Case report: MRI changes of the inner ear in an MD patient with suspected immune dysfunction

ObjectivesThe primary objective of this study was to present the progressive changes from labyrinthitis to endolymphatic hydrops (EH) demonstrated in the inner ear MRI of a patient with MD and suspected immune dysfunction.PatientThis 31-year-old male was diagnosed with MD and suspected autoimmune diseases.InterventionsImmunosuppressants and biological agents.Main outcomes measuresInner ear MRI images.ResultsChanges in the patient’s progress revealed that inner ear immune and inflammatory changes might induce EH, which may eventually turn into MD.ConclusionThis case is the first documented case of MRI revealing progressive changes from inflammatory response to endolymphatic hydrops in the inner ear. It shows the correlation between MD and inflammation visually. It is of great significance to reveal the pathogenesis of MD to further assist in the guidance of treatment decision making

Loss of p53 in mesenchymal stem cells promotes alteration of bone remodeling through negative regulation of osteoprotegerin.

p53 plays a pivotal role in controlling the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) by regulating genes involved in cell cycle and early steps of differentiation process. In the context of osteogenic differentiation of MSCs and bone homeostasis, the osteoprotegerin/receptor activator of NF-κB ligand/receptor activator of NF-κB (OPG/RANKL/RANK) axis is a critical signaling pathway. The absence or loss of function of p53 has been implicated in aberrant osteogenic differentiation of MSCs that results in higher bone formation versus erosion, leading to an unbalanced bone remodeling. Here, we show by microCT that mice with p53 deletion systemically or specifically in mesenchymal cells possess significantly higher bone density than their respective littermate controls. There is a negative correlation between p53 and OPG both in vivo by analysis of serum from p53+/+, p53+/-, and p53-/- mice and in vitro by p53 knockdown and ChIP assay in MSCs. Notably, high expression of Opg or its combination with low level of p53 are prominent features in clinical cancer lesion of osteosarcoma and prostate cancer respectively, which correlate with poor survival. Intra-bone marrow injection of prostate cancer cells, together with androgen can suppress p53 expression and enhance local Opg expression, leading to an enhancement of bone density. Our results support the notion that MSCs, as osteoblast progenitor cells and one major component of bone microenvironment, represent a cellular source of OPG, whose amount is regulated by the p53 status. It also highlights a key role for the p53-OPG axis in regulating the cancer associated bone remodeling

Study on the Dynamic Response Characteristics and p–y Curve of Straight and Inclined Pile Groups in Saturated Sands

This paper is based on a shaking table test of 2 × 2 straight pile groups and 2 × 2 inclined pile groups in non-liquefied sand and saturated sand with different thicknesses. Under the sine wave with a certain peak acceleration and frequency, the lateral dynamic response characteristics, the distribution law of the maximum bending moment envelope diagram, and the p–y curve of the straight and inclined pile groups are studied. The results show that the bending moment of the straight pile group is 3~4 times that of the inclined pile group at the bottom section of the pile in the 300 mm saturated sand. When the thickness of the saturated sand increases to 380 mm, the maximum bending moment of the straight pile group is 6~7 times that of the inclined pile group at the bottom section of the pile. Through the comparison of indicators, it shows that the inclined pile group can have better bending resistance when subjected to the same lateral dynamic load

Study on the Dynamic Response Characteristics and p–y Curve of Straight and Inclined Pile Groups in Saturated Sands

This paper is based on a shaking table test of 2 × 2 straight pile groups and 2 × 2 inclined pile groups in non-liquefied sand and saturated sand with different thicknesses. Under the sine wave with a certain peak acceleration and frequency, the lateral dynamic response characteristics, the distribution law of the maximum bending moment envelope diagram, and the p–y curve of the straight and inclined pile groups are studied. The results show that the bending moment of the straight pile group is 3~4 times that of the inclined pile group at the bottom section of the pile in the 300 mm saturated sand. When the thickness of the saturated sand increases to 380 mm, the maximum bending moment of the straight pile group is 6~7 times that of the inclined pile group at the bottom section of the pile. Through the comparison of indicators, it shows that the inclined pile group can have better bending resistance when subjected to the same lateral dynamic load

Lipopolysaccharides promote pulmonary fibrosis in silicosis through the aggravation of apoptosis and inflammation in alveolar macrophages

Alveolar macrophages (AMs) play an important defensive role by removing dust and bacteria from alveoli. Apoptosis of AMs is associated with lung fibrosis; however, the relationship between this apoptotic event and environmental factors, such as the presence of lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) in the workplace, has not yet been addressed. To investigate whether exposure to LPS can exacerbate fibrosis, we collected AMs from 12 male workers exposed to silica and incubated them in the presence and absence of LPS for 24 h. We show that the levels of cleaved caspase-3 and pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha were increased in these AMs following LPS treatment. Moreover, we demonstrate that LPS exposure aggravated apoptosis and the release of inflammatory factors in AMs in a mouse model of silicosis, which eventually promoted pulmonary fibrosis. These results suggest that exposure to LPS may accelerate the progression of pulmonary fibrosis in silicosis by increasing apoptosis and inflammation in AMs

Regulation of mineral elements in <i>Hordeum brevisubulatum</i> by <i>Epichloë bromicola</i> under Cd stress

In this study, wild barley (Hordeum brevisubulatum) infected (E+) and uninfected (E-) by Epichloë bromicola were used for hydroponic experiments during the seedling stage. Various attributes, such as the effect of fungal endophyte on the growth and development of wild barley, the absorption of cadmium (Cd) and mineral elements (Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn), subcellular distribution, and chemical forms were investigated under CdCl2 stress. The results showed that the fungal endophy significantly reduced the Ca content and percentage of plant roots under Cd stress. The Fe and Mn content of roots, the mineral element content of soluble fractions, and the stems in the pectin acid or protein-chelated state increased significantly in response to fungal endophy. Epichloë endophyte helped Cd2+ to enter into plants; and reduced the positive correlation of Ca-Fe and Ca-Mn in roots. In addition, it also decreased the correlation of soluble components Cd-Cu, Cd-Ca, Cd-Mg in roots, and the negative correlation between pectin acid or protein-chelated Cd in stems and mineral elements, to increase the absorbance of host for mineral elements. In conclusion, fungal endophy regulated the concentration and distribution of mineral elements, while storing more Cd2+ to resist the damage caused by Cd stress. The study could provide a ground for revealing the Cd tolerance mechanism of endophytic fungal symbionts. The present study is the first to study the effect of fungal endophy on essential mineral elements of plants under heavy metal stress, filling a gap in the existing research. The study could be helpful to reveal the mechanism of endophytic fungi to improve the host's tolerance to heavy metals and provide a foundation for the grass-endophyte symbionts to improve heavy metal-contaminated soils as ecological grasses.</p

Workability and proportion design of pumping concrete based on rheological parameters

In this paper a method is introduced to find an optimized ratio of pumping concrete based on concrete rheology. Workability includes three aspects: fluidity, bleeding resistance and segregation resistance. We tested concrete samples with various water-to-binder ratio (W/B), fly-ash to binder ratio (FA/B), sand-to-aggregate ratio (S/A) and the dose of liquid naphthalene water reducer (FDN/B) by using a concrete rheometer. Using concrete rheometer to measure the yield stress and viscosity based on Bingham model, and then study the rheological regulation of concretes by changing the component proportions. The samples also have been tested for quantifying bleeding and segregation. We obtained the relationship between the workability aspects (the bleeding speed, segregation speed and fluidity) and the rheological parameters, thus obtained appropriate ranges of proportions for the good workability of concrete pumping

Self-triggered coordination of distributed renewable generators for frequency restoration in islanded microgrids: A low communication and computation strategy

Microgrid provides a promising solution to consume more distributed renewable energies. To coordinate the increasingly developed distributed renewable generators in a high flexibility and high efficiency way, distributed event-triggered mechanisms have been widely investigated in the literature to reduce the communication requirement and hence improve the control performance of microgrids. However, most of the event-triggered mechanisms mandate continuous calculation of complicated triggering conditions, which may in turn impose the computation burden of the controller and increase additional energy cost. To this end, this paper presents a distributed self-triggered control strategy for the frequency restoration in islanded microgrids with the aid of a linear clock. With this self-triggered solution, each distributed generator’s controller decides its own control and communication actions based on monitoring the linear clock, which excludes continuous calculation of any triggering conditions. Thus, the communication and computation costs can be reduced simultaneously. Moreover, Zeno behavior can be naturally excluded by the above design. The results of theoretical analysis and simulations show that the proposed distributed self-triggered control scheme can effectively coordinate distributed renewable generators with very low communication and computation requirements. Therefore, this research can improve the coordination efficiency of microgrids greatly, which is very useful for guiding the efficient operation of large-scale distributed renewable generators

EV-Eye : Rethinking high-frequency eye tracking through the lenses of event cameras

In this paper, we present EV-Eye, a first-of-its-kind large scale multimodal eye tracking dataset aimed at inspiring research on high-frequency eye/gaze tracking. EV-Eye utilizes an emerging bio-inspired event camera to capture independent pixel-level intensity changes induced by eye movements, achieving sub-microsecond latency. Our dataset was curated over a two-week period and collected from 48 participants encompassing diverse genders and age groups. It comprises over 1.5 million near-eye grayscale images and 2.7 billion event samples generated by two DAVIS346 event cameras. Additionally, the dataset contains 675 thousands scene images and 2.7 million gaze references captured by Tobii Pro Glasses 3 eye tracker for cross-modality validation. Compared with existing event-based high-frequency eye tracking datasets, our dataset is significantly larger in size, and the gaze references involve more natural eye movement patterns, i.e., fixation, saccade and smooth pursuit. Alongside the event data, we also present a hybrid eye tracking method as benchmark, which leverages both the near-eye grayscale images and event data for robust and high-frequency eye tracking. We show that our method achieves higher accuracy for both pupil and gaze estimation tasks compared to the existing solution