Cyclic intensive light exposure induces retinal lesions similar to age-related macular degeneration in APPswe/PS1 bigenic mice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Intensive light exposure and beta-amyloid (Aβ) aggregates have been known as a risk factor for macular degeneration and an important component in the pathologic drusen structure involved in this disorder, respectively. However, it is unknown whether Aβ deposition mediates or exacerbates light exposure-induced pathogenesis of macular degeneration. Several studies including the one from us already showed accumulation of Aβ deposits in the retina in Alzheimer's transgenic mice. Using histopathological analysis combined with electroretinographic functional assessment, we investigated the effects of cyclic intensive light exposure (CILE) on the architecture of retina and related function in the APPswe/PS1bigenic mouse.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Histopathological analysis has found significant loss of outer nuclear layer/photoreceptor outer segment and outer plexiform layer along with abnormal hypo- and hyper-pigmentation in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), remarkable choroidal neovascularization (CNV), and exaggerated neuroinflammatory responses in the outer retina of APPswe/PS1 bigenic mice following cyclic intensive light exposure (CILE), whereas controls remained little change contrasted with age-matched non-transgenic littermates. CILE-induced degenerative changes in RPE are further confirmed by transmission electron microcopy and manifest as formation of basal laminar deposits, irregular thickening of Bruch's membrane (BrM), deposition of outer collagenous layer (OCL) in the subretinal space, and vacuolation in the RPE. Immunofluorescence microscopy reveals drusenoid Aβ deposits in RPE as well as neovessels attached which are associated with disruption of RPE integrity and provoked neuroinflammatory response as indicated by markedly increased retinal infiltration of microglia. Moreover, both immunohistochemistry and Western blots detect an induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in RPE, which corroborates increased CNV in the outer retina in the bigenic mice challenged by CILE.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our findings demonstrate that degenerative changes in the outer retina in the APPswe/PS1 bigenic mouse induced by CILE are consistent with these in AMD. These results suggest that an Alzheimer's transgenic animal model with accumulation of Aβ deposits might be an alternative animal model for AMD, if combined with other confounding factors such as intensive light exposure for AMD.</p

Optimization of molecular organization and nanoscale morphology for high performance low bandgap polymer solar cells

Air Force Office of Scientific Research [FA9550-13-1-0101]; National Science Foundation [ECCS-1305087]; Minjiang Scholar Program; Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC)Rational design and synthesis of low bandgap (LBG) polymers with judiciously tailored HOMO and LUMO levels have emerged as a viable route to high performance polymer solar cells with power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) exceeding 10%. In addition to engineering the energy-level of LBG polymers, the photovoltaic performance of LBG polymer-based solar cells also relies on the device architecture, in particular the fine morphology of the photoactive layer. The nanoscale interpenetrating networks composed of nanostructured donor and acceptor phases are the key to providing a large donor-acceptor interfacial area for maximizing the exciton dissociation and offering a continuous pathway for charge transport. In this Review Article, we summarize recent strategies for tuning the molecular organization and nanoscale morphology toward an enhanced photovoltaic performance of LBG polymer-based solar cells

Traffic-Aware Multi-Camera Tracking of Vehicles Based on ReID and Camera Link Model

Multi-target multi-camera tracking (MTMCT), i.e., tracking multiple targets across multiple cameras, is a crucial technique for smart city applications. In this paper, we propose an effective and reliable MTMCT framework for vehicles, which consists of a traffic-aware single camera tracking (TSCT) algorithm, a trajectory-based camera link model (CLM) for vehicle re-identification (ReID), and a hierarchical clustering algorithm to obtain the cross camera vehicle trajectories. First, the TSCT, which jointly considers vehicle appearance, geometric features, and some common traffic scenarios, is proposed to track the vehicles in each camera separately. Second, the trajectory-based CLM is adopted to facilitate the relationship between each pair of adjacently connected cameras and add spatio-temporal constraints for the subsequent vehicle ReID with temporal attention. Third, the hierarchical clustering algorithm is used to merge the vehicle trajectories among all the cameras to obtain the final MTMCT results. Our proposed MTMCT is evaluated on the CityFlow dataset and achieves a new state-of-the-art performance with IDF1 of 74.93%.Comment: Accepted by ACM International Conference on Multimedia 202

High efficiency perovskite solar cells: from complex nanostructure to planar heterojunction

Air Force Office of Scientific Research [FA9550-13-1-0101]Perovskite solar cells have garnered great attention in recent years as promising high performance next-generation solar cells with long-term stability at low cost. Since the seminal work of Miyasaka and others in 2009, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has rapidly increased from 3.8% to 15% over the past four years, exceeding the highest efficiency of conventional organic dye-sensitized DSSCs. Recently, the perovskite has been demonstrated to act successfully as an active layer in simple planar-heterojunction solar cells with no need of complex nanostructured DSSC architectures, leading to an attractively high PCE of 15.4% at a competitive low manufacturing cost. In this Feature Article, we aim to review the recent impressive development in perovskite solar cells, and discuss the prognosis for future progress in exploiting perovskite materials for high efficiency solar cells

Block copolymer/ferroelectric nanoparticle nanocomposites

Nanocomposites composed of diblock copolymer/ferroelectric nanoparticles were formed by selectively constraining ferroelectric nanoparticles (NPs) within diblock copolymer nanodomains via judicious surface modification of ferroelectric NPs. Ferroelectric barium titanate (BaTiO3) NPs with different sizes that are permanently capped with polystyrene chains (i.e., PS-functionalized BaTiO3NPs) were first synthesized by exploiting amphiphilic unimolecular star-like poly(acrylic acid)-block-polystyrene (PAA-b- PS) diblock copolymers as nanoreactors. Subsequently, PS-functionalized BaTiO3 NPs were preferentially sequestered within PS nanocylinders in the linear cylinder-forming polystyrene-block-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA) diblock copolymer upon mixing the BaTiO3 NPs with PS-b-PMMA. The use of PS-b-PMMA diblock copolymers, rather than traditional homopolymers, offers the opportunity for controlling the spatial organization of PS-functionalized BaTiO3 NPs in the PS-b-PMMA/BaTiO3 NP nanocomposites. Selective solvent vapor annealing was utilized to control the nanodomain orientation in the nanocomposites. Vertically oriented PS nanocylinders containing PS-functionalized BaTiO3 NPs were yielded after exposing the PS-b-PMMA/BaTiO3 NP nanocomposite thin film to acetone vapor, which is a selective solvent for PMMA block. The dielectric properties of nanocomposites in the microwave frequency range were investigated. The molecular weight of PS-b-PMMA and the size of BaTiO3 NPs were found to exert an apparent influence on the dielectric properties of the resulting nanocomposites