MicroRNA-223 ameliorates alcoholic liver injury by inhibiting the IL-6–p47phox–oxidative stress pathway in neutrophils

Objectives Chronic-plus-binge ethanol feeding activates neutrophils and exacerbates liver injury in mice. This study investigates how recent excessive drinking affects peripheral neutrophils and liver injury in alcoholics, and how miR-223, one of the most abundant microRNAs (miRNAs) in neutrophils, modulates neutrophil function and liver injury in ethanol-fed mice. Designs Three hundred alcoholics with (n=140) or without (n=160) recent excessive drinking and 45 healthy controls were enrolled. Mice were fed an ethanol diet for 10 days followed by a single binge of ethanol. Results Compared with healthy controls or alcoholics without recent drinking, alcoholics with recent excessive drinking had higher levels of circulating neutrophils, which correlated with serum levels of alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST). miRNA array analysis revealed that alcoholics had elevated serum miR-223 levels compared with healthy controls. In chronic-plus-binge ethanol feeding mouse model, the levels of miR-223 were increased in both serum and neutrophils. Genetic deletion of the miR-223 gene exacerbated ethanol-induced hepatic injury, neutrophil infiltration, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and upregulated hepatic expression of interleukin (IL)-6 and phagocytic oxidase (phox) p47phox. Mechanistic studies revealed that miR-223 directly inhibited IL-6 expression and subsequently inhibited p47phox expression in neutrophils. Deletion of the p47phox gene ameliorated ethanol-induced liver injury and ROS production by neutrophils. Finally, miR-223 expression was downregulated, while IL-6 and p47phox expression were upregulated in peripheral blood neutrophils from alcoholics compared with healthy controls. Conclusions miR-223 is an important regulator to block neutrophil infiltration in alcoholic liver disease and could be a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of this malady

EFFECTIVENESS OF ROOF POND SYSTEM FOR COOLING BUILDINGS IN SINGAPORE

Bachelor'sBACHELOR OF SCIENCE (PROJECT AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

Strategy for traditional Chinese medicine prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B

Abundant experience has been accumulated when it comes to the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB). However, there still exist some deficiencies such as insufficient randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and lack of attention to objective indices for therapeutic evaluation. Therefore, future clinical prevention and treatment should be tied closely to the research progress in the immune pathogenesis of CHB and give full play to the characteristics and advantages of TCM in modulating the functional status (including immunity) of human body. Moreover, clinical and translational research on the TCM regulation of immune response in CHB should be carried out to further improve clinical therapeutic effect. In addition, biochemistry, virology, and pathology should be applied actively in place of outcomes while paying attention to the symptoms of patients in an effort to improve the objectivity of therapeutic evaluation when summarizing clinical practice experience. Furthermore, RCTs should be employed as much as possible to enhance global recognition of the therapeutic effect of TCM treatment. And there is no doubt that bringing the advantages of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine therapy into full play will benefit a huge number of patients

A New Filtering Algorithm for Preserving Edges and Details of Digital Images

In order to overcome the shortage that the traditional image filtering algorithm can not preserve edges and details of digital images when filter out noises, a valid filtering algorithm for preserving edges and details of images is proposed in this paper. The algorithm first determines the pixel to be processed belongs to these three category that pixel belongs to the image itself, the background or the introducing noise of the process of image generation or transmission, and then uses different filtering policies to filter out noises according to the result of judgment. Because of different templates are used to filter out the pending pixel according to which template the pending pixel belongs to, the filtering algorithm can filter out noises as well as keeps the image’s edges and details effectively. The proposed algorithm is tested against different images, and it gives a better peak signal to noise ratio and a lower normalized mean square error. These results have also been checked and analyzed visually. The experimental results show that the proposed filtering algorithm not only can filter out the noise in image effectively but also protect edges and details of digital image well

A Novel Approach to Maritime Image Dehazing Based on a Large Kernel Encoder–Decoder Network with Multihead Pyramids

With the continuous increase in human–robot integration, battlefield formation is experiencing a revolutionary change. Unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vessels, combat robots, and other new intelligent weapons and equipment will play an essential role on future battlefields by performing various tasks, including situational reconnaissance, monitoring, attack, and communication relay. Real-time monitoring of maritime scenes is the basis of battle-situation and threat estimation in naval battlegrounds. However, images of maritime scenes are usually accompanied by haze, clouds, and other disturbances, which blur the images and diminish the validity of their contents. This will have a severe adverse impact on many downstream tasks. A novel large kernel encoder–decoder network with multihead pyramids (LKEDN-MHP) is proposed to address some maritime image dehazing-related issues. The LKEDN-MHP adopts a multihead pyramid approach to form a hybrid representation space comprising reflection, shading, and semanteme. Unlike standard convolutional neural networks (CNNs), the LKEDN-MHP uses many kernels with a 7 × 7 or larger scale to extract features. To reduce the computational burden, depthwise (DW) convolution combined with re-parameterization is adopted to form a hybrid model stacked by a large number of different receptive fields, further enhancing the hybrid receptive fields. To restore the natural hazy maritime scenes as much as possible, we apply digital twin technology to build a simulation system in virtual space. The final experimental results based on the evaluation metrics of the peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity index measure, Jaccard index, and Dice coefficient show that our LKEDN-MHP significantly enhances dehazing and real-time performance compared with those of state-of-the-art approaches based on vision transformers (ViTs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs)

Meta-Analysis of the Prognostic and Clinical Value of Tumor-Associated Macrophages in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background: Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are key components of the cancer microenvironment. This meta-analysis aimed to determine the association between TAMs and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: All studies investigating macrophages in HCC from January 2008 to May 2018 were retrieved by searching the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, PubMed, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang databases. The associations of TAMs with overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and the corresponding hazard ratios (HRs) or odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were pooled for analysis. Heterogeneity was assessed by using the Q test and I2 statistic. Statistical analyses were performed with Stata 13.0. Results: Seventeen articles with a total of 3547 patients were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled analysis showed that a high density of M2 TAMs in intratumor (IT) was significantly correlated with OS (HR = 1.58, 95%CI = 1.15–2.00), and the subgroup analysis suggested the significant difference in CD206+M2 TAMs (HR = 1.74, 95%CI = 1.26–2.21). However, the high expression levels of CD68+M1 TAMs in the IT or peritumor (PT) were not related with OS (CD68 in IT:HR = 1.30, 95%CI = 0.88–1.72;CD68 in PT:HR = 1.39, 95%CI = 0.93–1.85). Furthermore, a high density of CD206+M2 TAMs in IT showed a significant association with vascular invasion (OR = 2.18, 95%CI = 1.38–3.44) and more advanced TNM stage (OR = 2.38, 95%CI = 1.12–5.07). Conclusions: CD68+M1 TAMs have no prognostic effects on OS.A high density of M2 TAMs in IT is associated with poor prognosis in HCC, and CD206+ M2 TAMs can be used as a prognostic biomarker in HCC. However, the limit sample sizes might cause potential publication bias, thus more trails on CD206 are needed

Construction of China Osmanthus City and Intellectual Property Right Protection in Xianning City in the Context of Three New Developments

Xianning City of Hubei Province is one of the five major traditional osmanthus producing areas in the world and the hometown of osmanthus in China. Xianning is constructing China Osmanthus City in the whole city. This paper first introduces the main characteristics of the osmanthus industry in Xianning City, and analyzes the characteristics of traditional knowledge, biological genetic resources, new plant varieties, patents, geographical indications, and trademarks. Then, it studies the intellectual property resources of the osmanthus industry, and analyzes the main problems existing in the construction of China Osmanthus City and intellectual property right protection. Finally, it comes up with constructive recommendations including applying for China and Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, developing colored-leaf osmanthus varieties, creating a regional public brand of osmanthus specialty products, and building a new development pattern of osmanthus industry

Inheritance, Innovation and High-quality Development of Tea Industry in Xianning City, Hubei Province

Xianning City is a main tea producing area in Hubei Province, the capital of “border-selling tea” in China, and an important starting point for the Ten-Thousand-Mile Tea Road across the Eurasian continent. This paper studies the tea industry in Xianning from the aspects of top 100 counties of tea industry, important agricultural cultural heritage, famous Chinese historical and cultural villages, China's time-honored brands, major brands, and designated production enterprises of border-selling tea. Besides, it introduces intellectual property resources of the tea industry from traditional knowledge, biological genetic resources, new plant varieties, patents, geographical indications, trademarks, etc. Then, it analyzes major problems in the inheritance, innovation and high-quality development of Xianning tea, especially the border-selling tea. Finally, it comes up with constructive recommendations of starting the cultural inheritance and development project and upgrade project of the tea industry to build the capital of China's border-selling tea