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In recent years, many metabolites specific to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) have been identified thanks to the application of metabolomics techniques. This study aimed to investigate the candidate targets and potential molecular pathways involved in NAFLD in the presence of iron overload. Male Sprague Dawley rats were fed with control or high-fat diet with or without excess iron. After 8, 16, 20 weeks of treatment, urine samples of rats were collected for metabolomics analysis using ultra-performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS). Blood and liver samples were also collected. High-fat, high-iron diet resulted in increased triglyceride accumulation and increased oxidative damage. A total of 13 metabolites and four potential pathways were identified. Compared to the control group, the intensities of adenine, cAMP, hippuric acid, kynurenic acid, xanthurenic acid, uric acid, and citric acid were significantly lower (p < 0.05) and the concentration of other metabolites was significantly higher in the high-fat diet group. In the high-fat, high-iron group, the differences in the intensities of the above metabolites were amplified. Our findings suggest that NAFLD rats have impaired antioxidant system and liver function, lipid disorders, abnormal energy, and glucose metabolism, and that iron overload may further exacerbate these disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ground moving target (GMT) is defocused due to unknown motion parameters in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. Although the conventional Omega-K algorithm (Omega-KA) has been proven to be applicable for GMT imaging, its disadvantages are slow imaging speed, obvious sidelobe interference, and high computational complexity. To solve the above problems, a SAR-GMT imaging network is proposed based on trainable Omega-KA and sparse optimization. Specifically, we propose a two-dimensional (2-D) sparse imaging model deducted from the Omega-KA focusing process. Then, a recurrent neural network (RNN) based on an iterative optimization algorithm is built to learn the trainable parameters of Omega-KA by an off-line supervised training method, and the solving process of the sparse imaging model is mapped to each layer of the RNN. The proposed trainable Omega-KA network (Omega-KA-net) forms a new GMT imaging method that can be applied to high-quality imaging under down-sampling and a low signal to noise ratio (SNR) while saving the imaging time substantially. The experiments of simulation data and measured data demonstrate that the Omega-KA-net is superior to the conventional algorithms in terms of GMT imaging quality and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interrupted sampling repeater jamming (ISRJ) is an attracted coherent jamming method to inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) in the past decades. By means of different jamming parameters settings, realistic dense false targets can be formed around the true target. This paper proposed an adaptive anti-jamming method against ISRJ by adjusting the number of measurements based on compressed sensing (CS). The jamming signal is energy concentrated and segmented sparse in the frequency domain. The measurements number of the reconstructed target signal and the jamming signal is different. According to the restricted isometry property (RIP) condition of CS theory, signal reconstructing performance depends on the number of measurements that varies with the sparsity of the vector. Thus, the jamming signal is suppressed, and the true target signal is retained by altering the measurements number of echo signals. Besides, the two-dimensional (2D) anti-jamming method is derived in detail. The anti-jamming effect is analyzed with different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), sampling rates, and jam-to-signal ratios (JSR). Simulations prove the effectiveness of the proposed anti-jamming method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ground moving target (GMT) is displaced and defocused in conventional synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image due to the residual phase error of non-cooperative GMT motion. In this study, a GMT imaging (GMTIm) method is proposed for highly squint SAR. As the squint angle become large, the displace and defocus effect of the GMT image become severe and the geometry distortion of the GMT image cannot be ignored. The proposed method first deduced the two-dimensional (2-D) frequency domain signal of the GMT and the bulk compression function of the Range Migration Algorithm (RMA) in highly squint SAR. Then GMT ROI data are extracted and a modified minimum entropy algorithm (MMEA) is proposed to refocus the GMT image. MMEA introduces the idea of bisection into the iteration process to converge more efficiently than the previous minimum entropy method. To overcome the geometry distortion of the GMT image, an equivalent squint angle spectrum rotation method is proposed. Finally, to suppress the GMT image sidelobe, the sparse characteristic of GMT is considered and a sparse enhancement method is adopted. The proposed method can realize GMTIm in highly squint SAR where the squint angle reaches to 75 degrees. The PSNR and ISLR of point target in highly squint SAR is close to that in side-looking SAR. The simulated point target data and ship data are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging has developed rapidly in recent years. Although the traditional sparse optimization imaging algorithm has achieved effective results, its shortcomings are slow imaging speed, large number of parameters, and high computational complexity. To solve the above problems, an end-to-end SAR deep learning imaging algorithm is proposed. Based on the existing SAR sparse imaging algorithm, the SAR imaging model is first rewritten to the SAR complex signal form based on the real-value model. Second, instead of arranging the two-dimensional echo data into a vector to continuously construct an observation matrix, the algorithm only derives the neural network imaging model based on the iteration soft threshold algorithm (ISTA) sparse algorithm in the two-dimensional data domain, and then reconstructs the observation scene through the superposition and expansion of the multi-layer network. Finally, through the experiment of simulation data and measured data of the three targets, it is verified that our algorithm is superior to the traditional sparse algorithm in terms of imaging quality, imaging time, and the number of parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) begins with hepatic lipid accumulation, and leptin has anti-steatosis properties. In this study, we investigated the effects of leptin on hepatic steatosis and inflammation through the vagal pathway independently of the inhibitory effect of food intake., Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were matched for food intake after the high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity model and were injected intraperitoneally with leptin or leptin + lidocaine for 6 weeks. Control rats received equal volumes of saline. Adipose tissue mass, NAFLD activity scores (NAS), hepatic inflammatory factors, hepatic triglyceride content and hepatic lipid metabolism-related protein levels were evaluated., Results: Leptin ameliorated HFD-induced hepatic lipid accumulation, improved NAS, and decreased tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1) levels in the presence of matched intake. Lidocaine decreased the phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (p-STAT3) expression in the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) and abrogated the leptin-mediated improvement. Leptin increased hypothalamic phosphorylated Janus kinase 2 (p-JAK2) and p-STAT3 expression, as well as the expression of mitochondrial respiratory chain-related genes. Leptin also increased hepatic phosphorylated adenosine 5'-monophosphate-activated protein kinase (p-AMPK) expression and phosphorylation of its downstream target acetyl Co A carboxylase 1 (ACC1), reducing de novo lipogenesis., Conclusions: Our results suggest that leptin ameliorated hepatic lipid accumulation and inflammation by activating the JAK2-STAT3/AMPK pathway through the vagal pathway independently of the inhibitory effect of ingestion. Leptin has the potential to be a drug for early NAFLD treatment., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)