Screening for the efficacy on lipid accumulation in 3T3-L1 cells is an effective tool for the identification of new anti-diabetic compounds

Reducing lipid accumulation in insulin target tissues is critical for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. This study aimed to develop a biochemical assay in cells for high throughput (HTP) screening of anti-diabetic drugs by reducing lipid accumulation via different mechanisms

A Two-Stage Image Segmentation Method Using a Convex Variant of the Mumford--Shah Model and Thresholding

The Mumford–Shah model is one of the most important image segmentation models and has been studied extensively in the last twenty years. In this paper, we propose a two-stage segmentation method based on the Mumford–Shah model. The first stage of our method is to find a smooth solution g to a convex variant of the Mumford–Shah model. Once g is obtained, then in the second stage the segmentation is done by thresholding g into different phases. The thresholds can be given by the users or can be obtained automatically using any clustering methods. Because of the convexity of the model, g can be solved efficiently by techniques like the split-Bregman algorithm or the Chambolle–Pock method. We prove that our method is convergent and that the solution g is always unique. In our method, there is no need to specify the number of segments K (K ≥ 2) before finding g. We can obtain any K-phase segmentations by choosing (K − 1) thresholds after g is found in the first stage, and in the second stage there is no need to recompute g if the thresholds are changed to reveal different segmentation features in the image.Experimental results show that our two-stage method performs better than many standard two-phase or multiphase segmentation methods for very general images, including antimass, tubular, MRI, noisy, and blurry images

Activation of PPARa ameliorates hepatic insulin resistance and steatosis in high fructose-fed mice despite increased ER stress

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is suggested to cause hepatic insulin resistance by increasing de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and/or directly interfering with insulin signaling via activation of the JNK and IKK pathway. The present study interrogated these two proposed mechanisms in a mouse model of hepatic insulin resistance induced by a high fructose (HFru) diet with the treatment of fenofibrate (FB, 100 mg/kg/day), a PPARa agonist known to reduce lipid accumulation while maintaining elevated DNL in the liver. FB administration completely corrected HFru-induced glucose intolerance, hepatic steatosis and the impaired hepatic insulin signaling (pAkt and pGSK3ß). Intriguingly, both IRE1/XBP1 and PERK/eIF2a arms of the UPR signaling were activated. While retaining the elevated DNL (indicated by the upregulation of SREBP1c, ACC, FAS and SCD1 and 3H2O incorporation into lipids), FB treatment markedly increased FA oxidation (indicated by induction of ACOX1, pACC, ß-HAD activity and 14C-palmitate oxidation) and eliminated the accumulation of diacylglycerols (DAGs) which is known to impact on insulin signaling. Despite the marked activation of UPR signaling, neither JNK nor IKK appeared to be activated. These findings suggest that lipid accumulation (mainly DAGs), rather than the activation of JNK or IKK is pivotal for ER stress to cause hepatic insulin resistance. Therefore, by reducing the accumulation of deleterious lipids, activation of PPARa is able to ameliorate hepatic insulin resistance against increased ER stress

Discussion on application of information fusion techniques in electric power system fault detection

2002-2003 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Assessing current genetic status of the Hainan gibbon using historical and demographic baselines: implications for conservation management of species of extreme rarity

Evidence-based conservation planning is crucial for informing management decisions for species of extreme rarity, but collection of robust data on genetic status or other parameters can be extremely challenging for such species. The Hainan gibbon, possibly the world's rarest mammal, consists of a single population of c.25 individuals restricted to one protected area on Hainan Island, China, and has persisted for over 30 years at exceptionally low population size. Analysis of genotypes at 11 microsatellite loci from faecal samples for 36% of the current global population and tissue samples from 62% of existing historical museum specimens demonstrates limited current genetic diversity (Na=2.27, Ar=2.24, He =0.43); diversity has declined since the 19th century and even further within the last 30 years, representing declines of c.30% from historical levels (Na=3.36, Ar=3.29, He =0.63). Significant differentiation is seen between current and historical samples (FST =0.156, P=0.0315), and the current population exhibits extremely small Ne (current Ne =2.16). There is evidence for both a recent population bottleneck and an earlier bottleneck, with population size already reasonably low by the late 19th century (historical Ne =1162.96). Individuals in the current population are related at the level of half- to full-siblings between social groups, and full-siblings or parent-offspring within a social group, suggesting that inbreeding is likely to increase in the future. The species' current reduced genetic diversity must be considered during conservation planning, particularly for expectations of likely population recovery, indicating that intensive, carefully planned management is essential

Maternal Cigarette Smoke Exposure Exaggerates the Behavioral Defects and Neuronal Loss Caused by Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury in Female Offspring.

Objective: Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy affects ∼6 in 1,000 preterm neonates, leading to significant neurological sequela (e.g., cognitive deficits and cerebral palsy). Maternal smoke exposure (SE) is one of the common causes of neurological disorders; however, female offspring seems to be less affected than males in our previous study. We also showed that maternal SE exaggerated neurological disorders caused by neonatal hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in adolescent male offspring. Here, we aimed to examine whether female littermates of these males are protected from such insult. Methods: BALB/c dams were exposed to cigarette smoke generated from 2 cigarettes twice daily for 6 weeks before mating, during gestation and lactation. To induce hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, half of the pups from each litter underwent left carotid artery occlusion, followed by exposure to 8% oxygen (92% nitrogen) at postnatal day (P) 10. Behavioral tests were performed at P40-44, and brain tissues were collected at P45. Results: Maternal SE worsened the defects in short-term memory and motor function in females with hypoxic-ischemic injury; however, reduced anxiety due to injury was observed in the control offspring, but not the SE offspring. Both hypoxic-ischemic injury and maternal SE caused significant loss of neuronal cells and synaptic proteins, along with increased oxidative stress and inflammatory responses. Conclusion: Oxidative stress and inflammatory response due to maternal SE may be the mechanism of worsened neurological outcomes by hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in females, which was similar to their male littermates shown in our previous study

HiTIC-Monthly: a monthly high spatial resolution (1 km) human thermal index collection over China during 2003–2020

Human-perceived thermal comfort (known as human-perceived temperature) measures the combined effects of multiple meteorological factors (e.g., temperature, humidity, and wind speed) and can be aggravated under the influences of global warming and local human activities. With the most rapid urbanization and the largest population, China is being severely threatened by aggravating human thermal stress. However, the variations of thermal stress in China at a fine scale have not been fully understood. This gap is mainly due to the lack of a high-resolution gridded dataset of human thermal indices. Here, we generated the first high spatial resolution (1 km) dataset of monthly human thermal index collection (HiTIC-Monthly) over China during 2003–2020. In this collection, 12 commonly used thermal indices were generated by the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) learning algorithm from multi-source data, including land surface temperature, topography, land cover, population density, and impervious surface fraction. Their accuracies were comprehensively assessed based on the observations at 2419 weather stations across the mainland of China. The results show that our dataset has desirable accuracies, with the mean R2, root mean square error, and mean absolute error of 0.996, 0.693 ∘C, and 0.512 ∘C, respectively, by averaging the 12 indices. Moreover, the data exhibit high agreements with the observations across spatial and temporal dimensions, demonstrating the broad applicability of our dataset. A comparison with two existing datasets also suggests that our high-resolution dataset can describe a more explicit spatial distribution of the thermal information, showing great potentials in fine-scale (e.g., intra-urban) studies. Further investigation reveals that nearly all thermal indices exhibit increasing trends in most parts of China during 2003–2020. The increase is especially significant in North China, Southwest China, the Tibetan Plateau, and parts of Northwest China, during spring and summer. The HiTIC-Monthly dataset is publicly available from Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6895533 (Zhang et al., 2022a).</p

Effects of antenatal depression screening and intervention among Chinese highâ risk pregnant women with medically defined complications: A randomized controlled trial

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151825/1/eip12731_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151825/2/eip12731.pd