LncRNA SENCR suppresses abdominal aortic aneurysm formation by inhibiting smooth muscle cells apoptosis and extracellular matrix degradation

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a progressive chronic dilatation of the abdominal aorta without effective medical treatment. This study aims to clarify the potential of long non-coding RNA SENCR as a treatment target in AAA. Angiotensin II (Ang-II) was used to establish AAA model in vitro and in vivo. Reverse transcription quantitative PCR and western blot were performed to measure the expression of SENCR and proteins, respectively. Annexin V-FITC/PI double staining was carried out to detect the apoptotic rate in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), and cell apoptosis in aortic tissues was determined by TUNEL staining. Besides, hematoxylin and eosin and Elastica van Gieson staining were performed for histological analysis of aortic tissues. SENCR was downregulated in AAA tissues and Ang-II-stimulated VSMCs. Overexpression of SENCR could inhibit Ang-II-induced VSMC apoptosis, while inhibition of SENCR facilitated Ang-II-induced VSMC apoptosis. Moreover, the expression of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 in Ang-II-induced VSMCs was reduced following SENCR overexpression, while tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases 1 (TIMP-1) expression was increased. In vivo, overexpression of SENCR improved the pathological change in aortic tissues and the damage in arterial wall elastic fibers induced by Ang-II, as well as suppressed Ang-II-induced cell apoptosis and extracellular matrix degradation. Overall, SENCR was decreased in AAA. Overexpression of SENCR inhibited AAA formation via inhibition of VSMC apoptosis and extracellular matrix degradation. We provided a reliable evidence for SENCR acting as a potential target for AAA treatment

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Innovative design of community care services based on the concept of environmental sustainability

China’s rural elderly population continues to grow, and rural elderly care faces more severe challenges than cities. The rapid growth of rural demand for elderly care services means that more resources are needed, and the process of depletion of a large amount of resources inevitably has an adverse impact on the environment. The green development and sustainable design concepts proposed in the design field can reduce the waste of resources and reduce the greatest impact of humans on the environment, and promote the harmonious development of man and nature. Therefore, this article applies environmental sustainability concepts and service design concepts to rural community elderly care services , to innovate the existing community pension service system. Based on the analysis of the behavior and demand characteristics of the elderly in rural areas, this paper proposes an innovative design case of sustainable elderly care community service combining community resources with the full potential of the elderly, which provides reference and inspiration for the construction of an elderly care community service system in rural areas

Reliability Sensitivity Analysis by the Axis Orthogonal Importance Sampling Method Based on the Box-Muller Transformation

The axis orthogonal importance sampling method proves to be one version of efficient importance sampling methods since the quasi-Monte Carlo simulation is its basic ingredient, in which it is now a common practice to transform low-discrepancy sequences from the uniform distribution to the normal distribution by the well-known inverse transformation. As a valid transformation method for low-discrepancy sequences, the Box-Muller transformation is introduced into the axis orthogonal importance sampling method and compared with the inverse transformation in this paper for structural reliability sensitivity analysis. Three representative quasi-random sequences with low discrepancy are presented to generate samples following the target distribution and explore the interaction with the transformation method, which is used as a sample plan along the tangent plane at the most probable failure point in the axial orthogonal importance sampling for structural reliability analysis and reliability sensitivity analysis. The numerical experiments show that the reliability sensitivity analysis method by means of the Box-Muller transformation is a good alternative to the inverse transformation to generate samples from low-discrepancy sequences to the normal distribution. In particular, the scheme of the Box-Muller transformation combined with the Sobol sequence needs fewer samples with more accuracy and is more applicable for solving reliability sensitivity analysis in various nonlinear problems

Response Surface Method for Reliability Analysis Based on Iteratively-Reweighted-Least-Square Extreme Learning Machines

A response surface method for reliability analysis based on iteratively-reweighted-least-square extreme learning machines (IRLS-ELM) is explored in this paper, in which, highly nonlinear implicit performance functions of structures are approximated by the IRLS-ELM. Monte Carlo simulation is then carried out on the approximate IRLS-ELM for structural reliability analysis. Some numerical examples are given to illustrate the proposed method. The effects of parameters involved in the IRLS-ELM on accuracy in reliability analysis are respectively discussed. The results exhibit that a proper number of samples and neurons in hidden layer nodes, an appropriate regularization parameter, and the number of iterations for reweighting are of important assurance to obtain reasonable precision in estimating structural failure probability

Reactive block copolymers for the toughening of epoxies: Effect of nanostructured morphology and reactivity

Block copolymers (BCPs) have stimulated widespread research interest due to their applications as facile templates in the fabrication of optimized thermosets with micro- or nanostructured morphologies. In the present work, a novel block copolymer was obtained from a commercial poly(styrene-block-butadiene-block-styrene) (SBS) triblock copolymer precursor by a two-step process including reaction with hydrogen peroxide in a water/dichloroethane biphasic system to achieve an epoxidized derivative with a 46mol% degree of epoxidation (thus denoted as eSBS46), which was then followed by reaction with 1-(2-aminoethyl)piperazine (AEP, thus yielding eSBS46-AEP) as a reactive functional group that was incorporated to prepare nanostructured epoxy thermosetting blends. As a result of the oxirane ring-opening achieved (to a conversion degree of 10mol%) by reaction with AEP, the nanostructured morphology was converted from spherical micelles in the case of eSBS46 to branched wormlike micelles for eSBS46-AEP. At 5wt% loading of this BCP material, the fracture toughness was improved by 51% over the neat epoxy. These findings were compared with data obtained from the same epoxy thermoset formulation containing the eSBS46. Various measurements including transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), and measuring stress field factor (K-IC) analysis were employed to investigate the morphology, fracture graph, storage modulus, glass transition temperature (T-g), and fracture toughness of the epoxy thermosets containing these BCPs. The specific side-groups of eSBS46-AEP containing secondary amines and ternary amines increased the reactivity to epoxy matrices. A combination of fracture mechanisms including shear deformation, crack tip blunting, and matrix ductility enhancement contributed toward helped enhance the toughness. These results demonstrate that the role of modulating the reactivity of BCP has a significant effect on the final morphology and properties of the epoxy composites

Additive manufacturing of flexible polymer-derived ceramic matrix composites

It remains challenging to broaden the application fields of ceramics, largely because the hardness and brittleness of ceramics mean that they cannot undergo shape reconfiguration. In this study, we developed an ultraviolet light-curable preceramic polymer slurry, and this slurry was used for digital light processing printing of flexible green parts in designed shapes. These parts were subsequently transformed into complex structures by an assisted secondary molding strategy that enabled the morphology of their green and pyrolyzed forms to be well controlled. The collapse of bulk pyrolyzed parts was avoided by impregnating their precursors with silicon nitride (Si3N4) particles. The effects of different proportions of Si3N4 on the weight loss, shrinkage, density, porosity, and mechanical properties of the pyrolyzed composites were investigated, and the bending strength and Vickers hardness of the composites with 10 wt.% Si3N4 were found to be 130.61 ± 16.01 MPa and 6.43 ± 0.12 GPa, respectively

Responses of Seed Yield Components to the Field Practices for Regulating Seed Yield of Smooth Bromegrass (Bromus inermis Leyss.)

Agronomic practices improve seed yield by regulating seed yield components, and the relationship between seed yield and seed yield components is still unclear in smooth bromegrass (Bromus inermis). To optimize seed production and yield in smooth bromegrass, a five-year field trial was designed with split-split-plot to study the combined effects of row spacing (30, 45, 60, and 75 cm), phosphorus (0, 60, 90, and 120 kg P ha(-1)) and nitrogen (0 and 100 kg N ha(-1)) on seed yield and seed yield components including fertile tillers m(-2) (FTs), spikelets per fertile tiller (SFT), florets per spikelet (FS), and seeds per spikelet (SS). The results showed that FTs as a key factor had a positive effect to seed yield with the biggest pathway coefficient, while SS had a negative effect. Meanwhile, an interaction effect between FTs and SS was observed. FS and SS were increased with phosphorus application under the condition of sufficient nitrogen. In addition, sufficient precipitation at the non-growing season resulted in more FTs in the next year in rain-fed regions. Therefore, the optimum seed yield of smooth bromegrass can be obtained with row spacing (45 cm), nitrogen (100 kg N ha(-1)), and phosphorus application (60 kg P ha(-1))