Motion Analysis of Live Objects by Super-Resolution Fluorescence Microscopy

Motion analysis plays an important role in studing activities or behaviors of live objects in medicine, biotechnology, chemistry, physics, spectroscopy, nanotechnology, enzymology, and biological engineering. This paper briefly reviews the developments in this area mostly in the recent three years, especially for cellular analysis in fluorescence microscopy. The topic has received much attention with the increasing demands in biomedical applications. The tasks of motion analysis include detection and tracking of objects, as well as analysis of motion behavior, living activity, events, motion statistics, and so forth. In the last decades, hundreds of papers have been published in this research topic. They cover a wide area, such as investigation of cell, cancer, virus, sperm, microbe, karyogram, and so forth. These contributions are summarized in this review. Developed methods and practical examples are also introduced. The review is useful to people in the related field for easy referral of the state of the art

Recent Advances in Morphological Cell Image Analysis

This paper summarizes the recent advances in image processing methods for morphological cell analysis. The topic of morphological analysis has received much attention with the increasing demands in both bioinformatics and biomedical applications. Among many factors that affect the diagnosis of a disease, morphological cell analysis and statistics have made great contributions to results and effects for a doctor. Morphological cell analysis finds the cellar shape, cellar regularity, classification, statistics, diagnosis, and so forth. In the last 20 years, about 1000 publications have reported the use of morphological cell analysis in biomedical research. Relevant solutions encompass a rather wide application area, such as cell clumps segmentation, morphological characteristics extraction, 3D reconstruction, abnormal cells identification, and statistical analysis. These reports are summarized in this paper to enable easy referral to suitable methods for practical solutions. Representative contributions and future research trends are also addressed

Assessment of the therapeutic potential of anti-miR 24 and anti-miR 34 in cardiac diseases

Purpose: To study the therapeutic effects of anti-miR-24 and anti-miR-34 in cardiac diseasesMethods: H9c2 rat cardiomyocyte cell lines were transfected with the synthetic oligonucleotides antimiR-24 and anti-miR-34 which reduced the expressions of miR-24 and miR-34. Proliferation assay, real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunoblotting were carried out to determine the effect of the transfections on cardiomyocyte proliferation, expressions of miR-24 and miR-34, as well as expressions of the target genes, TGF-β1 and E2F3.Results: The proliferation ability of the transfected cells was decreased significantly, relative to negative control. In contrast, percentage apoptosis was higher in the negative control group than in transfected cells. The expression profiles of anti-miR-24 and anti-miR-34 were significantly reduced, when compared to negative control. These results were further confirmed using immunoblot which revealed that the expression of the target genes, TGF-β1 and E2F3, were upregulated in the transfected cells.Conclusion: These results suggest that the synthetic oligonucleotides (anti-miR-24 and anti-miR-34) might be useful in developing therapeutic drug targets for cardiac diseases by suppressing the expressions of miR-24 and miR-34. Keywords: H9c2rat cardiomyocyte miRNA, Anti-miR-24, Anti-miR-34, Cardiac disease

Incorporating a Local Binary Fitting Model into a Maximum Regional Difference Model for Extracting Microscopic Information under Complex Conditions

This paper presents a novel region-based method for extracting useful information from microscopic images under complex conditions. It is especially used for blood cell segmentation and statistical analysis. The active model detects several inner and outer contours of an object from its background. The method incorporates a local binary fitting model into a maximum regional difference model. It utilizes both local and global intensity information as the driving forces of the contour model on the principle of the largest regional difference. The local and global fitting forces ensure that local dissimilarities can be captured and globally different areas can be segmented, respectively. By combining the advantages of local and global information, the motion of the contour is driven by the mixed fitting force, which is composed of the local and global fitting term in the energy function. Experiments are carried out in the laboratory, and results show that the novel model can yield good performances for microscopic image analysis

Characteristics of multiple‐year nitrous oxide emissions from conventional vegetable fields in southeastern China

The annual and interannual characteristics of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from conventional vegetable fields are poorly understood. We carried out 4 year measurements of N2O fluxes from a conventional vegetable cultivation area in the Yangtze River delta. Under fertilized conditions subject to farming practices, approximately 86% of the annual total N2O release occurred following fertilization events. The direct emission factors (EFd) of the 12 individual vegetable seasons investigated ranged from 0.06 to 14.20%, with a mean of 3.09% and a coefficient of variation (CV) of 142%. The annual EFd varied from 0.59 to 4.98%, with a mean of 2.88% and an interannual CV of 74%. The mean value is much larger than the latest default value (1.00%) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Occasional application of lagoon‐stored manure slurry coupled with other nitrogen fertilizers, or basal nitrogen addition immediately followed by heavy rainfall, accounted for a substantial portion of the large EFds observed in warm seasons. The large CVs suggest that the emission factors obtained from short‐term observations that poorly represent seasonality and/or interannual variability will inevitably yield large uncertainties in inventory estimation. The results of this study indicate that conventional vegetable fields associated with intensive nitrogen addition, as well as occasional applications of manure slurry, may substantially account for regional N2O emissions. However, this conclusion needs to be further confirmed through studies at multiple field sites. Moreover, further experimental studies are needed to test the mitigation options suggested by this study for N2O emissions from open vegetable fields

Soil N intensity as a measure to estimate annual N2_{2}O and NO fluxes from natural and managed ecosystems

As natural and managed terrestrial ecosystems are major sources of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N$_{2}$O) and of the atmospheric pollutant nitric oxide (NO), predicting the source strengths of these ecosystems is central to understanding and sustainably managing the N-oxides fluxes. Here we reviewed 82 high temporal resolution datasets on N$_{2}$O and 57 on NO fluxes collected from multi-site and multi-year field measurements, including grasslands, forests, and agricultural crops, to assess whether soil N intensity, that is, the time-weighted sum of soil NH$_{4}$$^{+}$ and/or NO$_{3}$$^{-}$ concentrations, can be used to estimate annual N-oxides emissions. We show that soil N intensity alone can accurately predict annual N$_{2}$O and NO emissions, and that the N$_{2}$O emission strength is exponentially related to the soil inorganic N load. Thus, measuring soil inorganic N loads should improve current estimates of N-oxide emissions from global terrestrial ecosystems, and open possibilities for monitoring N$_{2}$O mitigation efforts

Formulation and Implementation of Energy Efficient Ultraviolet Curing for Photosensitive Resin-Bound Diamond Wire Saws

It is a currently dominant method to use wire saws for cutting silicon material because of its production efficiency and energy efficiency. Diamond wire saws, or fixed abrasive wire saws, have attracted much attention to researchers and engineers due to many advantages, including high cutting efficiency and low environmental pollution. This paper develops a novel diamond wire saw using ultraviolet curing technology. High-strength piano wires and polyethylene wires are selected as wire cores, and photosensitive resin is used as the binder. The problem of wire saw strength is mathematically formulated, and the effective parameters are analyzed. The surface morphology is analyzed for the developed diamond wire saw. A series of cutting experiments with different saws of varying manufacturing parameters are carried out. The slicing performance of such diamond wire saws is evaluated and compared. The experimental results show that the developed saw using the photosensitive resin has a very good performance in slicing silicon ingots. By the comparison between the developed diamond wire saw and the electroplated diamond wire saw, the surface smoothness of the workpiece is better than that by the latter

Improving rice production sustainability by reducing water demand and greenhouse gas emissions with biodegradable films

In China, rice production is facing unprecedented challenges, including the increasing demand, looming water crisis and on-going climate change. Thus, producing more rice at lower environmental cost is required for future development, i.e., the use of less water and the production of fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) per unit of rice. Ground cover rice production systems (GCRPSs) could potentially address these concerns, although no studies have systematically and simultaneously evaluated the benefits of GCRPS regarding yields and considering water use and GHG emissions. This study reports the results of a 2-year study comparing conventional paddy and various GCRPS practices. Relative to conventional paddy, GCRPSs had greater rice yields and nitrogen use efficiencies (8.5% and 70%, respectively), required less irrigation (−64%) and resulted in less total CH(4) and N(2)O emissions (−54%). On average, annual emission factors of N(2)O were 1.67% and 2.00% for conventional paddy and GCRPS, respectively. A cost-benefit analysis considering yields, GHG emissions, water demand and labor and mulching costs indicated GCRPSs are an environmentally and economically profitable technology. Furthermore, substituting the polyethylene film with a biodegradable film resulted in comparable benefits of yield and climate. Overall, GCRPSs, particularly with biodegradable films, provide a promising solution for farmers to secure or even increase yields while reducing the environmental footprint