920 research outputs found
The conception, connotation, and prospects of "Wetland City"
Wetlands can provide human with various kinds of ecosystem services, such as, regulating and storing flood, PuriĀ Fying water body, providing supplementary groundwater, etc.Ā In the future, the demand for urban wetlands'll be increasing greatly, since urban wetlands had been the important compoĀ nent of urban ecological environment.Ā In recent years, the Ramsar convention successively put forward the ' wetland City ' and its certification criteria and workĀ Process, etc.Ā Combining with the historical background of the serious situation of wetland protection and management, rapid growth of UrĀ Banization, functional retrogression of urban wetland, the conception and the connotation of "wetland city" wereĀ , and further researches of "Wetland City" in the were prospected.Ā In ' Wetland City ' would create beneficial conditions to improve the comprehensive competitivenesĀ s city, implementing ecological protection policy, enhance the level of wetland protection and management in CHINA.</B2Ā 0>
Astaxanthin protects against diabetic cardiomyopathy via activation of Akt pathway in H9c2 cells
Purpose: To investigate the cardioprotective action of astaxanthin, and to elucidate its underlying mechanism of action in H9c2 cells.Methods: Cell viability was determined by MTT assay. Intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) were evaluated using 2, 7-dichlorodihydro-fluorescein diacetate (H2DCFDA) staining. Cell apoptosis were assessed by determining caspase activities using colorimetric assay. The apoptotic cells were labelled with annexin V/PI staining and quantified by flow cytometry. Involvement of Akt signaling pathway was verified using western blot.Results: The results revealed that astaxanthin (5 and 10 Ī¼M) dose-dependently reversed high glucoseinduced cell viability loss in H9c2 cells (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001, respectively). Astaxanthin inhibited intracellular ROS production, decreased caspase 3 and caspase 9 activities in high glucose-challenged H9c2 cells in a concentration-related manner (p < 0.05). Besides, astaxanthin markedly inhibited the number of apoptotic H9c2 cells induced by high glucose. Furthermore, western blot analysis demonstrated that astaxanthin upregulated the activation of Akt signaling.Conclusion: Astaxanthin may protect high glucose induced diabetic cardiomyopathy via activation of Akt pathway, and thus deserves further investigation as a cardioprotective agent.Keywords: Astaxanthin, Diabetic cardiomyopathy, Cardiomyocyte, Apoptosis, Akt pathwa
SVCNet: Scribble-based Video Colorization Network with Temporal Aggregation
In this paper, we propose a scribble-based video colorization network with
temporal aggregation called SVCNet. It can colorize monochrome videos based on
different user-given color scribbles. It addresses three common issues in the
scribble-based video colorization area: colorization vividness, temporal
consistency, and color bleeding. To improve the colorization quality and
strengthen the temporal consistency, we adopt two sequential sub-networks in
SVCNet for precise colorization and temporal smoothing, respectively. The first
stage includes a pyramid feature encoder to incorporate color scribbles with a
grayscale frame, and a semantic feature encoder to extract semantics. The
second stage finetunes the output from the first stage by aggregating the
information of neighboring colorized frames (as short-range connections) and
the first colorized frame (as a long-range connection). To alleviate the color
bleeding artifacts, we learn video colorization and segmentation
simultaneously. Furthermore, we set the majority of operations on a fixed small
image resolution and use a Super-resolution Module at the tail of SVCNet to
recover original sizes. It allows the SVCNet to fit different image resolutions
at the inference. Finally, we evaluate the proposed SVCNet on DAVIS and Videvo
benchmarks. The experimental results demonstrate that SVCNet produces both
higher-quality and more temporally consistent videos than other well-known
video colorization approaches. The codes and models can be found at
https://github.com/zhaoyuzhi/SVCNet.Comment: accepted by IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP
VCGAN: Video Colorization with Hybrid Generative Adversarial Network
We propose a hybrid recurrent Video Colorization with Hybrid Generative
Adversarial Network (VCGAN), an improved approach to video colorization using
end-to-end learning. The VCGAN addresses two prevalent issues in the video
colorization domain: Temporal consistency and unification of colorization
network and refinement network into a single architecture. To enhance
colorization quality and spatiotemporal consistency, the mainstream of
generator in VCGAN is assisted by two additional networks, i.e., global feature
extractor and placeholder feature extractor, respectively. The global feature
extractor encodes the global semantics of grayscale input to enhance
colorization quality, whereas the placeholder feature extractor acts as a
feedback connection to encode the semantics of the previous colorized frame in
order to maintain spatiotemporal consistency. If changing the input for
placeholder feature extractor as grayscale input, the hybrid VCGAN also has the
potential to perform image colorization. To improve the consistency of far
frames, we propose a dense long-term loss that smooths the temporal disparity
of every two remote frames. Trained with colorization and temporal losses
jointly, VCGAN strikes a good balance between color vividness and video
continuity. Experimental results demonstrate that VCGAN produces higher-quality
and temporally more consistent colorful videos than existing approaches.Comment: Submitted Major Revision Manuscript of IEEE Transactions on
Multimedia (TMM
Protein Kinase CĪ“ Suppresses Autophagy to Induce Kidney Cell Apoptosis in Cisplatin Nephrotoxicity
Nephrotoxicity is a major adverse effect in cisplatin chemotherapy, and renoprotective approaches are unavailable. Recent work unveiled a critical role of protein kinase CĪ“ (PKCĪ“) in cisplatin nephrotoxicity and further demonstrated that inhibition of PKCĪ“ not only protects kidneys but enhances the chemotherapeutic effect of cisplatin in tumors; however, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we show that cisplatin induced rapid activation of autophagy in cultured kidney tubular cells and in the kidneys of injected mice. Cisplatin also induced the phosphorylation of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), p70S6 kinase downstream of mTOR, and serine/threonine-protein kinase ULK1, a component of the autophagy initiating complex. In vitro, pharmacologic inhibition of mTOR, directly or through inhibition of AKT, enhanced autophagy after cisplatin treatment. Notably, in both cells and kidneys, blockade of PKCĪ“ suppressed the cisplatin-induced phosphorylation of AKT, mTOR, p70S6 kinase, and ULK1 resulting in upregulation of autophagy. Furthermore, constitutively active and inactive forms of PKCĪ“ respectively enhanced and suppressed cisplatin-induced apoptosis in cultured cells. In mechanistic studies, we showed coimmunoprecipitation of PKCĪ“ and AKT from lysates of cisplatin-treated cells and direct phosphorylation of AKT at serine-473 by PKCĪ“in vitro Finally, administration of the PKCĪ“ inhibitor rottlerin with cisplatin protected against cisplatin nephrotoxicity in wild-type mice, but not in renal autophagy-deficient mice. Together, these results reveal a pathway consisting of PKCĪ“, AKT, mTOR, and ULK1 that inhibits autophagy in cisplatin nephrotoxicity. PKCĪ“ mediates cisplatin nephrotoxicity at least in part by suppressing autophagy, and accordingly, PKCĪ“ inhibition protects kidneys by upregulating autophagy
Spin excitations and the Fermi surface of superconducting FeS
High-temperature superconductivity occurs near antiferromagnetic
instabilities and nematic state. Debate remains on the origin of nematic order
in FeSe and its relation with superconductivity. Here, we use transport,
neutron scatter- ing and Fermi surface measurements to demonstrate that
hydro-thermo grown superconducting FeS, an isostructure of FeSe, is a
tetragonal paramagnet without nematic order and with a quasiparticle mass
significantly reduced from that of FeSe. Only stripe-type spin excitation is
observed up to 100 meV. No direct coupling between spin excitation and
superconductivity in FeS is found, suggesting that FeS is less correlated and
the nematic order in FeSe is due to competing checkerboard and stripe spin
fluctuations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 page
Dense Cranial Electroacupuncture Stimulation for Major Depressive DisorderāA Single-Blind, Randomized, Controlled Study
BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggest that electroacupuncture possesses therapeutic benefits for depressive disorders. The purpose of this study was to determine whether dense cranial electroacupuncture stimulation (DCEAS) could enhance the antidepressant efficacy in the early phase of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). METHODS: In this single-blind, randomized, controlled study, patients with MDD were randomly assigned to 9-session DCEAS or noninvasive electroacupuncture (n-EA) control procedure in combination with fluoxetine (FLX) for 3 weeks. Clinical outcomes were measured using the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17), Clinical Global Impression-severity (CGI-S), and Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) as well as the response and remission rates. RESULTS: Seventy-three patients were randomly assigned to n-EA (nā=ā35) and DCEAS (nā=ā38), of whom 34 in n-EA and 36 in DCEAS group were analyzed. DCEAS-treated patients displayed a significantly greater reduction from baseline in HAMD-17 scores at Day 3 through Day 21 and in SDS scores at Day 3 and Day 21 compared to patients receiving n-EA. DCEAS intervention also produced a higher rate of clinically significant response compared to n-EA procedure (19.4% (7/36) vs. 8.8% (3/34)). The incidence of adverse events was similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: DCEAS is a safe and effective intervention that augments the antidepressant efficacy. It can be considered as an additional therapy in the early phase of SSRI treatment of depressed patients. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Controlled-Trials.com ISRCTN88008690
- ā¦