Chinese herb medicine in augmented reality

Augmented reality becomes popular in education gradually, which provides a contextual and adaptive learning experience. Here, we develop a Chinese herb medicine AR platform based the 3dsMax and the Unity that allows users to visualize and interact with the herb model and learn the related information. The users use their mobile camera to scan the 2D herb picture to trigger the presentation of 3D AR model and corresponding text information on the screen in real-time. The system shows good performance and has high accuracy for the identification of herbal medicine after interference test and occlusion test. Users can interact with the herb AR model by rotating, scaling, and viewing transformation, which effectively enhances learners' interest in Chinese herb medicine

Market investigation of basic parameters for exposure assessment of contact materials for nut-seed food in China

Objective To establish the basic parameters for exposure assessment of contact materials for nut-seed food in China. Methods The contact area method was used to study the contact materials of nut-seed food in this study. Based on the contact area values, ratio of contact areas and unit mass were obtained. Results Through investigation and analysis, 114 kinds of nut-seed food were sampled, and 3 648 related data were obtained. Food contact materials of nut-seed food on the market mainly included aluminum, polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, polystyrene and coating. The average contact area per unit mass or volume (S/V) was 21.29 dm2/kg, the median was 13.40 dm2/kg, P5 was 1.11 dm2/kg, and P95 was 67.46 dm2/kg. Conclusion The basic parameters of nut-seed food contact materials could provide data support for the safety assessment in China

TFEB Probably Involved in Midazolam-Disturbed Lysosomal Homeostasis and Its Induced β-Amyloid Accumulation

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, and β-amyloid (Aβ) plays a leading role in the pathogenesis of AD. The transcription factor EB (TFEB), a main regulating factor of autophagy and lysosome biosynthesis, is involved in the pathogenesis of AD by regulating autophagy-lysosomal pathways. To date, the choice of anesthetics during surgery in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and evaluation of the effects and underlying mechanisms in these patients have rarely been reported. In this study, the HEK293-APP cells overexpressing APP and Hela cells were used. The cells were treated with midazolam at different concentrations and at different times, then lysosomes were stained by lysotracker and their morphology was observed under a fluorescence microscope. The number and size of lysosomes were analyzed using the ImageJ software. The levels of TFEB in the nucleus and APP-cleaved intracellular proteins were detected by nuclear separation and Western Blot. Finally, ELISA was used to detect the levels of Aβ40 and Aβ42 in the cells after drug treatment. We found that 30 μM midazolam decreased the number of lysosomes and increased its size in HEK293 and HeLa cells. However, 15 μM midazolam transiently disturbed lysosomal homeostasis at 24 h and recovered it at 36 h. Notably, there was no significant difference in the extent to which lysosomal homeostasis was disturbed between treatments of different concentrations of midazolam at 24 h. In addition, 30 μM midazolam prevents the transport of TFEB to the nucleus in either normal or starved cells. Finally, the intracellular C-terminal fragment β (CTFβ), CTFα, Aβ40 and Aβ42 levels were all significantly elevated in 30 μM midazolam-treated HKE293-APP cells. Collectively, the inhibition of TFEB transport to the nucleus may be involved in midazolam-disturbed lysosomal homeostasis and its induced Aβ accumulation in vitro. The results indicated the risk of accelerating the pathogenesis of AD by midazolam and suggested that TFEB might be a candidate target for reduction of midazolam-dependent neurotoxicity

Production of Transgenic Pigs Mediated by Pseudotyped Lentivirus and Sperm

Sperm-mediated gene transfer can be a very efficient method to produce transgenic pigs, however, the results from different laboratories had not been widely repeated. Genomic integration of transgene by injection of pseudotyped lentivirus to the perivitelline space has been proved to be a reliable route to generate transgenic animals. To test whether transgene in the lentivirus can be delivered by sperm, we studied incubation of pseudotyped lentiviruses and sperm before insemination. After incubation with pig spermatozoa, 62±3 lentiviral particles were detected per 100 sperm cells using quantitative real-time RT-PCR. The association of lentivirus with sperm was further confirmed by electron microscopy. The sperm incubated with lentiviral particles were artificially inseminated into pigs. Of the 59 piglets born from inseminated 5 sows, 6 piglets (10.17%) carried the transgene based on the PCR identification. Foreign gene and EGFP was successfully detected in ear tissue biopsies from two PCR-positive pigs, revealed via in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Offspring of one PCR-positive boar with normal sows showed PCR-positive. Two PCR-positive founders and offsprings of PCR-positive boar were further identified by Southern-blot analysis, out of which the two founders and two offsprings were positive in Southern blotting, strongly indicating integration of foreign gene into genome. The results indicate that incubation of sperm with pseudotyped lentiviruses can incorporated with sperm-mediated gene transfer to produce transgenic pigs with improved efficiency

A Comprehensive Expression Profile of MicroRNAs in Porcine Pituitary

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of small RNAs that regulate expressions of most genes. miRNAs play important roles in the pituitary, the “master” endocrine organ.However, we still don't know which role miRNAs play in the development of pituitary tissue or how much they contribute to the pituitary function. By applying a combination of microarray analysis and Solexa sequencing, we detected a total of 450 miRNAs in the porcine pituitary. Verification with RT-PCR showed a high degree of confidence for the obtained data. According to the current miRBase release17.0, the detected miRNAs included 169 known porcine miRNAs, 163 conserved miRNAs not yet identified in the pig, and 12 potentially new miRNAs not yet identified in any species, three of which were revealed using Northern blot. The pituitary might contain about 80.17% miRNA types belonging to the animal. Analysis of 10 highly expressed miRNAs with the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) indicated that the enriched miRNAs were involved not only in the development of the organ but also in a variety of inter-cell and inner cell processes or pathways that are involved in the function of the organ

Pattern Sensing Based Digital Predistortion of RF Power Amplifiers under Dynamical Signal Transmission

The 2019 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Conference on Hardware and Systems for 5G and Beyond (IMC-5G), Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America, 15-16 August 2019In this paper, a pattern sensing based digital predistortion (DPD) technique for radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PAs) under dynamical signal transmission is proposed. Unlike conventional methods where real time re-calibration is required, this approach utilizes a low resolution amplitude-modulation to amplitude-modulation (AM/AM) pattern to sense PA characteristics and then quickly select proper DPD coefficients to linearize the PA. Experimental results show that the proposed method can provide an efficient a nd effective w ay to deal with complex dynamic signal transmission scenarios and maintain very good linearization performance, which is very suitable for future 5G applications.Science Foundation IrelandNational Natural Science Foundation of Chin

Street Usage Characteristics, Subjective Perception and Urban Form of Aging Group: A Case Study of Shanghai, China

Against the background of the aging trend in China, construction and regeneration strategies for an aging-friendly built environment are becoming common, led by urban governments, and public street spaces are the focus of these strategies. Exploring such planning and design strategies can help to improve the social welfare of the aging population and meet their diverse needs. Thus, this paper, through analyzing the determinants of the elderly’s needs, examines the relationship between spatial perception and street form, using Shanghai, in China, as a case study. This study contributes to the current literature in two ways: first, it constitutes the first attempt to build a needs hierarchy for aging people in a Chinese developed city; second, our statistical analysis involves large-scale population surveys, which helps us to comprehensively and deeply understand the impact of detailed street forms on the elderly’s various spatial perceptions. Our results indicate that the renovation of street space in different areas of cities can be improved by the control of street form, to meet the diverse needs of the local aging group

Digital Predistortion of Ultra-Broadband mmWave Power Amplifiers with Limited Tx/Feedback Loop/Baseband Bandwidth

A novel digital predistortion (DPD) technique is proposed to linearize ultra-broadband millimeter wave (mmWave) power amplifiers (PAs) by only employing very limited bandwidth resources for the Tx, feedback loop (FB), and baseband (BB). Compared to the conventional methods, the proposed method will comprehensively reduce the bandwidth requirements for the whole system, which will make the linearization affordable for mmWave PAs. To validate the proposed idea, a 4-carrier 320 MHz modulated signal was employed to excite a mmWave PA with the center frequency of 41 GHz. Experimental results have proven that the proposed method can effectively realize the PA linearization with very narrow Tx/FB/BB bandwidth, which largely extends the capability of DPD to the forthcoming 5G era

MiR-125b-2 Knockout in Testis Is Associated with Targeting to the PAP Gene, Mitochondrial Copy Number, and Impaired Sperm Quality

It has been reported that the miR-125 family plays an important role in regulating embryo development. However, the function of miR-125b-2 in spermatogenesis remains unknown. In this study, we used a model of miR-125b knockout (KO) mice to study the relationship between miR-125b-2 and spermatogenesis. Among the KO mice, the progeny test showed that the litter size decreased significantly (p = 0.0002) and the rate of non-parous females increased significantly from 10% to 38%. At the same time, the testosterone concentration increased significantly (p = 0.007), with a remarkable decrease for estradiol (p = 0.02). Moreover, the sperm count decreased obviously (p = 0.011) and the percentage of abnormal sperm increased significantly (p = 0.0002). The testicular transcriptome sequencing revealed that there were 173 up-regulated genes, including Papolb (PAP), and 151 down-regulated genes in KO mice compared with wild type (WT). The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and gene ontology (GO) analysis showed that many of these genes were involved in sperm mitochondrial metabolism and other cellular biological processes. Meanwhile, the sperm mitochondria DNA (mtDNA) copy number increased significantly in the KO mice, but there were no changes observed in the mtDNA integrity and mutations of mt-Cytb, as well as the mt-ATP6 between the WT mice and KO mice. In the top 10 up-regulated genes, PAP, as a testis specific expressing gene, affect the process of spermatogenesis. Western blotting and the Luciferase assay validated that PAP was the target of miR-125b-5p. Intriguingly, we also found that both miR-125b and PAP were only highly expressed in the germ cells (GC) instead of in the Leydig cells (LC) and Sertoli cells (SC). Additionally, miR-125b-5p down regulated the secretion of testosterone in the TM3 cell by targeting PAP (p = 0.021). Our study firstly demonstrated that miR-125b-2 regulated testosterone secretion by directly targeting PAP, and increased the sperm mtDNA copy number to affect semen quality. The study indicated that miR-125b-2 had a positive influence on the reproductive performance of animals by regulating the expression of the PAP gene, and could be a potential drugs and diagnostic target for male infertility

Enhanced Proliferation of Porcine Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Induced by Extracellular Calcium is Associated with the Activation of the Calcium-Sensing Receptor and ERK Signaling Pathway

Porcine bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (pBMSCs) have the potential for application in regenerative medicine. This study aims to investigate the effects of extracellular calcium (Ca2+o) on pBMSCs proliferation and to explore the possible underlying mechanisms. The results demonstrated that 4 mM Ca2+o significantly promoted pBMSCs proliferation by reducing the G0/G1 phase cell percentage and by increasing the S phase cell proportion and the proliferation index of pBMSCs. Accordingly, Ca2+o stimulated the expression levels of proliferative genes such as cyclin A2, cyclin D1/3, cyclin E2, and PCNA and inhibited the expression of p21. In addition, Ca2+o resulted in a significant elevation of intracellular calcium and an increased ratio of p-ERK/ERK. However, inhibition of calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) by its antagonist NPS2143 abolished the aforementioned effects of Ca2+o. Moreover, Ca2+o-induced promotion of pBMSCs proliferation, the changes of proliferative genes expression levels, and the activation of ERK1/2 signaling pathway were effectively blocked by U0126, a selective ERK kinase inhibitor. In conclusion, our findings provided evidence that the enhanced pBMSCs proliferation in response to Ca2+o was associated with the activation of CaSR and ERK1/2 signaling pathway, which may be useful for the application of pBMSCs in future clinical studies aimed at tissue regeneration and repair