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Magnetic reconnection occurs ubiquitously in the universe and is often invoked to explain fast energy release and particle acceleration in high-energy astrophysics. The study of relativistic magnetic reconnection in the magnetically dominated regime has surged over the past two decades, revealing the physics of fast magnetic reconnection and nonthermal particle acceleration. Here we review these recent progresses, including the magnetohydrodynamic and collisionless reconnection dynamics as well as particle energization. The insights in astrophysical reconnection strongly connect to the development of magnetic reconnection in other areas, and further communication is greatly desired. We also provide a summary and discussion of key physics processes and frontier problems, toward a better understanding of the roles of magnetic reconnection in high-energy astrophysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We aimed to evaluate whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) could be a risk factor for breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) associated with axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Patients and methods: A total of 596 patients with cT0-4N0-3M0 breast cancer who underwent ALND and chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed between March 2012 and March 2022. NAC was administered in 188 patients (31.5%), while up-front surgery in 408 (68.5%). Univariate and multivariable Cox regression analyses were performed to determine whether NAC was an independent risk factor for BCRL. With propensity score matching (PSM), the NAC group and up-front surgery group were matched 1:1 by age, body mass index (BMI), molecular subtypes, type of breast surgery, and the number of positive lymph nodes. Kaplan–Meier survival analyses were performed for BCRL between groups before and after PSM. Subgroup analyses were conducted to explore whether NAC differed for BCRL occurrence in people with different characteristics. Results: At a median follow-up of 36.3 months, 130 patients (21.8%) experienced BCRL [NAC, 50/188 (26.60%) vs. up-front surgery, 80/408 (19.61%); P = 0.030]. Multivariable analysis identified that NAC [hazard ratio, 1.503; 95% CI (1.03, 2.19); P = 0.033] was an independent risk factor for BCRL. In addition, the hormone receptor-negative/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HR−/HER2−) subtype, breast-conserving surgery (BCS), and increased positive lymph nodes significantly increased BCRL risk. After PSM, NAC remained a risk factor for BCRL [hazard ratio, 1.896; 95% CI (1.18, 3.04); P = 0.007]. Subgroup analyses showed that NAC had a consistent BCRL risk in most clinical subgroups. Conclusion: NAC receipt has a statistically significant increase in BCRL risk in patients with ALND. These patients should be closely monitored and may benefit from early BCRL intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of depression; however, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Apart from the disordered circadian rhythm in animal models and patients with depression, dysfunction of clock genes has been reported to be involved with the progress of inflammation. This study aimed to investigate the role of circadian clock genes, especially brain and muscle ARNT-like 1 (Bmal1), in the linkage between inflammation and depression. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-challenged rats and BV2 cells were used in the present study. Four intraperitoneal LPS injections of 0.5 mg/kg were administered once every other day to the rats, and BV2 cells were challenged with LPS for 24 h at the working concentration of 1 mg/L, with or without the suppression of Bmal1 via small interfering RNA. The results showed that LPS could successfully induce depression-like behaviors and an “inflammatory storm” in rats, as indicated by the increased immobility time in the forced swimming test and the decreased saccharin preference index in the saccharin preference test, together with hyperactivity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, hyperactivation of astrocyte and microglia, and increased peripheral and central abundance of tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin 6, and C-reactive protein. Moreover, the protein expression levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 1, Copine6, and Synaptotagmin1 (Syt-1) decreased in the hippocampus and hypothalamus, whereas the expression of triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 increased. Interestingly, the fluctuation of temperature and serum concentration of melatonin and corticosterone was significantly different between the groups. Furthermore, protein expression levels of the circadian locomotor output cycles kaput, cryptochrome 2, and period 2 was significantly reduced in the hippocampus of LPS-challenged rats, whereas Bmal1 expression was significantly increased in the hippocampus but decreased in the hypothalamus, where it was co-located with neurons, microglia, and astrocytes. Consistently, apart from the reduced cell viability and increased phagocytic ability, LPS-challenged BV2 cells presented a similar trend with the changed protein expression in the hippocampus of the LPS model rats. However, the pathological changes in BV2 cells induced by LPS were reversed after the suppression of Bmal1. These results indicated that LPS could induce depression-like pathological changes, and the underlying mechanism might be partly associated with the imbalanced expression of Bmal1 and its regulated dysfunction of the circadian rhythm. Conclusions In conclusion, our results indicated that LPS could induce depression-like behaviors and an “inflammatory storm” in vivo, activate microglia in vitro, together with a disruption of synaptic plasticity and circadian rhythm. This mechanism may be involved in the imbalanced expression of Bmal1. Our results can help uncover a novel clock-immunological mechanism of neuroinflammation-induced depression and shed light on the development of new effective pharmacotherapies for depression [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemically modified graphene is commonly used as a desensitizer and combustion catalyst for energetic composites. However, the interaction between polar functional groups on chemically modified graphene and energetic ionic materials has not been explored systematically. Herein, we use graphene oxide (GO) with different oxidation degrees and dihydroxylammonium 5,5′-bistetrazole-1,1′-diolate (TKX-50) as experimental systems to investigate the effect of oxygen-containing functional groups of GO on the pyrolysis mechanism of energetic ionic materials. The experimental results show that the thermal decomposition of TKX-50 is affected by different oxidation degrees of GO, among which the highly oxidized GO (HGO) has the greatest effect. The thermal decomposition temperature of GO/TKX-50 composites decrease with the increase of oxygen-containing group content. The decomposition products of GO/TKX-50 composites are consistent with those of TKX-50, but the content of gas products changed. We argue that the interaction between the oxygen-containing groups of GO and TKX-50 controls the pyrolysis mechanism by promoting the transfer of protons in hydroxyl, (NH3OH)+, and (NH4)+, at least in the context of oxygen-containing functional groups. This work provides a route to manipulate the thermal decomposition temperature and gaseous product of the final compound through functional group content, which is helpful to study the polar functional group of chemically modified graphene for the modification of energetic materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particles are accelerated to very high, non-thermal energies during explosive energy-release phenomena in space, solar, and astrophysical plasma environments. While it has been established that magnetic reconnection plays an important role in the dynamics of Earth's magnetosphere, it remains unclear how magnetic reconnection can further explain particle acceleration to non-thermal energies. Here we review recent progress in our understanding of particle acceleration by magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetosphere. With improved resolutions, recent spacecraft missions have enabled detailed studies of particle acceleration at various structures such as the diffusion region, separatrix, jets, magnetic islands (flux ropes), and dipolarization front. With the guiding-center approximation of particle motion, many studies have discussed the relative importance of the parallel electric field as well as the Fermi and betatron effects. However, in order to fully understand the particle acceleration mechanism and further compare with particle acceleration in solar and astrophysical plasma environments, there is a need for further investigation of, for example, energy partition and the precise role of turbulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Natural scene images contain a large number of repetitive structures and irregular contours, which increases the difficulty of stitching. Traditional image stitching methods are highly dependent on feature extraction and matching results, resulting in a large number of matching errors when stitching natural images. In recent years, some scholars have proposed several deep learning-based image stitching networks. However, the structure of the network has a great influence on the stitching results. Due to the limitation of the receptive field of the convolution kernel, the deep feature extraction process often requires the stacking of multiple convolutional layers, resulting in redundant network structures. To address this issue, we propose an isotropic network architecture (VIGCN), which segments the image into labels and transforms the graph structure through patch embedding, and then utilizes the GCN structure to capture global correlations instead of deep convolutional layers. We combine supervised and unsupervised loss functions to train the network on real natural image datasets, and the results show that the model exhibits good performance in both visible and infrared image domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2)—entry receptor of SARS-CoV-2—and its homologue, the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), play a pivotal role in maintaining cardiovascular homeostasis. Potential changes in ACE2 expression levels and dynamics after SARS-CoV-2 infection have been barely investigated. The aim of this study was to develop an ACE2-targeting imaging agent as a noninvasive imaging tool to determine ACE2 regulation. Methods: DOTA-DX600, NODAGA-DX600 and HBED-CC-DX600 were obtained through custom synthesis and labeled with gallium-67 (T1/2 = 3.26 d) as a surrogate radioisotope for gallium-68 (T1/2 = 68 min). ACE2- and ACE-transfected HEK cells were used for the in vitro evaluation of these radiopeptides. The in vivo tissue distribution profiles of the radiopeptides were assessed in HEK-ACE2 and HEK-ACE xenografted mice and imaging studies were performed using SPECT/CT. Results: The highest molar activity was obtained for [67Ga]Ga-HBED-CC-DX600 (60 MBq/nmol), whereas the labeling efficiency of the other peptides was considerably lower (20 MBq/nmol). The radiopeptides were stable over 24 h in saline (> 99% intact peptide). All radiopeptides showed uptake in HEK-ACE2 cells (36–43%) with moderate ACE2-binding affinity (KD value: 83–113 nM), but no uptake in HEK-ACE cells (< 0.1%) was observed. Accumulation of the radiopeptides was observed in HEK-ACE2 xenografts (11–16% IA/g) at 3 h after injection, but only background signals were seen in HEK-ACE xenografts (< 0.5% IA/g). Renal retention was still high 3 h after injection of [67Ga]Ga-DOTA-DX600 and [67Ga]Ga-NODAGA-DX600 (~ 24% IA/g), but much lower for [67Ga]Ga-HBED-CC-DX600 (7.2 ± 2.2% IA/g). SPECT/CT imaging studies confirmed the most favorable target-to-nontarget ratio for [67Ga]Ga-HBED-CC-DX600. Conclusions: This study demonstrated ACE2 selectivity for all radiopeptides. [67Ga]Ga-HBED-CC-DX600 was revealed as the most promising candidate due to its favorable tissue distribution profile. Importantly, the HBED-CC chelator enabled 67Ga-labeling at high molar activity, which would be essential to obtain images with high signal-to-background contrast to detect (patho)physiological ACE2 expression levels in patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: Large-area production of self-standing graphene nanofilm (~ 20 cm) through a clean 'substrate replacement' strategy. Realizing highly crystalline graphene nanofilms without micro-gasbags by introducing polymers. The graphene nanofilms demonstrate a solid light–matter interaction (photoelectric conversion in the mid-infrared and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding in X-band) with performance beyond state-of-the-art graphene/silicon diodes and EMI materials. Bulk graphene nanofilms feature fast electronic and phonon transport in combination with strong light–matter interaction and thus have great potential for versatile applications, spanning from photonic, electronic, and optoelectronic devices to charge-stripping and electromagnetic shielding, etc. However, large-area flexible close-stacked graphene nanofilms with a wide thickness range have yet to be reported. Here, we report a polyacrylonitrile-assisted 'substrate replacement' strategy to fabricate large-area free-standing graphene oxide/polyacrylonitrile nanofilms (lateral size ~ 20 cm). Linear polyacrylonitrile chains-derived nanochannels promote the escape of gases and enable macro-assembled graphene nanofilms (nMAGs) of 50–600 nm thickness following heat treatment at 3,000 °C. The uniform nMAGs exhibit 802–1,540 cm2 V−1 s−1 carrier mobility, 4.3–4.7 ps carrier lifetime, and > 1,581 W m−1 K−1 thermal conductivity (nMAG-assembled 10 µm-thick films, mMAGs). nMAGs are highly flexible and show no structure damage even after 1.0 × 105 cycles of folding–unfolding. Furthermore, nMAGs broaden the detection region of graphene/silicon heterojunction from near-infrared to mid-infrared and demonstrate higher absolute electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding effectiveness than state-of-the-art EMI materials of the same thickness. These results are expected to lead to the broad applications of such bulk nanofilms, especially as micro/nanoelectronic and optoelectronic platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of human early development is severely hampered by limited access to embryonic tissues. Due to their close evolutionary relationship with humans, nonhuman primates are often used as surrogates to understand human development but currently suffer from a lack of in vivo datasets, especially from gastrulation to early organogenesis during which the major embryonic cell types are dynamically specified. To fill this gap, we collected six Carnegie stage 8–11 cynomolgus monkey (Macaca fascicularis) embryos and performed in-depth transcriptomic analyses of 56,636 single cells. Our analyses show transcriptomic features of major perigastrulation cell types, which help shed light on morphogenetic events including primitive streak development, somitogenesis, gut tube formation, neural tube patterning and neural crest differentiation in primates. In addition, comparative analyses with mouse embryos and human embryoids uncovered conserved and divergent features of perigastrulation development across species—for example, species-specific dependency on Hippo signalling during presomitic mesoderm differentiation—and provide an initial assessment of relevant stem cell models of human early organogenesis. This comprehensive single-cell transcriptome atlas not only fills the knowledge gap in the nonhuman primate research field but also serves as an invaluable resource for understanding human embryogenesis and developmental disorders.In-depth transcriptomic analyses of 56,636 single cells from monkey embryos revealed transcriptional features of major perigastrulation cell types, and comparative analyses with mouse embryos and human embryoids uncovered conserved and divergent features of perigastrulation development across species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To prevent the migration of energetic plasticizers in propellants, Graphene oxide (GO) was added as filler to the ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) insulation composite by mechanical mixing. Then, the anti-migration performance was analyzed by investigating the diffusion of dioctyl sebacate using immersion tests at different temperatures. The diffusion coefficient is in the range of 10–14-10–12 m2/s, and the migration activation energy is about 60 kJ/mol. Compared with pure EPDM, the anti-migration effects of EPDM/GO-5 are increased by 15.68%, 9.23%, 8.81%, and 5.69% at 25 °C, 40 °C, 60 °C, and 80 °C, respectively. Moreover, the composite shows a 58% increase in tensile strength and a 132% improvement in the elongation at break by the addition of 5 phr filler of GO. Meanwhile, the thermal stability of the EPDM insulation is also improved with the addition of GO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is a complication of sepsis currently lacking effective therapeutic options. Excessive inflammatory responses are emerging triggers of coagulopathy during sepsis, but the interplay between the immune system and coagulation are not fully understood. Here we utilize a murine model of intraperitoneal lipopolysaccharide stimulation and show neutrophils in the circulation mitigate the occurrence of DIC, preventing subsequent septic death. We show circulating neutrophils release extracellular vesicles containing mitochondria, which contain superoxide dismutase 2 upon exposure to lipopolysaccharide. Extracellular superoxide dismutase 2 is necessary to induce neutrophils' antithrombotic function by preventing endothelial reactive oxygen species accumulation and alleviating endothelial dysfunction. Intervening endothelial reactive oxygen species accumulation by antioxidants significantly ameliorates disseminated intravascular coagulation improving survival in this murine model of lipopolysaccharide challenge. These findings reveal an interaction between neutrophils and vascular endothelium which critically regulate coagulation in a model of sepsis and may have potential implications for the management of disseminated intravascular coagulation. Disseminated intravascular coagulation is associated with sepsis and a number of inflammatory components have been linked to sepsis associated coagulopathy. Here the authors show neutrophils can prevent lethal coagulopathy via the production of extracellular vesicles that carry superoxide dismutase 2 in a murine model of lipopolysaccharide induced sepsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A geo-localization method is proposed for military and civilian applications, which is used when no global navigation satellite system (GNSS) information is available. The open graphics library (OpenGL) is used to build a three-dimensional geographic model of the test area using digital elevation model (DEM) data, and the skyline can thus be extracted with the model to form a database. Then, MultiSkip DeepLab (MS-DeepLab), a fully convolutional semantic segmentation network with multiple skip structures, is proposed to extract the skyline from the query image. Finally, a matching model based on convolutional neural network (CNN) feature is adopted to calculate the similarity between the skyline features of the query image and the DEM database to realize automatic geo-localization. The experiments are conducted at a 202.6 km2 test site in north-eastern Changsha, China. 50 test points are selected to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and an excellent result with an average positioning error of 49.29 m is obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: We aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on emergency and cardiovascular disease–related calls in Hangzhou, China. Methods: We conducted a single-center retrospective study, collecting data on emergency calls to the Hangzhou Emergency Center (HEC) during the COVID-19 epidemic (January 20, 2020, to March 15, 2020). Data were compared with the same period in 2019. Results: Compared to 2019, the number of emergency calls has dropped by 21.63%, ambulance calls by 29.02%, rescue calls by 22.57%, and cardiovascular disease-related emergency calls by 32.86%. The numbers of emergency, ambulance, and rescue calls in 2020 were significantly lower than in 2019. Conclusions: During the COVID-19 epidemic in Hangzhou, the numbers of emergency and cardiovascular disease–related calls have decreased significantly. These results point to a severe social problem that requires the attention of the medical community and the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a novel network called Dilated Multi-Scale Fusion network (DMSF) for point cloud analysis in this paper. The network aims to integrate different scales to enhance the feature of point cloud, and each scale feature is obtained by Dilated K − Nearest Neighbor (DKNN) operation, which significantly enhances the size of the receptive field of point cloud. Experimental results show that compared with other state-of-art methods, the proposed network can obtain comparable or even better results in the representative public dataset for point cloud classification and segmentation tasks. Specifically, the oAcc reached 93.6 on the ModelNet40 classification dataset, and the mIoU reached 67.2 on the S3DIS segmentation dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contribution, magnesium hydroxides and graphene oxide were synergistically combined to prepare the chip-in-flakes nanohybrid (Mg(OH)2/GO, MGO) via one-step hydrothermal approach for improving fire retardancy of polypropylene. Various characterizations confirmed its composition, structure and morphology. The fire-retardant evaluations illustrated that limiting oxygen index (LOI) of PP composite with 50 wt.% MGO was improved to 27.8% with UL-94 V-0 rating compared with virgin PP (17.4%, no rating). In parallel, the peak heat release rate, total heat release and smoke production rate of PP/MGO (PMG) were reduced by 80.5%, 30.8% and 79.4% respectively. The mechanism investigation uncovered that the conspicuous fire retardancy and smoke suppression were credited to the synergistic effect between GO and Mg(OH)2 toward the optimized physical barrier. Furthermore, dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) disclosed the highest modulus (8043 MPa) at -71 °C relative to 3236 MPa of pure PP. In viewpoint, hierarchical nano-flakes with synergistic effect offered an effective approach for the fire-safe polymer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is still a lack of competing risk analysis of patients with papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC) following surgery. We performed the cumulative incidence function (CIF) to estimate the absolute risks of cancer-specific mortality (CSM) and other-cause mortality (OCM) of pRCC over time, and constructed a nomogram predicting the probability of 2-, 3- and 5-year CSM based on competing risk regression. A total of 5993 pRCC patients who underwent nephrectomy between 2010 and 2016 were identified from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The 2-, 3-, 5-year CSM rates were 3.2%, 4.4% and 6.5%, respectively, and that of OCM were 3.2%, 5.0% and 9.3%, respectively. The estimates of 5-year cumulative mortality were most pronounced among patients aged > 75 years in OCM (17.0%). On multivariable analyses, age, tumor grade, T stage, N stage, and with or without bone, liver and lung metastases were identified as independent predictors of CSM following surgery and were integrated to generate the nomogram. The nomogram achieved a satisfactory discrimination with the AUCt of 0.730 at 5-year, and the calibration curves presented impressive agreements. Taken together, age-related OCM is a significant portion of all-cause mortality in elderly patients and our nomogram can be used for decision-making and patient counselling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and other eye diseases have seriously threatened people's visual health. Whether it is clinical diagnosis or computer-aided diagnosis, the accurate segmentation of the retinal tissues and lesion areas (optic disc (OD), optic cup (OC), retinal blood vessels) are indispensable. In this paper, we propose a novel network MES-Net for the retinal image segmentation tasks. MES-Net adopts U-Net as the overall architecture, including three proposed modules: multi-scale feature pre-extraction (MFP) block, encoder spatial cascading encoding (ESCE) path, and decoder input SE block. We use MFP block to extract multi-scale semantic features from input images with different resolutions, and take ESCE path to extract deep features and improve the feature reuse rate. SE block can weaken the semantic gaps between the encoder paths and the decoder paths. For retinal vessel segmentation, the accuracy values of MES-Net tested on the DRIVE, STARE and CHASE datasets are 0.9667, 0.9724, and 0.9697, and AUC is 0.9853, 0.9897, and 0.9869, respectively. For OC and OD simultaneous segmentation, the overlap coefficients of OC and OD tested on the ORIGA dataset are 0.818 and 0.948, and the accuracy are 0.935 and 0.977, respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed method significantly improves the performance of the original U-Net and is superior to other state-of-the-art methods. Thus, it can be applied to retinal image segmentation tasks, and many other medical image segmentation problems can also benefit from the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigations of brain structure in schizophrenia using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have identified variations in regional grey matter (GM) volume throughout the brain but the results are mixed. This study aims to investigate whether the inconsistent voxel-based morphometry (VBM) findings in schizophrenia are due to the use of different software packages. T1 MRI images were obtained from 86 first-episode schizophrenia (FESZ) patients and 86 age- and gender-matched Healthy controls (HCs). VBM analysis was carried out using FMRIB software library (FSL) 5.0 and statistical parametric mapping 8 (SPM8). All images were processed using the default parameter settings as provided by these software packages. FSL-VBM revealed widespread GM volume reductions in FESZ patients compared with HCs, however, for SPM-VBM, only increased and circumscribed GM volume changes were found, both software revealed increased GM volume within cerebellum. Significant correlations between Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and GM volume were mainly found in frontal regions. Algorithms of GM tissue segmentation, image registration and statistical strategies might contribute to these disparate results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in China at the end of 2019, the world has experienced a large-scale epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2. The epidemiological and clinical course of COVID-19 patients has been reported, but there have been few analyses about the characteristics, predictive risk factors, and outcomes of critical patients. In this single-center retrospective case–control study, 90 adult inpatients hospitalized at Tongji Hospital (Wuhan, China) were included. Demographic, clinical, laboratory tests, and treatment data were obtained and compared between critical and non-critical patients. We found that compared with non-critical patients, the critical patients had higher SOFA score and qSOFA scores. Critical patients had lower lymphocyte and platelet count, elevated D-dimer, decreased fibrinogen, and elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), and interleukin-6(IL-6). More critical patients received treatment including antibiotics, anticoagulation, corticosteroid, and oxygen therapy than non-critical ones. Multivariable regression showed higher qSOFA score and elevation of IL-6 were related to critical patients. Antibiotic usage and anticoagulation were associated with decreased in-hospital mortality. And critical grouping contributed greatly to in-hospital death. Critical COVID-19 patients have a more severe clinical course. qSOFA score and elevation of IL-6 are risk factors for critical condition. Non-critical grouping, positive antibiotic application, and anticoagulation may be beneficial for patient survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glaucoma is a chronic disease that threatens eye health and can cause permanent blindness. Since there is no cure for glaucoma, early screening and detection are crucial for the prevention of glaucoma. Therefore, a novel method for automatic glaucoma screening that combines clinical measurement features with image-based features is proposed in this paper. To accurately extract clinical measurement features, an improved UNet++ neural network is proposed to segment the optic disc and optic cup based on region of interest (ROI) simultaneously. Some important clinical measurement features, such as optic cup to disc ratio, are extracted from the segmentation results. Then, the increasing field of view (IFOV) feature model is proposed to fully extract texture features, statistical features, and other hidden image-based features. Next, we select the best feature combination from all the features and use the adaptive synthetic sampling approach to alleviate the uneven distribution of training data. Finally, a gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) classifier for glaucoma screening is trained. Experimental results based on the ORIGA dataset show that the proposed algorithm achieves excellent glaucoma screening performance with sensitivity of 0.894, accuracy of 0.843, and AUC of 0.901, which is superior to other existing methods. Graphical abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fiber stretching process plays the key role in the process of fiber production and its effects is measured by the stretching ratio. The stretching ratio is determined by the relative speed of the winding roller. The stretching ratio has impact on the performance of the final fiber filament and production directly. Focused on the importance of the stretching ratio, the support vector regression (SVR) predictive model, called nonlinear auto-regressive exogenous model, for the fiber stretching rate based on existing industry data is proposed. Furthermore, the fruit fly optimization algorithm inspired by immune mechanism and cooperation functional (IFOA) is presented, and then is used to optimize the parameters in SVR. Furthermore, taking into account the high cost and accurate precision of the fiber stretching process, a time series autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model is introduced to reduce the prediction error of the IFOA–SVR model. Simulations results demonstrate that the proposed IFOA–SVR method can increase the prediction accuracy than the traditional FOA and the SVR method, and the ARMA model is essential to modify the prediction error of the IFOA–SVR model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glaucoma as an irreversible blinding opioid neuropathy disease, its blindness rate is the second only after cataract in the world. The optic cup-to-disc ratio (CDR) is generally considered to be an important clinical indicator for judging the severity of glaucoma by ophthalmologists from retinal fundus image. In this letter, we propose an automatic CDR measurement method that consists of a novel optic disc localization method and a simultaneous optic disc and cup segmentation network based on the improved U shape deep convolutional neural network. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve superior performance when compared with other existing methods. Thus, our method can be used as a powerful tool for glaucoma-assisted diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently developed DNA base editing methods enable the direct generation of desired point mutations in genomic DNA without generating any double-strand breaks1–3, but the issue of off-target edits has limited the application of these methods. Although several previous studies have evaluated off-target mutations in genomic DNA4–8, it is now clear that the deaminases that are integral to commonly used DNA base editors often bind to RNA9–13. For example, the cytosine deaminase APOBEC1—which is used in cytosine base editors (CBEs)—targets both DNA and RNA12, and the adenine deaminase TadA—which is used in adenine base editors (ABEs)—induces site-specific inosine formation on RNA9,11. However, any potential RNA mutations caused by DNA base editors have not been evaluated. Adeno-associated viruses are the most common delivery system for gene therapies that involve DNA editing; these viruses can sustain long-term gene expression in vivo, so the extent of potential RNA mutations induced by DNA base editors is of great concern14–16. Here we quantitatively evaluated RNA single nucleotide variations (SNVs) that were induced by CBEs or ABEs. Both the cytosine base editor BE3 and the adenine base editor ABE7.10 generated tens of thousands of off-target RNA SNVs. Subsequently, by engineering deaminases, we found that three CBE variants and one ABE variant showed a reduction in off-target RNA SNVs to the baseline while maintaining efficient DNA on-target activity. This study reveals a previously overlooked aspect of off-target effects in DNA editing and also demonstrates that such effects can be eliminated by engineering deaminases. Cytosine and adenine base editors have undesired off-target effects on RNA, but this activity can be reduced in deaminase-engineered variants while preserving on-target DNA editing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanocarbon black (CB) was introduced into ethylene-vinyl acetate/brucite (EM) composites to investigate the synergistic effect of CB and metal hydroxide on improving the flame retardancy of EVA. Flammability properties of the as-prepared EVA composites were investigated by thermogravimetric analysis, limiting oxygen index (LOI), UL-94 test and cone calorimetry test. The results indicated that the optimum mass ratio of CB/brucite was 1/54, at which the EVA composites displayed dramatic improvement on thermal stability and flame retardancy. The LOI value was as high as 35.3%, the UL-94 passed the V-0 rating, and the peak heat release rate reduced 79% in comparison with pure EVA. Based on the morphology and structure analysis for residue chars, the flame-retardant mechanism was attributed mainly to the positive synergistic effect of CB and brucite on promoting the formation of better carbon protective layer during combustion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we apply the ansatz method to the multi-linear form of the (2+1)-dimensional Date–Jimbo–Kashiwara–Miwa equation for constructing interaction solutions. By taking the ansatz as the quadratic function or the linear combination of the quadratic function and the exponential one, explicit rational and rational-exponential solutions are derived. It is shown that these exact solutions describe the lump, the lump–stripe soliton interaction with fission and fusion phenomena, and a rogue wave excited from the stripe soliton pair, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-mm-thick AA 6061 plate and 2-mm-thick Ti6Al4V plate were friction stir lap welded using a W-Re pin tool. Defect-free joints were obtained at various rotation speeds ranging from 800 to 1400 rpm with a constant welding speed of 100 mm/min. The influence of rotation speed on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the Al/Ti friction stir lap welding (FSLW) joints was investigated. At low rotation speed within 1000 rpm, the obtained joint has no obvious mechanical Al/Ti intermixing at the interface. However, a significant mechanical mixture of Al and Ti alloys accompanied by hooks could be found in the joint welded at a rotation speed over 1000 rpm. Only diffusion layer was observed in the joint obtained at low rotation speed. Further, IMCs could be found in the Al/Ti mixture and hook when the rotation speed increased to 1400 rpm. The highest microhardness was measured at the interface due to the formation of IMCs. The tensile shear load of the welded joints reached the maximum at 1000 rpm and the specimens failed along the interface during the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The flotation of hemimorphite using the S(II)-Pb(II)-xanthate process, which includes sulfidization with sodium sulfide, activation by lead cations, and subsequent flotation with xanthate, was investigated. The flotation results indicated that hemimorphite floats when the S(II)-Pb(II)-xanthate process is used; a maximum recovery of approximately 90% was obtained. Zeta-potential, contact-angle, scanning electron microscopy-energy-dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), and diffuse-reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) measurements were used to characterize the activation products on the hemimorphite surface and their subsequent interaction with sodium butyl xanthate (SBX). The results showed that a ZnS coating formed on the hemimorphite surface after the sample was conditioned in an Na2S solution. However, the formation of a ZnS coating on the hemimorphite surface did not improve hemimorphite flotation. With the subsequent addition of lead cations, PbS species formed on the mineral surface. The formation of the PbS species on the surface of hemimorphite significantly increased the adsorption capacity of SBX, forming lead xanthate (referred to as chemical adsorption) and leading to a substantial improvement in hemimorphite flotation. Our results indicate that the addition of lead cations is a critical step in the successful flotation of hemimorphite using the sulfidization-lead ion activation-xanthate process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alterations of the topological organization of abnormal regions or network-level structural aberrations are still poorly understood for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Herein, we investigated brain structural networks in recent-onset PTSD patients, all affected by the coalmine-flood disaster. Cortical networks were studied in recent onset PTSD patients (n = 15) and matched healthy controls (n = 25). Cortical networks were constructed by thresholding correlation matrices of 150 regions and quantified using graph theoretical approaches. Contributions of high-degree nodes, and regional and global network measures, including degree and betweenness, were studied. Compared with healthy controls, PTSD patients showed altered quantitative values in global network properties, characterized by shorter path length and higher clustering. Moreover, PTSD patients exhibited decreased connectivity in the right lingual gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral superior and inferior frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, and posterior cingulate gyrus. Nodal centrality decreased predominantly in the occipital regions (lingual gyrus) and default-mode regions, while increased correlations and centralities were observed in the medial temporal lobe and posterior cingulate cortex. PTSD-related networks exhibited a less efficient organization and regional connectivity. According to these findings, we conclude that regional connections involving fear-processing and re-experiential-processing cortex may play a role in maintaining or adapting to PTSD pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the lack of enough information to solve the equation of image degradation model, existing defogging methods generally introduce some parameters and set these values fixed. Inappropriate parameter setting leads to difficulty in obtaining the best defogging results for different input foggy images. Therefore, a single image defogging algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed in this letter to adaptively and automatically select optimal parameter values for image defogging algorithms. The proposed method is applied to two representative defogging algorithms by selecting the two main parameters and optimizing them using the PSO algorithm. Comparative study and qualitative evaluation demonstrate that the better quality results are obtained by using the proposed parameter selection method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information flow among auditory and language processing-related regions implicated in the pathophysiology of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) in schizophrenia (SZ) remains unclear. In this study, we used stochastic dynamic causal modeling (sDCM) to quantify connections among the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (inner speech monitoring), auditory cortex (auditory processing), hippocampus (memory retrieval), thalamus (information filtering), and Broca's area (language production) in 17 first-episode drug-naïve SZ patients with AVHs, 15 without AVHs, and 19 healthy controls using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Finally, we performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and correlation analysis between image measures and symptoms. sDCM revealed an increased sensitivity of auditory cortex to its thalamic afferents and a decrease in hippocampal sensitivity to auditory inputs in SZ patients with AVHs. The area under the ROC curve showed the diagnostic value of these two connections to distinguish SZ patients with AVHs from those without AVHs. Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between the strength of the connectivity from Broca's area to the auditory cortex and the severity of AVHs. These findings demonstrate, for the first time, augmented AVH-specific excitatory afferents from the thalamus to the auditory cortex in SZ patients, resulting in auditory perception without external auditory stimuli. Our results provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying AVHs in SZ. This thalamic-auditory cortical-hippocampal dysconnectivity may also serve as a diagnostic biomarker of AVHs in SZ and a therapeutic target based on direct in vivo evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a method to recognize gestures made by Chinese traffic police based on the static and dynamic descriptor fusion for driver assistance systems and intelligent vehicles. Gesture recognition is made possible by combining the extracted static and dynamic features. First, the point cloud data of human upper body in each frame of input video is obtained to estimate the static descriptor with 2.5D gesture model. Then, the dynamic descriptor is estimated by computing the motion history image of the input RGB video sequence. Finally, the above two descriptors are fused and the mean structural similarity index is used to recognize the gestures made by Chinese traffic police. A comparative study and qualitative evaluation are proposed with other gesture recognition methods, which demonstrate that better recognition results can be obtained using the proposed method on a number of video sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arachidonyl-2-chloroethylamide (ACEA), a highly selective agonist of cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1R), has been reported to protect neurons in ischemic injury. We sought to investigate whether mitochondrial biogenesis was involved in the therapeutic effect of ACEA in cerebral ischemia. Focal cerebral ischemic injury was induced in adult male Sprague Dawley rats. Intraperitoneal injection of 1 mg/kg ACEA improved neurological behavior, reduced infarct volume, and inhibited apoptosis. The volume and numbers of mitochondria were significantly increased after ACEA administration. Expression of mitochondrial transcription factor A (Tfam), nuclear transcription factor-1 (Nrf-1), and cytochrome C oxidase subunit IV (COX IV) were also significantly up-regulated in animals administered ACEA. One thousand nanomoles of ACEA inhibited mitochondrial dysfunction in primary rat cortical neurons exposed to oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD). Furthermore, ACEA administration increased phosphorylation of glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) after reperfusion. Phosphorylation of GSK-3β induced mitochondrial biogenesis and preserved mitochondrial function whereas inhibition of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) dampened phosphorylation of GSK-3β and reversed induction of mitochondrial biogenesis and function following ACEA administration. In conclusion, ACEA could induce mitochondrial biogenesis and improve mitochondrial function at the beginning of cerebral ischemia, thus alleviating cerebral ischemia injury. Phosphorylation of GSK-3β might be involved in the regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis induced by ACEA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rich groundwater content can produce a complex geological environment for underground tunnels. Therefore, the brittle mechanical characteristics of hard rock exposed by tunnelling in a moist environment are of great significance. Uniaxial tests and acoustic emission (AE) analysis of sandstone with respect to different moisture conditions are described in this paper. Moisture-controlled trends of the stress-strain relationship, mechanical parameter variation, maximum instantaneous AE energy, cumulative AE energy and macro crack behaviour were analysed in detail. In addition, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were performed to analyse the fracture surfaces of rock at the microscale. Sandstone particles were found to be more likely to slip past each other at high moisture contents, resulting in increased plastic deformation and dissipation of internal energy. Increasing moisture reduces the brittleness of hard rock and the probability of rock burst. The results reveal the mechanical mechanisms cause moisture to affect brittle hard rock and can contribute to the improvement of the design and construction of deep tunnels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insulin resistance (IR) is the hallmark of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which is one of the most important chronic noncommunicable diseases. Effective and feasible strategies to treat IR are still urgently needed. Previous research studies reported that whole body vibration (WBV) was beneficial for IR in clinical; however, its underlying mechanisms remains unknown. In the present study, db/db mice were treated with WBV administration 60 min/day for 12 weeks and the impaired insulin sensitivity was improved. Besides, liver steatosis was also ameliorated. Further explorations revealed that WBV could reduce the expression of SREBP1c and increase the expression of GSH-Px and consequently suppress oxidative stress. In conclusion, WBV attenuates oxidative stress to ameliorate liver steatosis and thus improves insulin resistance in db/db mice. Therefore, WBV administration is a promising treatment for individuals who suffered from central obesity and IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A locking section is a conceptual model employed to analyze large-scale rock slides, of which the role was commonly found governing the mechanism of such mass movements. The physical experimental study presented herein is designed to study the failure mechanism of the locking section by measuring its basic characteristics. Dataset on the magnitude of the energy release, stress state, and displacement near and within the locking section are obtained by acoustic emission sensor, strain gauge, and micrometer gauge. The study captured the continued stress and energy accumulation at the locking section under increasing loads and the final brittle shear failure, which depicts the comprehensive deformation and failure processes occurred at the locking section. The concurrence of the locking section failure is the abrupt intensive energy release that results in the occurrence of the high-speed rock sliding. In conclusion, the experiment aims at investigating the initiation mechanism of large-scale rock slides governed by a locking section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrocatalytic oxidation is a promising process for degrading toxic and biorefractory organic pollutants in wastewater treatment. Selection of electrode materials is crucial for electrochemical oxidation process. In this study, Ti/F-PbO and Ti/Sb-SnO electrodes were chosen to compare their electrocatalytic characterization, which were prepared by electrodeposition and thermal decomposition method, respectively. The surface morphology and crystal structure of two electrodes were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The linear polarization curves show that Ti/Sb-SnO electrodes possess higher oxygen evolution overpotential than Ti/F-PbO electrodes. But the stability and corrosion resistance ability of Ti/F-PbO electrode was higher than that of Ti/Sb-SnO electrode. The electrocatalytic activity of Ti/F-PbO and Ti/Sb-SnO electrodes was examined for the electrochemical oxidation of malachite green (MG). The bulk electrolysis shows that the Ti/Sb-SnO electrodes exhibit the higher electrocatalytic activity for the degradation of MG than Ti/F-PbO electrodes, and the degradation process is good fitting for the pseudo-first order reaction. The higher electrocatalytic activity of Ti/Sb-SnO electrodes can be attributed to the higher oxygen evolution overpotential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tooth modification technique is widely used in gear industry to improve the meshing performance of gearings. However, few of the present studies on tooth modification considers the influence of inevitable random errors on gear modification effects. In order to investigate the uncertainties of tooth modification amount variations on system's dynamic behaviors of a helical planetary gears, an analytical dynamic model including tooth modification parameters is proposed to carry out a deterministic analysis on the dynamics of a helical planetary gear. The dynamic meshing forces as well as the dynamic transmission errors of the sun-planet 1 gear pair with and without tooth modifications are computed and compared to show the effectiveness of tooth modifications on gear dynamics enhancement. By using response surface method, a fitted regression model for the dynamic transmission error(DTE) fluctuations is established to quantify the relationship between modification amounts and DTE fluctuations. By shifting the inevitable random errors arousing from manufacturing and installing process to tooth modification amount variations, a statistical tooth modification model is developed and a methodology combining Monte Carlo simulation and response surface method is presented for uncertainty analysis of tooth modifications. The uncertainly analysis reveals that the system's dynamic behaviors do not obey the normal distribution rule even though the design variables are normally distributed. In addition, a deterministic modification amount will not definitely achieve an optimal result for both static and dynamic transmission error fluctuation reduction simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a method to recognize gestures made by Chinese traffic police in complex scenes based on a max-covering scheme for driver assistance systems and intelligent vehicles. Gesture recognition is made possible by upper-body-part detection with a five-part body model. First, the police's torso and arms are extracted from a complex traffic scene as the foreground region by using dark channel prior and kernel density estimation. Then the coordinates of pixels in the upper arms and forearms are determined using the proposed max-covering scheme, which is based on a key observation that body-part tiles maximally cover the foreground region and satisfy a body plan. Finally, the rotation joint angle or Gabor feature-based two-dimensional principal component analysis is used to recognize the gestures made by Chinese traffic police. A comparative study is proposed with other human pose estimation methods, which demonstrates that better recognition results can be obtained using the proposed method on a number of video sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diabetes mellitus substantially increases the risk of stroke and enhances brain's vulnerability to ischemia insult. Electroacupuncture (EA) pretreatment was proved to induce cerebral ischemic tolerance in normal stroke models. Whether EA could attenuate cerebral ischemia injury in diabetic mice and the possible underlying mechanism are still unrevealed. Male C57BL/6 mice were subjected to streptozotocin (STZ) for diabetic models. After inducing focal cerebral ischemia model, the levels of plasma and cerebral adiponectin (APN) were measured as well as the expression of cerebral adiponectin receptor 1 (AdipoR1) and 2 (AdipoR2). The neurobehavioral score, infarction volume, and cellular apoptosis were evaluated with or without AdipoR1 short interfering RNA (siRNA). The role of phosphorylation of glycogen synthesis kinase 3 beta (GSK-3β) at Ser-9 in the EA pretreatment was also assessed. EA pretreatment increased both plasma and cerebral APN levels and enhanced neuronal AdipoR1 in diabetic mice. In addition, EA reduced infarct size, improved neurological outcomes, and inhibited cell apoptosis after reperfusion. These beneficial effects were reversed by AdipoR1 knockdown. Furthermore, EA increased GSK-3β phosphorylation (p-GSK-3β) in the ipsilateral penumbra. Augmented p-GSK-3β induced neuroprotective effects similar to those of EA pretreatment. In contrast, dampened p-GSK-3β could reverse the neuroprotective effects of EA. In addition, the increase in p-GSK-3β by EA was abolished by AdipoR1 knockdown. We conclude that EA pretreatment increases the production of APN, which induce protective effects against cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury through neuronal AdipoR1-mediated phosphorylation of GSK-3β in diabetic mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA methylation is a crucial element in the epigenetic regulation of mammalian embryonic development. However, its dynamic patterns have not been analysed at the genome scale in human pre-implantation embryos due to technical difficulties and the scarcity of required materials. Here we systematically profile the methylome of human early embryos from the zygotic stage through to post-implantation by reduced representation bisulphite sequencing and whole-genome bisulphite sequencing. We show that the major wave of genome-wide demethylation is complete at the 2-cell stage, contrary to previous observations in mice. Moreover, the demethylation of the paternal genome is much faster than that of the maternal genome, and by the end of the zygotic stage the genome-wide methylation level in male pronuclei is already lower than that in female pronuclei. The inverse correlation between promoter methylation and gene expression gradually strengthens during early embryonic development, reaching its peak at the post-implantation stage. Furthermore, we show that active genes, with the trimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 4 (H3K4me3) mark at the promoter regions in pluripotent human embryonic stem cells, are essentially devoid of DNA methylation in both mature gametes and throughout pre-implantation development. Finally, we also show that long interspersed nuclear elements or short interspersed nuclear elements that are evolutionarily young are demethylated to a milder extent compared to older elements in the same family and have higher abundance of transcripts, indicating that early embryos tend to retain higher residual methylation at the evolutionarily younger and more active transposable elements. Our work provides insights into the critical features of the methylome of human early embryos, as well as its functional relation to the regulation of gene expression and the repression of transposable elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glutamate is a major excitatory neurotransmitter in the retina. Glutamate neurotoxicity has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several ocular diseases. Aquaporin 4 (AQP4) is a water-selective membrane transport protein, and its knockout could alter retinal neuron excitability. However, the effect of AQP4 knockout on glutamate metabolism is still unclear in the retina. Here, we reported that the retinas in AQP4 knockout mice showed higher glutamate levels than that in wild-type mice upon light damage. AQP4 knockout could result in accelerated apoptosis of retinal cells, increased reactive gliosis, and attenuated survival of RGCs in response to light damage. Moreover, AQP4 knockout could affect the expression pattern of glutamate metabolism-related proteins such as GLAST and GS. Taken together, this study revealed a novel role of AQP4 in regulating glutamate metabolism. Pharmacological manipulation of AQP4 function may represent as a potent therapeutic target in the treatment of neurological ocular disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim:Myeloperoxidase (MPO) and glutathione S-transferase pi 1 (GSTP1) are important carcinogen-metabolizing enzymes. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the common polymorphisms of MPO and GSTP1 genes and lung cancer risk in Chinese Han population.Methods:A total of 266 subjects with lung cancer and 307 controls without personal history of the disease were recruited in this case control study. The tagSNPs approach was used to assess the common polymorphisms of MOP and GSTP1 genes and lung cancer risk according to the disequilibrium information from the HapMap project. The tagSNP rs7208693 was selected as the polymorphism site for MPO, while the haplotype-tagging SNPs rs1695, rs4891, rs762803 and rs749174 were selected as the polymorphism sites for GSTP1. The gene polymorphisms were confirmed using real-time PCR, cloning and sequencing.Results:The four GSTP1 haplotype-tagging SNPs rs1695, rs4891, rs762803 and rs749174, but not the MPO tagSNP rs7208693, exhibited an association with lung cancer susceptibility in smokers in the overall population and in the studied subgroups. When Phase 2 software was used to reconstruct the haplotype for GSTP1, the haplotype CACA (rs749174+rs1695 + rs762803+rs4891) exhibited an increased risk of lung cancer among smokers (adjust odds ratio 1.53; 95%CI 1.04-2.25, P=0.033). Furthermore, diplotype analyses demonstrated that the significant association between the risk haplotype and lung cancer. The risk haplotypes co-segregated with one or more biologically functional polymorphisms and corresponded to a recessive inheritance model.Conclusion:The common polymorphisms of the GSTP1 gene may be the candidates for SNP markers for lung cancer susceptibility in Chinese Han population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the formation process of vacuum gap in coaxial microsecond conduction time plasma opening switch (POS), we have made measurements of the line-integrated plasma density during switch operation using a time-resolved sensitive He-Ne interferometer. The conduction current and conduction time in experiments are about 120 kA and 1 μs, respectively. As a result, more than 85% of conduction current has been transferred to an inductive load with rise time of 130 ns. The radial dependence of the density is measured by changing the radial location of the line-of-sight for shots with the same nominal POS parameters. During the conduction phase, the line-integrated plasma density in POS increases at all radial locations over the gun-only case by further ionization of material injected from the guns. The current conduction is observed to cause a radial redistribution of the switch plasma. A vacuum gap forms rapidly in the plasma at 5.5 mm from the center conductor, which is consistent with the location where magnetic pressure is the largest, allowing current to be transferred from the POS to the load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have previously shown that electroacupuncture (EA) pretreatment produces neuroprotective effects, which were mediated through an endocannabinoid signal transduction mechanism. Herein, we have studied the possible contribution of the phosphorylated form of glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) in EA pretreatment-induced neuroprotection via the cannabinoid CB1 receptor (CB1R). Focal transient cerebral ischemia was induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion in rats. Phosphorylation of GSK-3β at Ser-9 [p-GSK-3β (Ser-9)] was evaluated in the penumbra tissue following reperfusion. Infarct size and neurological score were assessed in the presence of either PI3K inhibitors or a GSK-3β inhibitor 72 h after reperfusion. Cellular apoptosis was evidenced by TUNEL staining and determination of the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio 24 h after reperfusion. The present study showed that EA pretreatment increased p-GSK-3β(Ser-9) 2 h after reperfusion in the ipsilateral penumbra. Augmented phosphorylation of GSK-3β induced similar neuroprotective effects as did EA pretreatment. By contrast, inhibition of PI3K dampened the levels of p-GSK-3β(Ser-9), and reversed not only the neuroprotective effect but also the anti-apoptotic effect following EA pretreatment. Regulation of GSK-3β by EA pretreatment was abolished following treatment with a CB1R antagonist and CB1R knockdown, whereas two CB1R agonists enhanced the phosphorylation of GSK-3β. Therefore we conclude that EA pretreatment protects against cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury through CB1R-mediated phosphorylation of GSK-3β. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]