6 (23.1%) of 26 DI patients with UUTD, and enterocystoplasty was recommended for two patients with poor bladder capacity, compliance and renal impairment. For the 24 remaining patients, medication combined with individualized and appropriate bladder management, including intermittent catheterization, indwelling catheter and regular voiding, achieved satisfactory results. High serum creatinine decreased from 248.0 ± 115.8 μmoI/L to 177.4 ± 92.8 μmoI/L in 12 patients from a population with a median of 108.1 μmoI/L (IQR: 79.9-206.5 μmoI/L). Forty-four dilated ureters showed significant improvement in the UUTD grade, and the median grade of 52 UUTD ureters decreased from 3 to 2.ConclusionBladder distension, trabeculation and decreased or absent sensations were common features for DI patients with UUTD. Individualized therapy by medication combined with appropriate bladder management can improve UUTD and renal function in DI patients

Cases report: MRI findings of asymptomatically familial subependymal heterotopia with filamin A gene abnormality

Subependymal heterotopia (SEH) is a rare neuronal migration disorder consisting of gray matter nodules along the lateral ventricular walls and is often associated with other brain malformations. Despite most SEH cases showing epilepsy during their lifetimes, very few patients with asymptomatically familial SEH tend to cause misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis. We present four familial SEH cases without any positive symptoms and medical history, including two fetuses, who were diagnosed by MRI and confirmed by genetic testing with mutation of filamin A. This report emphasizes the role of MRI in the recognition of SEH at an early age of gestation and in asymptomatically familial SEH. MRI provides a fast, repeatable, reliable, and cheap choice for detecting and screening familial SEH

Stochastic Air-Fuel Ratio Control of Compressed Natural Gas Engines Using State Observer

In this paper, the air-fuel ratio regulation problem of compressed natural gas (CNG) engines considering stochastic L2 disturbance attenuation is researched. A state observer is designed to overcome the unmeasurability of the total air mass and total fuel mass in the cylinder, since the residual air and residual fuel that are included in the residual gas are unmeasured and the residual gas reflects stochasticity. With the proposed state observer, a stochastic robust air-fuel ratio regulator is proposed by using a CNG engine dynamic model to attenuate the uncertain cyclic fluctuation of the fresh air, and the augmented closed-loop system is mean-square stable. A validation of the proposed stochastic robust air-fuel ratio regulator is carried out by the numerical simulation of two working conditions. The accuracy control of the air-fuel ratio is realized by the proposed stochastic robust air-fuel ratio regulator, which in turn leads to an improvement in fuel economy and emission performance of the CNG engines

Comparison between diaphragmatic-navigated and self-navigated coronary magnetic resonance angiography at 3T in pediatric patients with congenital coronary artery anomalies

Background: Coronary magnetic resonance angiography (CMRA) is being increasingly used in pediatric patients with congenital coronary artery anomalies (CAAs). However, the data on the free-breathing self-navigation technique, which has the potential to simplify the acquisition plan with a high success rate at 3T, remain scarce. This study investigated the clinical application value of self-navigated (sNAV) CMRA at 3T in pediatric patients with suspected CAAs and compared it to conventional diaphragmatic-navigated (dNAV) CMRA. Methods: From April 2019 to March 2022, we enrolled 65 pediatric patients (38 males and 27 females; mean age 8.5±4.4 years) with suspected CAAs in this prospective study. All patients underwent both dNAV and sNAV sequences in random order with gradient recalled echo (GRE) sequence during free breathing, with 39 (20 males and 19 females; mean age 10.2±3.6 years) of them additionally undergoing coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) or invasive coronary angiography (ICA). We measured and compared the success rate, scan time, visual score of the 9 main coronary artery segments, vessel sharpness, and vessel length between the two sequences. The diagnostic accuracy was compared using CCTA or ICA as a reference. Results: The success rate of sNAV-CMRA (65/65, 100%) was higher than that of dNAV-CMRA (61/65, 93.8%) (P0.050). The visual score and vessel sharpness of the right coronary artery and left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) were significantly improved in dNAV-CMRA compared with sNAV-CMRA (all P values 0.050). Conclusions: Our findings demonstrated that both sNAV and dNAV in CMRA provide clinical application value in pediatric patients with CAAs and have similar diagnostic performance. Although the image quality of sNAV-CMRA is slightly inferior compared to that of dNAV-CMRA, sNAV-CMRA allows for a simpler scanning procedure

Analysis on WeChat-Based Blended Learning in Network Marketing Course

Blended learning is an information-based teaching method. This method is applied in network marketing course and verifying its teaching effect is a problem worthy of research. By combining blended learning-related theories, student features, and course requirements, a WeChat-based blended learning pattern applicable to network marketing course was proposed in this study. A teaching design of WeChat-based blended learning was created, followed by a teaching experiment. Quantitative analysis was used to verify the teaching results of the experimental and control classes. Results demonstrate that the learning effect of experimental class adopting WeChat-based blended learning is superior to that of the control class adopting traditional teaching method. WeChat-based blended learning lengthens extracurricular learning time, enhances students’ learning interest, and increases the opportunity of student–teacher exchange. This study provides references for developing WeChat-based hybrid learning

Virtual Restoration of Stained Chinese Paintings Using Patch-Based Color Constrained Poisson Editing with Selected Hyperspectral Feature Bands

Stains, as one of most common degradations of paper cultural relics, not only affect paintings’ appearance, but sometimes even cover the text, patterns, and colors contained in the relics. Virtual restorations based on common red–green–blue images (RGB) which remove the degradations and then fill the lacuna regions with the image’s known parts with the inpainting technology could produce a visually plausible result. However, due to the lack of information inside the degradations, they always yield inconsistent structures when stains cover several color materials. To effectively remove the stains and restore the covered original contents of Chinese paintings, a novel method based on Poisson editing is proposed by exploiting the information inside the degradations of selected three feature bands as the auxiliary information to guide the restoration since the selected feature bands captured fewer stains and could expose the covered information. To make the Poisson editing suitable for stain removal, the feature bands were also exploited to search for the optimal patch for the pixels in the stain region, and the searched patch was used to construct the color constraint on the original Poisson editing to ensure the restoration of the original color of paintings. Specifically, this method mainly consists of two steps: feature band selection from hyperspectral data by establishing rules and reconstruction of stain contaminated regions of RGB image with color constrained Poisson editing. Four Chinese paintings (‘Fishing’, ‘Crane and Banana’, ‘the Hui Nationality Painting’, and ‘Lotus Pond and Wild Goose’) with different color materials were used to test the performance of the proposed method. Visual results show that this method can effectively remove or dilute the stains while restoring a painting’s original colors. By comparing values of restored pixels with nonstained pixels (reference of their same color materials), images processed by the proposed method had the lowest average root mean square error (RMSE), normalized absolute error (NAE), and average differences (AD), which indicates that it is an effective method to restore the stains of Chinese paintings

Comparison of Different Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors in Attenuating Inflammatory Pain in Rats

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs), which interfere with the epigenetic process of histone acetylation, have shown analgesic effects in animal models of persistent pain. The HDAC family comprises 18 genes; however, the different effects of distinct classes of HDACIs on pain relief remain unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of these HDACIs on attenuating thermal hyperalgesia in persistent inflammatory pain. Persistent inflammatory pain was induced by injecting Complete Freund’s Adjuvant (CFA) into the left hind paw of rats. Then, HDACIs targeting class I (entinostat (MS-275)) and class IIa (sodium butyrate, valproic acid (VPA), and 4-phenylbutyric acid (4-PBA)), or class II (suberoylanilide hydoxamic acid (SAHA), trichostatin A (TSA), and dacinostat (LAQ824)) were administered intraperitoneally once daily for 3 or 4 days. We found that the injection of SAHA once a day for 3 days significantly attenuated CFA-induced thermal hyperalgesia from day 4 and lasted 7 days. In comparison with SAHA, suppression of hyperalgesia by 4-PBA peaked on day 2, whereas that by MS-275 occurred on days 5 and 6. Fatigue was a serious side effect seen with MS-275. These findings will be beneficial for optimizing the selection of specific HDACIs in medical fields such as pain medicine and neuropsychiatry