Irisin Lowers Blood Pressure by Improvement of Endothelial Dysfunction via AMPK‐Akt‐eNOS‐NO Pathway in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

Background Exercise is a major nonpharmacological treatment for hypertension, but its underlying mechanisms are still not completely elucidated. Irisin, a polypeptide containing 112 amino acids, which is secreted mainly by skeletal muscle cells during exercise, exerts a protective role in metabolic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus and obesity. Because of the close relationship between irisin and metabolic diseases, we hypothesized that irisin may play a role in the regulation of blood pressure. Methods and Results Blood pressures of male Wistar‐Kyoto (WKY) rats and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) were monitored through the carotid artery. Our study found that acute intravenous injection of irisin reduced blood pressure in SHRs, but not WKY rats. Irisin, by itself, had no direct vasorelaxing effect in phenylephrine‐preconstricted mesenteric arteries from SHRs. However, irisin augmented the acetylcholine‐induced vasorelaxation in mesenteric arteries from SHRs that could be reversed by Nω‐nitro‐L‐arginine‐methyl ester (L‐NAME;100 μmol/L), indicating a role of nitric oxide (NO) in this action. Indeed, irisin increased NO production and phosphorylation of endothelial nirtic oxide synthase (eNOS) in endothelial cells. 5′‐AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) was involved in the vasorelaxing effect of irisin because compound C (20 μmol/L), an AMPKinhibitor, blocked the irisin‐mediated increase in phosphorylation of eNOS and protein kinase B (Akt) in endothelial cells and vasodilation in mesenteric arteries. Conclusions We conclude that acute administration of irisin lowers blood pressure of SHRs by amelioration of endothelial dysfunction of the mesenteric artery through the AMPK‐Akt‐eNOS‐NO signaling pathway

The Role of Substrate Stiffness on the Dynamics of Actin Rich Structures and Cell Behavior

<p>Cell-substrate interactions influence various cellular processes such as morphology, motility, proliferation and differentiation. Actin dynamics within cells have been shown to be influenced by substrate stiffness, as NIH 3T3 fibroblasts grown on stiffer substrates tend to exhibit more prominent actin stress fiber formation. Circular dorsal ruffles (CDRs) are transient actin-rich ring-like structures within cells, induced by various growth factors, such as the platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF). CDRs grow and shrink in size after cells are stimulated with PDGF, eventually disappearing ten of minutes after stimulation. As substrate stiffness affect actin structures and cell motility, and CDRs are actin structures which have been previously linked to cell motility and macropinocytosis, the role of substrate stiffness on the properties of CDRs in NIH 3T3 fibroblasts and how they proceed to affect cell behavior is investigated. Cells were seeded on Poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates of various stiffnesses and stimulated with PDGF to induce CDR formation. It was found that an increase in substrate stiffness increases the lifetime of CDRs, but did not affect their size. A mathematical model of the signaling pathways involved in CDR formation is developed to provide insight into this lifetime and size dependence, and is linked to substrate stiffness via Rac-Rho antagonism. CDR formation did not affect the motility of cells seeded on 10 kPa stiff substrates, but is shown to increase localized lamellipodia formation in the cell via the diffusion of actin from the CDRs to the lamellipodia. To further probe the influence of cell-substrate interactions on cell behavior and actin dynamics, a two dimensional system which introduces a dynamically changing, reversible and localized substrate stiffness environment is constructed. Cells are seeded on top of thin PDMS nano-membranes, and are capable of feeling through the thin layer, experiencing the stiffness of the polyacrylamide substrates below the nano-membrane. The membranes are carefully re-transplanted on top of other polyacrylamide substrates with differing stiffnesses. This reversible dynamic stiffness system is a novel approach which would help in the investigation of the influence of reversible dynamic stiffness environments on cell morphology, motility, proliferation and differentiation in various cells types. </p

Analysing Engagement of Local Influencers’ YouTube Videos in Singapore

This study examines specific textual and visual elements that impact engagement on YouTube videos produced by local influencers in Singapore. While content creators predominantly focus on trending content, this study introduces a multifaceted approach, emphasising the significance of textual and visual elements in video titles, descriptions, and overall aesthetics. An online survey conducted in Q3 2020 revealed YouTube's dominance in Singapore, with 88.7% of the population actively using the platform. Leveraging this data, the study employed the Random Forest Classification model to predict engagement levels based on textual and visual features. The model achieved an accuracy rate of 70.5% for textual features, and 57.6% for visual features. Textual analysis identified key lexemes and bigrams, such as 'singapore', 'type', and 'people', that resonate with higher engagement metrics. Visual analysis, on the other hand, underscored the importance of the video's initial minutes and the Green chromatic channel in influencing engagement. The study further suggests that beyond content, strategic choices in titles, descriptions, and video aesthetics can significantly enhance engagement rates. The findings provide a comprehensive guide for content creators, emphasising the potential of data science techniques in optimising video engagement in the evolving landscape of YouTube in Singapore

State-of-Health Prediction of Lithium-Ion Batteries Based on CNN-BiLSTM-AM

State-of-Health (SOH) prediction of lithium-ion batteries is crucial in battery management systems. In order to guarantee the safe operation of lithium-ion batteries, a hybrid model based on convolutional neural network (CNN)-bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) and attention mechanism (AM) is developed to predict the SOH of lithium-ion batteries. By analyzing the charging and discharging process of batteries, the indirect health indicator (HI), which is highly correlated with capacity, is extracted in this paper. HI is taken as the input of CNN, and the convolution and pooling operations of CNN layers are used to extract the features of battery time series data. On this basis, a BiLSTM depth model is built in this paper to collect the data coming from CNN forward and reverse dependencies and further emphasize the correlation between the serial data by AM to obtain an accurate SOH estimate. Experimental results based on NASA PCoE lithium-ion battery data demonstrate that the proposed hybrid model outperforms other single models, with the root mean square error (RMSE) of SOH prediction results all less than 0.01, and can accurately predict the SOH of lithium-ion batteries

Investigating circular dorsal ruffles through varying substrate stiffness and mathematical modeling

Circular dorsal ruffles (CDRs) are transient actin-rich ring-like structures which form on the dorsal surface of growth-factor stimulated cells. However, the dynamics and mechanism of formation of CDRs are still unknown. It has been observed that CDR formation leads to stress fibers disappearing near the CDRs. Since stress fiber formation can be modified by substrate stiffness, we examined the effect of substrate stiffness on CDR formation by seeding NIH 3T3 fibroblasts on glass and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates of varying stiffnesses from 20 kPa to 1800 kPa. We found that increasing substrate stiffness increased the lifetime of the CDRs. We developed a mathematical model of the signaling pathways involved in CDR formation to provide insight into this lifetime and size dependence which is linked to substrate stiffness via Rac-Rho antagonism. From the model, increasing stiffness raised mDia1-nucleated stress fiber formation due to Rho activation. The increased stress fibers present increased replenishment of the G-actin pool, therefore prolonging Arp2/3-nucleated CDR formation due to Rac activation. Negative feedback by WAVE-related RacGAP on Rac explained how CDR actin propagates as an excitable wave, much like wave propagation in other excitable medium, e.g., nerve signal transmission.Accepted versio

A Novel Perturbed Spiral Sheathless Chip for Particle Separation Based on Traveling Surface Acoustic Waves (TSAW)

The combination of the new perturbed spiral channel and a slanted gold interfingered transducer (IDT) is designed to achieve precise dynamic separation of target particles (20 μm). The offset micropillar array solves the defect that the high-width flow (avoiding the occurrence of channel blockage) channel cannot realize the focusing of small particles (5 μm, 10 μm). The relationship between the maximum design gap of the micropillar (Smax) and the particle radius (a) is given: Smax = 4a, which not only ensures that small particles will not pass through the micropillar gap, but also is compatible with the appropriate flow rates. A non-offset micropillar array was used to remove 20 μm particles in the corner area. The innovation of a spiral channel structure greatly improves the separation efficiency and purity of the separation chip. The separation chip designed by us achieves deflection separation of 20 μm particles at 24.95–41.58 MHz (κ = 1.09–1.81), at a flow rate of 1.2 mL per hour. When f = 33.7 MHz (κ = 1.47), the transverse migration distance of 20 μm particles is the smallest, and the separation purity and efficiency are as high as 92% and 100%, respectively