A Multi-Robot Cooperation Framework for Sewing Personalized Stent Grafts

This paper presents a multi-robot system for manufacturing personalized medical stent grafts. The proposed system adopts a modular design, which includes: a (personalized) mandrel module, a bimanual sewing module, and a vision module. The mandrel module incorporates the personalized geometry of patients, while the bimanual sewing module adopts a learning-by-demonstration approach to transfer human hand-sewing skills to the robots. The human demonstrations were firstly observed by the vision module and then encoded using a statistical model to generate the reference motion trajectories. During autonomous robot sewing, the vision module plays the role of coordinating multi-robot collaboration. Experiment results show that the robots can adapt to generalized stent designs. The proposed system can also be used for other manipulation tasks, especially for flexible production of customized products and where bimanual or multi-robot cooperation is required.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Key words: modularity, medical device customization, multi-robot system, robot learning, visual servoing, robot sewin

Physical activity enjoyment scale (PAES) during the intervention.

<p>HIIT had significant higher scores than those of MVCT in any week of exercise intervention. *<i>p</i> < 0.05, **<i>p</i> < 0.01.</p

Flow-chart of the study.

<p>Flow-chart of the study.</p

Training data during intervention.

<p>Training data during intervention.</p

Outcome measures before and after five weeks of exercise training.

<p>Outcome measures before and after five weeks of exercise training.</p

MiR-375 Is Epigenetically Downregulated by HPV-16 E6 Mediated DNMT1 Upregulation and Modulates EMT of Cervical Cancer Cells by Suppressing lncRNA MALAT1

<div><p>Epigenetic modulation is an important mechanism of miRNA dysregulation in cervical cancer. In this study, we firstly studied how this mechanism contributes to miR-375 downregulation in cervical cancer cells. Then, we further studied the association between miR-375 and MALAT1 (metastasis associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1) in epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) of the cancer cells. HPV-16 positive SiHa and CaSki cells were used as <i>in vitro</i> model. Our data showed that HPV-16 E6 positively modulated DNMT1 expression in both SiHa and CaSki cells. Knockdown of DNMT1 partly restored miR-375 levels in the cells. The following methylation-specific PCR (MSP) assay and qRT-PCR analysis showed that methylation was common in the promoter region of miR-375 in both SiHa and CaSki cells and demethylation partly restored miR-375 levels in the cells. Therefore, we infer that miR-375 is downregulated partly due to promoter hypermethylation mediated by DNMT1 in HPV-16 positive cervical cancer cells. Our bioinformatics analysis showed that MALAT1 has three putative binding sites with miR-375 and the following dual luciferase assay confirmed two of them. QRT-PCR analysis showed that miR-375 overexpression significantly reduced MALAT1 expression, while MALAT1 overexpression reversely suppressed miR-375 levels. Therefore, we infer that there is a reciprocal regulation between miR-375 and MALAT1 in the cells. In SiHa cells, miR-375 overexpression or MALAT1 siRNA partly restored E-cadherin expression, significantly reduced N-cadherin and also reduced invasion capacity of SiHa cells. Therefore, these results suggest that miR-375 and MALAT1 form a functional axis modulating EMT in cervical cancer.</p></div

Hypobaric Treatment Effects on Chilling Injury, Mitochondrial Dysfunction, and the Ascorbate–Glutathione (AsA-GSH) Cycle in Postharvest Peach Fruit

In this study, hypobaric treatment effects were investigated on chilling injury, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the ascorbate–glutathione (AsA-GSH) cycle in peach fruit stored at 0 °C. Internal browning of peaches was dramatically reduced by applying 10–20 kPa pressure. Hypobaric treatment markedly inhibited membrane fluidity increase, whereas it kept mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP) concentration and cytochrome <i>C</i> oxidase (CCO) and succinic dehydrogenase (SDH) activity relatively high in mitochondria. Similarly, 10–20 kPa pressure treatment reduced the level of decrease observed in AsA and GSH concentrations, while it enhanced ascorbate peroxidase (APX), glutathione reductase (GR), and monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDHAR) activities related to the AsA-GSH cycle. Furthermore, comparative transcriptomic analysis showed that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with the metabolism of glutathione, ascorbate, and aldarate were up-regulated in peaches treated with 10–20 kPa for 30 days at 0 °C. Genes encoding GR, MDHAR, and APX were identified and exhibited higher expression in fruits treated with low pressure than in fruits treated with normal atmospheric pressure. Our findings indicate that the alleviation of chilling injury by hypobaric treatment was associated with preventing mitochondrial dysfunction and triggering the AsA-GSH cycle by the transcriptional up-regulation of related enzymes

Schematic diagram of the regulative networks among MALAT1, miR-375, HPV-16 E6 and DNMT1 in cervical cancer cells.

<p>* Inhibition of E6 by miR-375 and the enhancing effect of E6 on MALAT1 expression were from previously published data.</p

HPV-16 E6 and DNMT1 knockdown increases miR-375 expression in cervical cancer.

<p>A-B. QRT-PCR analysis of miR-375 expression in SiHa and CaSki cells after transfection of HPV-16 E6 siRNA (A) or transfected with DNMT1 siRNA (B). **<i>p</i><0.01.</p

HPV-16 E6 enhances DNMT1 expression in cervical cancer cells.

<p>A-B. Images of western blot analysis of HPV-16 E6 and DNMT1 expression in SiHa and CaSki cells after transfection of HPV-16 E6 siRNA (A) or transfected with pcDNA3.1-E6 expression vector (B). C-D. Quantitation of the relative gray scale of protein bands showed in figure A-B. **<i>p</i><0.01.</p