Fault diagnosis-based SDG transfer for zero-sample fault symptom

The traditional fault diagnosis models cannot achieve good fault diagnosis accuracy when a new unseen fault class appears in the test set, but there is no training sample of this fault in the training set. Therefore, studying the unseen cause-effect problem of fault symptoms is extremely challenging. As various faults often occur in a chemical plant, it is necessary to perform fault causal-effect diagnosis to find the root cause of the fault. However, only some fault causal-effect data are always available to construct a reliable causal-effect diagnosis model. Another worst thing is that measurement noise often contaminates the collected data. The above problems are very common in industrial operations. However, past-developed data-driven approaches rarely include causal-effect relationships between variables, particularly in the zero-shot of causal-effect relationships. This would cause incorrect inference of seen faults and make it impossible to predict unseen faults. This study effectively combines zero-shot learning, conditional variational autoencoders (CVAE), and the signed directed graph (SDG) to solve the above problems. Specifically, the learning approach that determines the cause-effect of all the faults using SDG with physics knowledge to obtain the fault description. SDG is used to determine the attributes of the seen and unseen faults. Instead of the seen fault label space, attributes can easily create an unseen fault space from a seen fault space. After having the corresponding attribute spaces of the failure cause, some failure causes are learned in advance by a CVAE model from the available fault data. The advantage of the CVAE is that process variables are mapped into the latent space for dimension reduction and measurement noise deduction; the latent data can more accurately represent the actual behavior of the process. Then, with the extended space spanned by unseen attributes, the migration capabilities can predict the unseen causes of failure and infer the causes of the unseen failures. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified by the data collected from chemical reaction processes

A cell sorting and trapping microfluidic device with an interdigital channel

The growing interest in cell sorting and trapping is driving the demand for high performance technologies. Using labeling techniques or external forces, cells can be identified by a series of methods. However, all of these methods require complicated systems with expensive devices. Based on inherent differences in cellular morphology, cells can be sorted by specific structures in microfluidic devices. The weir filter is a basic and efficient cell sorting and trapping structure. However, in some existing weir devices, because of cell deformability and high flow velocity in gaps, trapped cells may become stuck or even pass through the gaps. Here, we designed and fabricated a microfluidic device with interdigital channels for cell sorting and trapping. The chip consisted of a sheet of silicone elastomer polydimethylsiloxane and a sheet of glass. A square-wave-like weir was designed in the middle of the channel, comprising the interdigital channels. The square-wave pattern extended the weir length by three times with the channel width remaining constant. Compared with a straight weir, this structure exhibited a notably higher trapping capacity. Interdigital channels provided more space to slow down the rate of the pressure decrease, which prevented the cells from becoming stuck in the gaps. Sorting a mixture K562 and blood cells to trap cells demonstrated the efficiency of the chip with the interdigital channel to sort and trap large and less deformable cells. With stable and efficient cell sorting and trapping abilities, the chip with an interdigital channel may be widely applied in scientific research fields

The exploration of the potential mechanism of oxymatrine-mediated antipruritic effect based on network pharmacology and weighted gene co-expression network analysis

The treatment of chronic itch is considered to be a challenge for its non-histamine dependence and the search for alternative medicine is still striving. The pathology of the chronic itch is closely related to immune system regulation and inflammatory response. Oxymatrine (OMT) is a traditional Chinese medicine ingredient extracted from the roots of Sophora flavescens Aiton with significant antitumor, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory effects. However, the underlying mechanism of OMT on chronic itch is obscure, which limits clinical application. Hence, this study is aimed to clarify the pruritus alleviation mechanism of OMT by combining network pharmacology analysis, weighted gene co-expression analysis (WGCNA), and molecular docking. We screened 125 common targets of OMT regulating inflammation and pruritus with pharmacology technology, the GO enrichment function analysis and KEGG signaling pathway analysis to demonstrate the close relation to the signaling pathways regulating inflammation such as MAPK signaling pathway and PI3K-AKT signaling pathway. We adopted the most relevant templates for pruritus diseases, combined with network pharmacology to preliminarily screen out 3 OMT functions and regulatory targets, exerting a good connection and correlation with the target at the screened disease targets. Further experiments were conducted to explore the potential mechanism of OMT using the LPS-induced RAW264.7 cell inflammation model. The results showed that pretreatment with different concentrations of OMT (25 μM, 50 μM, and 100 μM) for 24 h, inhibited expression of IL-6, iNOS TLR4 and TGFR-1 as well as apoptosis of Raw264.7 cells induced by LPS. Moreover, OMT effectively inhibited LPS-induced MAPK pathway activation and the expression of related sites MAP2K1, MAPK8 MAP2K4, and MAPKAP-K2 in RAW 264.7 cells. The OMT also reduced the phosphorylation of p-38, associated with site in the activation of MAPK signaling pathway. These results could contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying how OMT alleviates inflammation to treat chronic pruritic diseases and provide a potential drug for the treatment of chronic itch.</p

Anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties of Polyphyllin VI revealed by network pharmacology and RNA sequencing

Inflammatory pain, sustained by a complex network of inflammatory mediators, is a severe and persistent illness affecting many of the general population. We explore possible anti-inflammatory pathways of Polyphyllin VI (PPVI) based on our prior study, which showed that PPVI reduces inflammation in mice to reduce pain. Network pharmacology and RNA-Seq identified the contribution of the MAPK signaling pathway to inflammatory pain. In the LPS/ATP-induced RAW264.7 cell model, pretreatment with PPVI for 1 h inhibited the release of IL-6 and IL-8, down-regulated expression of the P2X7 receptor(P2X7R), and decreased phosphorylation of p38 and ERK1/2 components of the MAPK pathway. Moreover, PPVI decreased expression of IL-6 and IL-8 was observed in the serum of the inflammatory pain mice model and reduced phosphorylation of p38 and ERK1/2 in the dorsal root ganglia while the reductions of expression of IL-6 and phosphorylation of ERK1/2 were not observed after the pre-treatment with A740003 (an antagonist of the P2X7R). These results suggest that PPVI may inhibit the release of IL-8 by regulating P2X7R to reduce the phosphorylation of p38. However, the modulation of PPVI on the release of IL-6 and phosphorylation of ERK1/2 may mediated by other P2X7R-independent signals. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].</p

Polyphyllin VI screened from Chonglou by cell membrane immobilized chromatography relieves inflammatory pain by inhibiting inflammation and normalizing the expression of P2X₃ purinoceptor

Objective: Inflammatory pain is one of the most common diseases in daily life and clinic. In this work, we analysed bioactive components of the traditional Chinese medicine Chonglou and studied mechanisms of their analgesic effects. Material and methods: Molecular docking technology and U373 cells overexpressing P2X3 receptors combined with the cell membrane immobilized chromatography were used to screen possible CL bioactive molecules interacting with the P2X3 receptor. Moreover, we investigated the analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects of Polyphyllin VI (PPIV), in mice with chronic neuroinflammatory pain induced by CFA (complete Freund’s adjuvant). Results: The results of cell membrane immobilized chromatography and molecular docking showed that PPVI was one of the effective compounds of Chonglou. In mice with CFA-induced chronic neuroinflammatory pain, PPVI decreased the thermal paw withdrawal latency and mechanical paw withdrawal threshold and diminished foot edema. Additionally, in mice with CFA-induced chronic neuroinflammatory pain, PPIV reduced the expression of the pro-inflammatory factors IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α, and downregulated the expression of P2X3 receptors in the dorsal root ganglion and spinal cord. Conclusion: Our work identifies PPVI as a potential analgesic component in the Chonglou extract. We demonstrated that PPVI reduces pain by inhibiting inflammation and normalizing P2X3 receptor expression in the dorsal root ganglion and spinal cord.</p

1D-Reactor Decentralized MDA for Uniform and Accurate Whole Genome Amplification

Multiple displacement amplification (MDA), a most popular isothermal whole genome amplification (WGA) method, suffers the major hurdle of highly uneven amplification, thus, leading to many problems in approaching biological applications related to copy-number assessment. In addition to the optimization of reagents and conditions, complete physical separation of the entire reaction system into numerous tiny chambers or droplets using microfluidic devices, has been proven efficient to mitigate this amplifying bias in recent works. Here, we present another MDA advance, microchannel MDA (μcMDA), which decentralizes MDA reagents throughout a one-dimensional slender tube. Due to the double effect from soft partition of high molecular-weight DNA molecules and less-limited diffusion of small particles, μcMDA is shown to be significantly effective at improving the amplification uniformity, which enables us to accurately detect single nucleotide variants (SNVs) with higher efficiency and sensitivity. More importantly, this straightforward method requires neither customized instruments nor complicated operations, making it a ready-to-use technique in almost all biological laboratories

Giant Exchange Bias‐Like Effect at Low Cooling Fields Induced by Pinned Magnetic Domains in Y2_2NiIrO6_6 Double Perovskite

Exchange bias (EB) is highly desirable for widespread technologies. Generally, conventional exchange-bias heterojunctions require excessively large cooling fields for sufficient bias fields, which are generated by pinned spins at the interface of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic layers. It is crucial for applicability to obtain considerable exchange-bias fields with minimum cooling fields. Here, an exchange-bias-like effect is reported in a double perovskite, Y$_2$NiIrO$_6$, which shows long-range ferrimagnetic ordering below 192 K. It displays a giant bias-like field of 1.1 T with a cooling field of only 15 Oe at 5 K. This robust phenomenon appears below 170 K. This fascinating bias-like effect is the secondary effect of the vertical shifts of the magnetic loops, which is attributed to the pinned magnetic domains due to the combination of strong spin–orbit coupling on Ir, and antiferromagnetically coupled Ni- and Ir-sublattices. The pinned moments in Y$_2$NiIrO$_6$ are present throughout the full volume, not just at the interface as in conventional bilayer systems