Photoacoustic microscopy for evaluating a lipopolysaccharideâ induced inflammation model in mice

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148356/1/jbio201800251_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148356/2/jbio201800251.pd

Colonization of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae does not affect subsequent infection and liver transplant outcomes: a retrospective observational cohort study

ObjectiveTo investigate the colonization rate of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-E), subsequent infections by ESBL-E and ESBL-producing gram-negative bacilli (ESBL-GNB), and the effect of ESBL-E colonization on clinical outcomes in liver transplantation (LT) recipients.MethodsThis is a retrospective cohort study that included patients who underwent LT at Shanghai Renji Hospital between July 2016 and December 2017. Rectal swabs from LT patients at the postoperative ICU enrollment were screened anonymously for ESBL-E carriage. Demographics data, laboratory indexes, operative complications, and clinical course information were also obtained. The extent of ESBL-E colonization, the subsequent infection rates of ESBL-E and ESBL-GNB, and the clinical outcomes were compared between ESBL-E colonized and non-colonized patients.ResultsIn total, 496 liver transplant recipients (387 males) were included in this study. ESBL-E colonization was detected in 240 patients (48.4%). There was no significant difference between the rates of ESBL-E infection (5.8 vs. 3.1%, p = 0.143), Ischemia-reperfusion ≥ 3 (27.9 vs. 24.6%, p = 0.403), acute kidney injury (39.6 vs. 38.7%, p = 0.835), acute rejection (2.1 vs. 1.6%, p = 0.664), graft versus host reaction (1.3 vs. 1.2%, p = 0.937), duration of hospitalization (22 vs. 23 days, p = 0.568), 90-day mortality (7.1 vs. 4.7%, p = 0.262) and 1-year mortality (12.9 vs. 9.3%, p = 0.265) in patients with and without ESBL-E colonization. Though the ESBL-GNB infection rate was higher in ESBL-E colonized patients (12.1 vs. 6.6%, p = 0.037), multivariate analysis showed that ESBL-E colonization did not increase the risk of ESBL-GNB infection (Model 1: aOR 1.755, 95% CI: 0.911–3.380, p = 0.093; Model 2: aOR 1.556, 95% CI: 0.761–3.181, p = 0.226). The ESBL-producing bacteria spectrum of colonization was significantly different from that of infections occurring after LT, with only three colonization events leading to infection by the same pathogen identified.ConclusionESBL-E colonization in liver transplant patients is not associated with ESBL-E infection, nor is it a risk factor for post-transplant ESBL-GNB infection. Additionally, ESBL-E colonization does not lead to worse prognoses when compared with non-colonized patients.Clinical trial registrationChinese Clinical Trial Registry, Identifier [ChiCTR2100043034]

Superconductivity in boron-doped carbon nanotube networks

By using the five Angstrom diameter pores of calcined zeolite as the template, we have fabricated boron doped carbon nanotube networks via the chemical vapor deposition method. Raman data indicate the network to comprise segments of interconnected carbon nano tubes. Transport measurements showed a superconducting transition initiating at 40K, with a sharp downturn around 20K to a low resistance state at 2K, accompanied by a low resistance plateau in the current voltage characteristic, fluctuating around zero resistance. Magnetic measurements exhibited the Meissner effect characteristic of thin superconducting wire networks in which the superconducting wire radius is much smaller than the London penetration length. At low magnetic field, the negative diamagnetic susceptibility was observed to persist beyond 200K. The transport and magnetic data are reconciled on the basis of a physical model based on weak links comprising short, one-dimensional superconducting nano tubes, that govern the global transport behavior.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures in the main text, 2 figures in appendices, 37 reference

3D Face Arbitrary Style Transfer

Style transfer of 3D faces has gained more and more attention. However, previous methods mainly use images of artistic faces for style transfer while ignoring arbitrary style images such as abstract paintings. To solve this problem, we propose a novel method, namely Face-guided Dual Style Transfer (FDST). To begin with, FDST employs a 3D decoupling module to separate facial geometry and texture. Then we propose a style fusion strategy for facial geometry. Subsequently, we design an optimization-based DDSG mechanism for textures that can guide the style transfer by two style images. Besides the normal style image input, DDSG can utilize the original face input as another style input as the face prior. By this means, high-quality face arbitrary style transfer results can be obtained. Furthermore, FDST can be applied in many downstream tasks, including region-controllable style transfer, high-fidelity face texture reconstruction, large-pose face reconstruction, and artistic face reconstruction. Comprehensive quantitative and qualitative results show that our method can achieve comparable performance. All source codes and pre-trained weights will be released to the public

AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agents

Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly smart and autonomous, targeting real-world pragmatic missions beyond traditional NLP tasks. As a result, there has been an urgent need to evaluate LLMs as agents on challenging tasks in interactive environments. We present AgentBench, a multi-dimensional evolving benchmark that currently consists of 8 distinct environments to assess LLM-as-Agent's reasoning and decision-making abilities in a multi-turn open-ended generation setting. Our extensive test over 27 API-based and open-sourced (OSS) LLMs shows that, while top commercial LLMs present a strong ability of acting as agents in complex environments, there is a significant disparity in performance between them and OSS competitors. We identify the typical reasons of failures in environments and LLMs, showing that poor long-term reasoning, decision-making, and instruction following abilities are the main obstacles for developing usable LLM agents. Training on code and high quality multi-turn alignment data could improve agent performance. Datasets, environments, and an integrated evaluation package for AgentBench are released at \url{https://github.com/THUDM/AgentBench}.Comment: 55 page

The genome of broomcorn millet

Broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) is the most water-efficient cereal and one of the earliest domesticated plants. Here we report its high-quality, chromosome-scale genome assembly using a combination of short-read sequencing, single-molecule real-time sequencing, Hi-C, and a high-density genetic map. Phylogenetic analyses reveal two sets of homologous chromosomes that may have merged ~5.6 million years ago, both of which exhibit strong synteny with other grass species. Broomcorn millet contains 55,930 proteincoding genes and 339 microRNA genes. We find Paniceae-specific expansion in several subfamilies of the BTB (broad complex/tramtrack/bric-a-brac) subunit of ubiquitin E3 ligases, suggesting enhanced regulation of protein dynamics may have contributed to the evolution of broomcorn millet. In addition, we identify the coexistence of all three C4 subtypes of carbon fixation candidate genes. The genome sequence is a valuable resource for breeders and will provide the foundation for studying the exceptional stress tolerance as well as C4 biology

Fermion-boson many-body interplay in a frustrated kagome paramagnet

Kagome-net, appearing in areas of fundamental physics, materials, photonic and cold-atom systems, hosts frustrated fermionic and bosonic excitations. However, it is extremely rare to find a system to study both fermionic and bosonic modes to gain insights into their many-body interplay. Here we use state-of-the-art scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy to discover unusual electronic coupling to flat-band phonons in a layered kagome paramagnet. Our results reveal the kagome structure with unprecedented atomic resolution and observe the striking bosonic mode interacting with dispersive kagome electrons near the Fermi surface. At this mode energy, the fermionic quasi-particle dispersion exhibits a pronounced renormalization, signaling a giant coupling to bosons. Through a combination of self-energy analysis, first-principles calculation, and a lattice vibration model, we present evidence that this mode arises from the geometrically frustrated phonon flat-band, which is the lattice analog of kagome electron flat-band. Our findings provide the first example of kagome bosonic mode (flat-band phonon) in electronic excitations and its strong interaction with fermionic degrees of freedom in kagome-net materials.Comment: To appear in Nature Communications (2020

Bone mesenchymal stem cell extracellular vesicles delivered miR let-7-5p alleviate endothelial glycocalyx degradation and leakage via targeting ABL2

Abstract Background Endothelial glycocalyx (EG) is an active player and treatment target in inflammatory-related vascular leakage. The bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (bMSCs) are promising potential treatments for leakage; however, the therapeutic effect and mechanism of bMSC on EG degradation needs to be elucidated. Methods EG degradation and leakage were evaluated in both lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced mice ear vascular leakage model and LPS-stimulated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) model treated with bMSCs. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) were extracted from bMSCs and the containing microRNA profile was analyzed. EV and miR let-7-5p were inhibited to determine their function in the therapeutic process. The ABL2 gene was knockdown in HUVECs to verify its role as a therapeutic target in EG degradation. Results bMSCs treatment could alleviate LPS-induced EG degradation and leakage in vivo and in vitro, whereas EVs/let-7-5p-deficient bMSCs were insufficient to reduce EG degradation. LPS down-regulated the expression of let-7-5p while upregulated endothelial expression of ABL2 in HUVECs and induced EG degradation and leakage. bMSC-EVs uptaken by HUVECs could deliver let-7-5p targeting endothelial ABL2, which suppressed the activation of downstream p38MAPK and IL-6, IL-1β levels, and thus reversed LPS-induced EG degradation and leakage. Conclusion bMCSs alleviate LPS-induced EG degradation and leakage through EV delivery of miR let-7-5p targeting endothelial ABL2

Learning a spatially smooth subspace for face recognition

Subspace learning based face recognition methods have attracted considerable interests in recently years, includin