Effect of mesenchymal stem cell transplantation on behavior and structural changes in myelin in experimental rat autoimmune encephalomyelitis

Purpose: To investigate the effect of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (BM-MSC) transplantation on behavior and structural changes in myelin of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in rats.Methods: Wistar rats were randomly assigned to normal control, EAE, placebo injection treatment, and MSCs treatment. EAE, placebo injection treatment and MSCs treatment groups were further divided into six groups, i.e., 1-day, 3-day, 7-day, 14-day, 21-day, and 28-day post-onset. Changes in the diseasestatus of the rats and structural changes in myelin at different time points were assessed with silver staining.Results: Behavioral changes peaked between 13 to 17 days post-immunization (71.90 % incidence), while disease symptoms peaked between 3 and 5 days after onset, were sustained for about 7 days, and then eased gradually thereafter. The highest therapeutic scores and the entire course of the disease in EAE and placebo treatment groups were not significantly different (p > 0.05). However, in MSC treatment group, these parameters were significantly lower than in the above two groups (p < 0.05). In EAE and placebo treatment groups, myelin sheath lesions were obvious from day 3 to 7 but on day 14, the number of myelin sheath fragments decreased significantly. Recovery at different time points was also better than those in EAE and placebo treatment groups.Conclusion: MSC transplantation shortens the course of EAE, and also reduces its severity. Thus, it has some prospects for use in the management of EAE.Keywords: Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, Autoimmune encephalomyelitis, Transplantation, Myeli

Flexible Visual Recognition by Evidential Modeling of Confusion and Ignorance

In real-world scenarios, typical visual recognition systems could fail under two major causes, i.e., the misclassification between known classes and the excusable misbehavior on unknown-class images. To tackle these deficiencies, flexible visual recognition should dynamically predict multiple classes when they are unconfident between choices and reject making predictions when the input is entirely out of the training distribution. Two challenges emerge along with this novel task. First, prediction uncertainty should be separately quantified as confusion depicting inter-class uncertainties and ignorance identifying out-of-distribution samples. Second, both confusion and ignorance should be comparable between samples to enable effective decision-making. In this paper, we propose to model these two sources of uncertainty explicitly with the theory of Subjective Logic. Regarding recognition as an evidence-collecting process, confusion is then defined as conflicting evidence, while ignorance is the absence of evidence. By predicting Dirichlet concentration parameters for singletons, comprehensive subjective opinions, including confusion and ignorance, could be achieved via further evidence combinations. Through a series of experiments on synthetic data analysis, visual recognition, and open-set detection, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods in quantifying two sources of uncertainties and dealing with flexible recognition.Comment: Accepted by ICCV2

Machine learning prediction of critical transition and system collapse

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to acknowledge support from the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program sponsored by the Basic Research Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and funded by the Office of Naval Research through Grant No. N00014-16-1-2828.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Measuring Significance of Community Structure in Complex Networks

Many complex systems can be represented as networks and separating a network into communities could simplify the functional analysis considerably. Recently, many approaches have been proposed for finding communities, but none of them can evaluate the communities found are significant or trivial definitely. In this paper, we propose an index to evaluate the significance of communities in networks. The index is based on comparing the similarity between the original community structure in network and the community structure of the network after perturbed, and is defined by integrating all the similarities. Many artificial networks and real-world networks are tested. The results show that the index is independent from the size of network and the number of communities. Moreover, we find the clear communities always exist in social networks, but don't find significative communities in proteins interaction networks and metabolic networks.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

4-[1-Acetyl-3-(4-methoxy­phen­yl)-2-pyrazolin-5-yl]phenol

In the title compound, C18H18N2O3, the dihedral angle formed by the benzene rings is 71.75 (4)°. In the crystal structure, centrosymmetrically related mol­ecules are linked into dimers by inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds and π–π stacking inter­actions with centroid–centroid distances of 3.5511 (6) Å

The Individual and Combined Effects of Deoxynivalenol and Aflatoxin B1 on Primary Hepatocytes of Cyprinus Carpio

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and deoxynivalenol (DON) are important food-borne mycotoxins that have been implicated in animal and human health. In this study, individual and combinative effects of AFB1 and DON were tested in primary hepatocytes of Cyprinus carpio. The results indicated that the combinative effects of AFB1 and DON (0.01 μg/mL AFB1 and 0.25 μg/mL DON; 0.02 μg/mL AFB1 and 0.25 μg/mL DON; 0.02 μg/mL AFB1 and 0.5 μg/mL DON) were higher than that of individual mycotoxin (P < 0.05). The activity of AST, ALT and LDH in cell supernatant was higher than that of control group (P < 0.05) when the mycotoxins were exposed to primary hepatocytes for 4 h. The decreased cell number was observed in tested group by inverted light microscopy. The mitochondrial swelling, endoplasmic reticulum dilation and a lot of lipid droplets were observed in primary hepatocytes by transmission electron microscope. Therefore, this combination was classified as an additive response of the two mycotoxins

Aqua­(1H-benzimidazole-κN 3)(pyridine-2,6-dicarboxyl­ato-κ3 O 2,N,O 6)copper(II) 0.75-hydrate

The title complex, [Cu(C7H3NO4)(C7H6N2)(H2O)]·0.75H2O, consists of discrete monomeric units. The CuII atom is coordinated by two carboxyl­ate O atoms and the N atom from a dipicolinate unit and by an N atom from a benzimidazole ligand. The distorted square-pyramidal geometry is completed by a longer axial bond to the O atom of a water mol­ecule. The mol­ecular structure and packing are stabilized by classical O—H⋯O and N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, also including a disordered crystal water molecule

Piperazine-1,4-diium bis­(3,5-dicarboxy­benzoate)

The asymmetric unit of the title salt, C4H12N2 2+·2C9H5O6 −, comprises one half of the piperazine-1,4-diium dication lying on an inversion centre and one 3,5-dicarboxy­benzoate anion. In the crystal, the ions are linked into a two-dimensional framework parallel to (101) by N—H⋯O and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Covert Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy: A New Minimally Invasive Technique

To further improve our developed transumbilical endoscopic surgery (TUES), we developed a completely covert laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). Twelve cases of LC were recruited for this new approach. First, a 10-mm trocar was placed above the umbilicus for inserting the laparoscope. Two 5-mm trocars were then placed near the right and left ends of the superior margin of the suprapubic hair. After the 5-mm 30° laparoscope was shifted to the left suprapubic trocar, the harmonic scalper, electric hook, and grasper were inserted either through the 10-mm umbilical trocar or through the right suprapubic trocar. All gallbladders were successfully removed without intraoperative complications. The mean operating time was 28.5±5.7min (range 20-45min). All patients felt well after surgery and did not need postoperative analgesia. They resumed free oral intake 6h after the procedure. All patients were satisfied with the appearance of the incisions, which were completely hidden in the umbilicus and suprapubic hair. The approach we developed has overcome both external instrument interference around the umbilicus and the loss of triangulation in the operative field. It is relatively simpler than a typical TUES and offers better cosmetic results