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Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg (ASG) has been used as traditional medicine for centuries. However, the active ingredients from leaves and their anti-inflammatory mechanism are rarely reported. The network pharmacology and molecular docking strategies were applied to explore the potential mechanisms of Benzophenone compounds from the leaves of ASG (BLASG) against inflammation. BLASG-related targets were obtained from the SwissTargetPrediction and PharmMapper databases. Inflammation-associated targets were retrieved from GeneGards, DisGeNET, and CTD databases. Cytoscape software was used to draw a network diagram of BLASG and its corresponding targets. DAVID database was applied for enrichment analyses. A protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed to identify the hub targets of BLASG. Molecular docking analyses were performed by AutoDockTools 1.5.6. Moreover, we used ELISA and qRT-PCR assays to validate the anti-inflammatory effects of BLASG by cell experiments. Four BLASG were extracted from ASG, and corresponding 225 potential targets were identified. PPI network analysis indicated that SRC, PIK3R1, AKT1, and other targets were the core therapeutic targets. Enrichment analyses revealed that the effects of BLASG are regulated by targets associated with apoptosis and inflammation-related pathways. In addition, molecular docking revealed that BLASG combined well with PI3K and AKT1. Furthermore, BLASG significantly decreased the inflammatory cytokines levels and down-regulated PIK3R1 and AKT1 gene expression in RAW264.7 cells. Our study predicted the potential targets and pathways of BLASG against inflammation, which offered a promising strategy to reveal the therapeutic mechanism of natural active components in the treatment of diseases.

The mitochondrial quality control of lung epithelial cells is disturbed during sepsis, which contributes to abnormal mitochondrial function and acute lung injury. Melatonin is one of the primary hormones secreted by the pineal gland, displaying favorable antioxidative actions in sepsis and cardiopulmonary disease. However, the potential roles and molecular basis of melatonin in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated lung epithelial cells have not been explored and reported. Herein, we investigated whether melatonin could protect against sepsis-induced acute lung injury (ALI) and LPS-treated lung epithelial cells through the mitochondrial quality control as well as its possible molecular targets. Wild type and Sirt3 knockout mice were intratracheally instilled with LPS for 12 h to construct an in vivo acute lung injury model. Both A549 lung epithelial cells and primary alveolar type II (AT-II) cells were used to explore the possible roles of melatonin in vitro by incubating with small interfering RNA against Sirt3. To determine the involvement of the melatonin receptor, cells and mice were treated with si Mtnr1b and luzindole. Melatonin pretreatment significantly inhibited pathological injury, inflammatory response, oxidative stress, and apoptosis in LPS-treated lung tissues and LPS-treated lung epithelial cells. Furthermore, melatonin also shifted the dynamic course of mitochondria from fission to fusion, inhibited mitophagy and fatty acid oxidation in LPS-treated lung epithelial cells in vitro and in vivo. However, SIRT3 inhibition abolished the protective roles of melatonin in acute lung injury. Mechanistically, we found that melatonin increased the activity and expression of SIRT3, which further promoted the deacetylation of SOD2 at K122 and K68. More importantly, melatonin exerted pulmonary protection by activating MTNR1B but not MTNR1A during ALI. Collectively, melatonin could preserve the mitochondrial quality control of lung epithelial cells through the deacetylation of SOD2 in a SIRT3-dependent manner, which eventually alleviated sepsis-induced injury, inflammation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis. Thus, melatonin may serve as a promising candidate against ALI in the future.

Severe air pollution in China has become a challenging issue because of its adverse health effects. The distribution of air pollutants and their relationships exhibits spatio-temporal heterogeneity due to influences by meteorological and socioeconomic factors. Investigation of spatio-temporal variations of criteria air pollutants and their relationships, thus, helps understand the current status and further assist pollution prevention and control. Even though many studies have been conducted, relationships among pollutants are non-linear due to complicated chemical reactions and were difficult to model by linear analyses in previous studies. Here, we presented a tri-clustering–based method, the Bregman cuboid average tri-clustering algorithm with I-divergence (BCAT_I), to explore spatio-temporal heterogeneity of air pollutants and their relationships in China. Concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, CO, SO2, NO2, and O3 in 31 provincial cities in 2021 were used as the case study dataset. Results showed that air pollutants except O3 exhibited spatial and seasonal variations, i.e., low in summer in southern cities and high in winter in northern cities. Variations of PMs were more similar to those of CO than other pollutants in southern cities in 2021. Results also found that relationships among these air pollutants were heterogeneous in different regions and time periods in China. Moreover, with the increasing level of NO2 from summer to winter in northern cities, concentrations of O3 first decreased and then increased. This is because the response of O3 to NO2 was negative at the low pollution level due to the titration reaction, which, however, changed to positive when concentrations of NO2 became high.

AimSyndecan-1 (SDC-1) has been shown to have a high predictive value for sepsis development, though uncertainty around these results exists. The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess the prognostic ability of SDC-1 in predicting sepsis-related complications and mortality.MethodsWe searched PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases from January 01, 1990, to March 17, 2021, to identify eligible studies. The search terms used were “SDC-1,” “sepsis,” “severe sepsis,” and “septic shock,” and a meta-analysis was performed using the RevMan 5.4 software.ResultsEleven studies with a total of 2,318 enrolled patients were included. SDC-1 concentrations were significantly higher in the composite poor outcome group [standardized mean difference (SMD) = 0.55; 95% CI: 0.38–0.72; P < 0.001] as well as in deceased patients (SMD = 0.53; 95% CI: 0.40–0.67; P < 0.001), patients with septic shock (SMD = 0.81; 95% CI: 0.36–1.25; P < 0.001), and patients with acute kidney injury (SMD = 0.48; 95% CI: 0.33–0.62; P < 0.001). Statistical significance was also found in the subgroup analysis when stratified by different sepsis diagnostic criteria.ConclusionBaseline SDC-1 levels may be a useful predictor of sepsis-related complications and mortality.Systematic Review Registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021246344, PROSPERO, identifier: CRD42021246344.

Mitochondrial dynamic equilibrium of lung epithelial cells is disturbed during sepsis, which contributes to abnormal mitochondrial function and acute lung injury (ALI). Melatonin is one primary hormone secreted by the pineal gland, displaying favorable antioxidative actions in sepsis and cardiopulmonary disease. However, the potential roles and molecular basis of melatonin in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated lung epithelial cells have not been explored and reported. Herein, we investigated whether melatonin could protect against sepsis-induced ALI and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated lung epithelial cells through mitochondrial dynamic equilibrium as well as its possible molecular targets. Wild type and Sirt3 knockout mice were instilled with LPS intratracheally for 12 hours to construct an in vivo ALI model. And A549 lung epithelial cells were used to explore the possible roles of melatonin in vitro by incubating with small interfering RNA (siRNA) against Sirt3. To figure out the involvement of melatonin receptor, si Mtnr1b and luzindole were used in cells and mice. Melatonin pretreatment significantly inhibited pathological injury, inflammatory response, oxidative stress and apoptosis in LPS-treated lung tissues and LPS-treated lung epithelial cells. Meanwhile, melatonin also shifted the dynamic course of mitochondria from fission into fusion in LPS-treated lung epithelial cells in vivo and in vitro. However, SIRT3 inhibition abolished the protective roles of melatonin in ALI. Mechanistically, we found that melatonin increased the activity and expression of SIRT3, which further promoted the deacetylation of SOD2 at K122 and K68. More importantly, melatonin exerted pulmonary protection by activating MTNR1B but not MTNR1A in ALI. Collectively, melatonin could preserve mitochondrial dynamic equilibrium of lung epithelial cells through the deacetylation of SOD2 in a SIRT3-dependent manner, which eventually alleviated LPS-elicited injury, inflammation, oxidative stress, apoptosis. Thus, melatonin may serve as a promising candidate against ALI in the future.

Additional file 4: Table S1. Summarized data of clinical and pathological parameters from the eligible studies.

Additional file 1. Fig. S1. Erbin deficiency facilitates NLRP3 inflammasome activation and pyroptosis of microglia in vivo and vitro. Fig. S2. Erbin regulates pyroptosis via IRE1α/Xbp1s/Ca2+ in vivo and vitro. Fig. S3. Erbin inhibits pyroptosis via IRE1α/Xbp1s/Ca2+ in BV2 cells and improves synaptic proteins by inhibiting IRE1α/Xbp1s pathway. Fig. S4. LPS/nigericin stimulation resulted in decreased TXNIP protein levels regardless of Erbin knockdown in BV2 cells.

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Funnel plots of MELD score at 24 weeks; ALB levels at 12 weeks, 24 weeks, and 48 weeks; TBIL at 4 weeks and 24 weeks; No asymmetry was observed in the funnel plots. No publication bias was found using Egger’s and Begg’s test.

Additional file 1.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Forest plot for different clinicopathological parameters.

Additional file 3: Figure S3. Forest plot for DFS of different clinicopathological parameters.

Additional file 1. Table S1. Results of subgroup analyses of the effect of MSCs therapy on MELD score. Table S2. Results of sensitivity analyses of the effect of MSCs therapy on MELD score. Table S3. Results of subgroup analyses of the effect of MSCs therapy on ALB level. Table S4. Results of sensitivity analyses of the effect of MSCs therapy on ALB level. Table S5. Results of subgroup analyses of the effect of MSCs therapy on TBIL level. Table S6. Results of sensitivity analyses of the effect of MSCs therapy on TBIL level.

Diverse functions such as decision-making and memory consolidation may depend upon communication between neurons in hippocampus (HP) and prefrontal cortex (PFC). HP replay is a candidate mechanism to facilitate this communication, however details remain largely unknown due to the technical challenges of recording sufficient numbers of HP neurons for replay while also recording PFC neurons. Here we implanted male rats with 40-tetrode drives, split between HP and PFC, during learning of a Y-maze spatial memory task. Surprisingly, we found that in contrast to their non-selectivity for maze arm during movement, a portion of PFC neurons were highly selective for HP replay of different arms. Moreover, PFC neurons' selectivity to HP non-local arm representation during running tended to match their replay arm selectivity and was predictive of future choice. Thus, PFC activity that is tuned to HP activity is best explained by non-local HP position representations rather than HP representation of actual position, providing a new potential mechanism of HP-PFC coordination during HP replay.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTThe hippocampus is implicated in spatial learning while the prefrontal cortex is implicated in decision-making. The question of how the two areas interact has been of great interest. A specific activity type in hippocampus called replay is particularly interesting because it resembles internal exploration of non-local experiences, but is technically challenging to study, requiring recordings from large numbers of hippocampus neurons simultaneously. Here we combined replay recordings from hippocampus with prefrontal recordings, to reveal a surprising degree of selectivity for replay, and a pattern of coordination that supports some conceptions of hippocampocortical interaction and challenges others.

Additional file 1: Etiologies of Pr-AKI in different phases of pregnancy

Additional file 1: Figure S1. 1H-NMR spectrum of CPT-SS-OH in DMSO-d6. Figure S2. 13C-NMR spectrum of CPT-SS-OH in DMSO-d6. Figure S3. 1H-NMR spectrum of CPT-SS-LG in CDCl3. Figure S4. 13C-NMR spectrum of CPT-SS-LG in CDCl3. Figure S5. 1H-NMR spectrum of IR820-NH2 in CD3OD. Figure S6. 13C-NMR spectrum of IR820-NH2 in CD3OD. Figure S7. 1H-NMR spectrum of IR820-SS-CPT in DMSO-d6. Figure S8. 13C-NMR spectrum of IR820-SS-CPT in DMSO-d6. Figure S9. ESI���MS spectrum of IR820-SS-CPT. Figure S10. 1H-NMR spectrum of CPT-CC-OH in CDCl3. Figure S11. 1H-NMR spectrum of CPT-CC-LG in CDCl3. Figure S12. 1H-NMR spectrum of IR820-CC-CPT in CD3OD. Figure S13. ESI���MS spectrum of IR820-CC-CPT. Figure S14. UV���vis���NIR absorbance spectra of IR820, IR820-SS-CPT, and CPT in methanol. Figure S15. Stability of the hydrodynamic particle size of the IR820-SS-CPT NPs. Figure S16. Fluorescence spectra of IR820-SS-CPT NPs (10 ��M) incubated with or without 10 mM GSH for 2 h in PBS. Figure S17. Relative fluorescent intensity of IR820-SS-CPT NPs internalized by 4T1 cells treated with PBS, chlorpromazine, nystatin, amiloride at 37 ��C, and PBS at 4 ��C using flow cytometry analysis. Figure S18. Relative viability of LO2 cells treated with various concentrations of CPT and IR820-SS-CPT NPs for 36 h. Error bars indicate SD (n = 3). Figure S19. In vivo pharmacokinetics profiles of IR820-SS-CPT NPs and free CPT in Sprague���Dawley (SD) rats. Error bars indicate SD (n = 3). Figure S20. Representative H&E staining of the major organs and tumors of the mice treated with PBS and IR820-SS-CPT NPs + NIR.

Additional file 2: Comparison of clinical features and pregnancy outcomes between Pr-AKI patients from low and high altitude

Additional file 2: Comparison of clinical features and pregnancy outcomes between Pr-AKI patients from low and high altitude

Background A semi-supervised model is proposed for extracting clinical terms of Traditional Chinese Medicine using feature words. Methods The extraction model is based on BiLSTM-CRF and combined with semi-supervised learning and feature word set, which reduces the cost of manual annotation and leverage extraction results. Results Experiment results show that the proposed model improves the extraction of five types of TCM clinical terms, including traditional Chinese medicine, symptoms, patterns, diseases and formulas. The best F1-value of the experiment reaches 78.70% on the test dataset. Conclusions This method can reduce the cost of manual labeling and improve the result in the NER research of TCM clinical terms.

This study assesses the suitability of the two-stream microwave emission model in simulating brightness temperature (TBp) and retrieving liquid water content (θliq) at L-band in combination with the four-phase dielectric model for both thawed and frozen soil. Both single (SCA) and double (DCA) channel algorithms are adopted using both ground-based ELBARA-III and spaceborne SMAP measurements conducted in a Tibetan grassland site. The ELBARA-III measured TBp are smaller than the SMAP measurements in the warm season due to a lower value of average θliq presented within the ELBARA-III footprint. The two-stream emission model configured with SMAP vegetation and surface roughness parameterization underestimates both ELBARA-III and SMAP measured TBp at horizontal polarization in the cold season, and overestimates the vertical polarized measurements (TBV) in the warm season. Implementation of a new surface roughness and vegetation parameterization resolves above deficiency, and the simulations capture better large-scale SMAP measurements in comparison to these performed for the ELBARA-III footprint. The dynamics of in situ θliq are better reproduced by retrievals using the SCA based on TBV measurements (SCA-V), whereby the SCA-V retrievals using the SMAP ascending overpass measurements shows the best results with an unbiased root-mean-square error (ubRMSE) of 0.035 m3 m−3 that outperforms the SMAP mission specification.

Simultaneous enhancement of conductivity and mechanical properties for polyaniline/polymer nanocomposite still remains a big challenge. Here, a reverse approach via in situ polymerization (RIP) of vinyl monomers in waterborne polyaniline dispersion was raised to prepare conductive polyaniline (GPANI)/polyacrylate (PMB) interpenetrating polymer (GPANI-PMB) nanocomposite. GPANI/PMB physical blend was simultaneously prepared as reference. The conductive GPANI-PMB nanocomposite film with compact pomegranate-shape morphology is homogeneous, ultraflexible and mechanically strong. With incorporating a considerable amount of PMB into GPANI via the RIP method, only a slight decrease from 3.21 to 2.80 S/cm was detected for the conductivity of GPANI-PMB, while the tensile strength significantly increased from 25 to 43.5 MPa, and the elongation at break increased from 40% to 234%. The water absorption of GPANI-PMB3 after 72 h immersion decreased from 24.68% to 10.35% in comparison with GPANI, which is also higher than that of GPANI/PMB. The conductivity and tensile strength of GPANI-PMB were also much higher than that of GPANI/PMB (0.006 S/cm vs. 5.59 MPa). Moreover, the conductivity of GPANI-PMB remained almost invariable after folding 200 times, while that of GPANI/PMB decreased by almost half. This RIP approach should be applicable for preparing conventional conductive polymer nanocomposite with high conductivity, high strength and high flexibility.

In this study, the feasibility of employing an integrated bioremediation approach in contaminated river sediment was evaluated. Sequential addition of co-substrate (acetate) and electron acceptor (NO3-) in a two-phase treatment was capable of effectively removing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in river sediment. The residual concentration of total PAHs decreased to far below effect range low (ERL) value within 91 days of incubation, at which concentration it could rarely pose biological impairment. The biodegradation of high molecular weight PAHs were found to be mainly occurred in the sediment treated with co-substrates (i.e. acetate or methanol), in which acetate was found to be more suitable for PAHs degradation. The role of co-substrates in influencing PAHs biodegradation was tentatively discussed herein. Additionally, the sediment odorous problem and blackish appearance were intensively addressed by NO3- injection. The results of this study demonstrated that integrating two or more approaches/processes would be a helpful option in sediment remediation. It can lead to a more effective remediation performance, handle multiple contamination issues, as well as mitigate environmental risks caused by one of the single methods.

The application of wireless sensor networks is almost involved in all industries. However, due to the limitations of technology, the wireless sensor has many weaknesses. In the process of application, the sensor nodes can't get accurate data from the environment because of the interference of various factors, then the real fact of the environment won't be reflected, the whole system can't work properly. In this paper, I propose a method called MDRE to evaluate the credibility of sensor nodes which based on the modified D-S evidence theory. Lots of experiments make it clear that the method can evaluate the credibility of the node more accurately.

This study presents tracking control problem for a class of uncertain time-delay electrostatic micro-actuator systems which can be actively driven bidirectionally. By introducing indirect adaptive neural network (NN) algorithm into dynamic surface control (DSC) framework, some assumptions, which the uncertain time-delays must be satisfied in previous works, are removed. Also, by using the tangent barrier function, the proposed controller can ensure the system state tracks a reference trajectory and keeps in a desired region to prevent contact between the movable and fixed electrodes, while not violating the constraint during the whole dynamic response process. In addition, simulation results show that the effectiveness of the proposed results.

The utilization of a telescope with a large single aperture is limited by the manufacturing technique, cost, volume and weight of a monolithic mirror. In order to solve these problems, the technology of the segmented synthetic aperture was introduced. The primary mirror of a large segmented synthetic aperture telescope consists of several segmented mirrors, whose misalignment errors make the wavefront change drastically and influence the MTF of the optical system badly. The wavefront coding technology (WFC) is an innovative technology that joints the optical design and digital image processing together. By adding a phase mask close to the pupil of an optical system and modulating the wavefront, the WFC system becomes very insensitive to defocus and other aberrations based on defocus. The theoretical analysis of characteristics of the WFC system was done in the form of PSF. The application of WFC to a segmented three mirror anastigmat (TMA) was presented. A space telescope with an effective focal length as 40m, a F number as 10, a field of view as 0.5°x0.05° was designed, whose primary mirror consisted of seven segmented mirrors. The influence of defocus and misalignment errors on the telescope was discussed. The imaging process of the WFC system and following image restoration were simulated. As a result, sharp images were obtained and the large segmented synthetic aperture telescope had looser misalignment tolerance and extended depth of focus.

The problem of fault-tolerant control for a class of nonlinear time-delay systems is investigated based on the observer technique. An adaptive observer and adaptive fault-tolerant controller are designed in proposed approach. Firstly, the adaptive observer is utilized to give a real time estimation of the fault. Then, an adaptive fault-tolerant controller is designed according to the estimation of the fault. The asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is proved by Lyapunov theory both in normal case and fault case. Finally, the simulation results of the aircraft example illustrate that this method is effective and feasible.

Increased indiscriminate use of pulmonary artery hypertension targeted drugs has been observed in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) secondary to heart failure. We performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the chronic effects of using phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors to treat patients with

Tantalum and copper layers were deposited on a thermally oxidized Si substrate in a magnetron sputtering process. Nanoindentation was adopted to investigate the hardness and elastic modulus of the Cu/Ta/SiO2/Si multilayer system. The hardness shows an apparent dependence on the film thickness, and decreases with the increase of film thickness, whereas the elastic modulus does not. To reveal the structural change, a trench through the center of a residual indent was cut by a focused ion beam, and then examined using an ion-microscope. TEM analysis showed that delamination occurs at the interface between the Ta and the SiO2 layer of the residual indent, suggesting that the destruction under a relatively large load is due to weak bonding.

Three compounds have been found in the La-Ba-Cu-O system, LaBaCu/sub 2/O/sub 5+//sub x/, La/sub 2/BaCu/sub 2/O/sub 6/, and La/sub 2-//sub x/Ba/sub x/CuO/sub 4/ (xless than or equal to0.1). Single-phase samples of LaBaCu/sub 2/O/sub 5+//sub x/ are studied by powder x-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. Its crystallographic structure is a tetragonal superlattice based on a cubic-perovskite subcell with a = 3.917 A and triple periods. The superconductivity transition in this compound occurs around 15 K.