Effects of dietary oxidized fish oil on the growth performance, intestinal health, and antioxidant capacity of zebrafish

This study aimed to investigate the effects of oxidized fish oil (OFO) on growth performance, intestinal health, and antioxidant function and to determine the minimum concentration of oxidized fish oil to cause irreversible damage to the intestinal tissue structure of zebrafish. A 30-day feeding trial on zebrafish (average weight 0.054 g) was conducted in triplicate groups of fish fed four test diets containing different concentrations of OFO: 0% OFO (OFF, blank control), 2% OFO (OF1), 4% OFO (OF2), and 6% OFO (OF3). The body weight gain (WG), specific growth rates (SGR), feed conversion ratio (FCR), survival rate (SR), and antioxidant function {glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX), total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD), catalase (CAT), and malondialdehyde (MDA)} were recorded. The intestinal structure was observed at the end of the trial. After the 14-day experimental period, Final body weight (FBW), WG, and SGR decreased significantly with the increase in the concentration of feed OFO (P < 0.05), while FCR showed a downward trend. The activity of T-SOD decreased significantly, the activities of GSH-PX and CAT, and the MDA content increased significantly with the increase in the concentration of feed OFO (P < 0.05). The intestinal morphological damage score showed an upward trend with the increase in the concentration of OFO, and it was significantly higher in group OF2 and OF3 than in group OF1 (P < 0.05). After the 28-day test period, the experimental indexes and intestinal antioxidant function trends were the same as those on 14 days. The increased OFO concentration significantly increased the intestinal morphological injury score (P < 0.05). These results demonstrated that adding 4% OFO to the feed for 14 days could induce irreversible damage to the intestinal tissue structure, weaken the antioxidant function, and decrease the growth performance of zebrafish

Intersection Complexity and Its Influence on Human Drivers

As mixed traffic between automated vehicles and human drivers in inner city becomes more prevalent in the near future understanding and predicting drivers’ behavior is important. Additionally, there is a wide variety of inner city intersections. They can differ greatly in traffic density, visibility, number of objects and many more aspects. This difference in complexity has an influence on the behavior of human drivers at intersections. To further understand the effect of complexity we conducted a naturalistic driving field study in inner city traffic with 34 participants. We focused on unsignalized intersections because there is a greater range of possibly ambiguous situations at such intersections than compared to e.g. an intersection regulated by traffic lights. Features describing the behavior (commit distance, drop in velocity and the minimal velocity) are extracted from the driven trajectories. Additionally, we define intersection complexity by several features describing an intersection. These features include both the static (street, visible and driveable width, the visibility of the other streets and the number of trees) and the dynamic environment (entry location and turning direction, numbers of vehicles, vehicles with interaction, vehicles with priority, vehicles having to yield and pedestrians). Based on those we show that the entry location and the turning direction have a significant effect on the behavior features. Additionally, we show that the typical behavior of human drivers can be predicted by the features describing an intersection’s complexity. Finally, the feature set is reduced in dimensionality for a more condensed intersection description. For that we test reduced feature sets as well as feature sets from an autoencoder and show that prediction is feasible with them as well

Object Detection for Caries or Pit and Fissure Sealing Requirement in Children's First Permanent Molars

Dental caries is one of the most common oral diseases that, if left untreated, can lead to a variety of oral problems. It mainly occurs inside the pits and fissures on the occlusal/buccal/palatal surfaces of molars and children are a high-risk group for pit and fissure caries in permanent molars. Pit and fissure sealing is one of the most effective methods that is widely used in prevention of pit and fissure caries. However, current detection of pits and fissures or caries depends primarily on the experienced dentists, which ordinary parents do not have, and children may miss the remedial treatment without timely detection. To address this issue, we present a method to autodetect caries and pit and fissure sealing requirements using oral photos taken by smartphones. We use the YOLOv5 and YOLOX models and adopt a tiling strategy to reduce information loss during image pre-processing. The best result for YOLOXs model with tiling strategy is 72.3 mAP.5, while the best result without tiling strategy is 71.2. YOLOv5s6 model with/without tiling attains 70.9/67.9 mAP.5, respectively. We deploy the pre-trained network to mobile devices as a WeChat applet, allowing in-home detection by parents or children guardian

Tumor-associated macrophages regulate gastric cancer cell invasion and metastasis through TGF beta 2/NF-kappa B/Kindlin-2 axis

Objective: Recent studies have shown that tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) play an important role in cancer invasion and metastasis. Our previous studies have reported that TAMs promote the invasion and metastasis of gastric cancer (GC) cells through the Kindlin-2 pathway. However, the mechanism needs to be clarified. Methods: THP-1 monocytes were induced by PMA/interleukin (IL)-4/IL-13 to establish an efficient TAM model in vitro and M2 macrophages were isolated via flow cytometry. A dual luciferase reporter system and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay were used to investigate the mechanism of transforming growth factor beta 2 (TGF beta 2) regulating Kindlin-2 expression. Immunohistochemistry was used to study the relationships among TAM infiltration in human GC tissues, Kindlin-2 protein expression, clinicopathological parameters and prognosis in human GC tissues. A nude mouse oncogenesis model was used to verify the invasion and metastasis mechanisms in vivo. Results: We found that Kindlin-2 expression was upregulated at both mRNA and protein levels in GC cells cocultured with TAMs, associated with higher invasion rate. Kindlin-2 knockdown reduced the invasion rate of GC cells under coculture condition. TGF beta 2 secreted by TAMs regulated the expression of Kindlin-2 through the transcription factor NF-kappa B. TAMs thus participated in the progression of GC through the TGF beta 2/NF-kappa B/Kindlin-2 axis. Kindlin-2 expression and TAM infiltration were significantly positively correlated with TNM stage, and patients with high Kindlin-2 expression had significantly poorer overall survival than patients with low Kindlin-2 expression. Furthermore, Kindlin-2 promoted the invasion of GC cells in vivo. Conclusions: This study elucidates the mechanism of TAMs participating in GC cell invasion and metastasis through the TGF beta 2/NF-kappa B/Kindlin-2 axis, providing a possibility for new treatment options and approaches.Peer reviewe

Effects of the dispersion of polymer wrapped two neighbouring single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on nanoengineering load transfer

Effects of the dispersion of polymer wrapped two neighbouring single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on nanoengineering load transfe

Intersection Complexity and Its Influence on Human Drivers

As mixed traffic between automated vehicles and human drivers in inner city becomes more prevalent in the near future understanding and predicting drivers&#x2019; behavior is important. Additionally, there is a wide variety of inner city intersections. They can differ greatly in traffic density, visibility, number of objects and many more aspects. This difference in complexity has an influence on the behavior of human drivers at intersections. To further understand the effect of complexity we conducted a naturalistic driving field study in inner city traffic with 34 participants. We focused on unsignalized intersections because there is a greater range of possibly ambiguous situations at such intersections than compared to e.g. an intersection regulated by traffic lights. Features describing the behavior (commit distance, drop in velocity and the minimal velocity) are extracted from the driven trajectories. Additionally, we define intersection complexity by several features describing an intersection. These features include both the static (street, visible and driveable width, the visibility of the other streets and the number of trees) and the dynamic environment (entry location and turning direction, numbers of vehicles, vehicles with interaction, vehicles with priority, vehicles having to yield and pedestrians). Based on those we show that the entry location and the turning direction have a significant effect on the behavior features. Additionally, we show that the typical behavior of human drivers can be predicted by the features describing an intersection&#x2019;s complexity. Finally, the feature set is reduced in dimensionality for a more condensed intersection description. For that we test reduced feature sets as well as feature sets from an autoencoder and show that prediction is feasible with them as well

Effects of the dispersion of polymer wrapped two neighbouring single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on nanoengineering load transfer

German Federation of Materials Science and Engineering (BV MatWerk); German Research Foundation (DFG); National Natural Science Foundation of China (Microscale grinding and micromilling-grinding compound machining process) [52075064]The influence of polymer wrapped two neighbouring single-walled nanotubes' (SWNTs) dispersion on their load transfer is investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The influence of the SWNTs' position, the polymer chain length and the temperature on the interaction force between the two neighbouring SWNTs are systematically studied. There are four main findings from our simulations: (I) The dispersion angle dominates the amplitude and the interaction force evolution with or without polymer during the pulling process of two SWNTs. (2) The chain length does not affect the two SWNTs' interaction force within a short separation distance, the so called "Force enhancing point". The enhanced load effect of the polymer takes place after the load displacement goes across this point. (3) The temperature has a minor influence on the maximum pull force, while the increased temperature greatly decreases the pullout energy. (4) Based on the detailed analysis of the separation process, the self-repairing function of the system is found. The present results provide a guidance for understanding the load transfer of SWNT dispersion in phononic devices. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved