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Although prebiotic activities of alginate and agar oligosaccharides isolated from seaweeds have been reported, it remains unknown whether seaweed polysaccharides have prebiotic activity. In this study, we isolated polysaccharides from four species of seaweeds, such as Grateloupia filicina(GFP), Eucheuma spinosum(ESP), Ulva pertusa(UPP), and Ascophyllum nodosum(ANP), and characterized their structures and prebiotic effects in vitro. The results showed that these polysaccharides were different in total sugar and sulfate contents as well as monosaccharide composition. GFP and ESP significantly promoted bifidobacterium proliferation and 0.1% ESP and 0.4% GFP resulted in the highest proliferation rates of beneficial bacteria, whereas UPP and ANP inhibited the growth of beneficial bacteria at all tested concentrations (0.1%–0.5%). The different behaviors of the four seaweed-originated polysaccharides might be reflected by differences in monosaccharide composition and structure. Therefore, polysaccharides isolated from GFP and ESP could be utilized as prebiotics. However, more studies must be carried out in vivo.

Heparin has been used as an anticoagulant drug for many years, but it has significant side effects. In the search for good substitutes, low molecular weight (MW) polysaccharides from Sargassum fusiformehave been examined and confirmed to possess biological activities. Here, S. fusiformepolysaccharides (SFP) were extracted and subjected to a hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) oxidation method for the preparation of low-MW SFP (LSFP). The effects of temperature, pH, and H2O2concentration on the degradation process were also examined. Several LSFP of 36, 9, 5.7, and 2.7 kDa were obtained under different conditions, and their anticoagulant activities studied in vitro. The results showed that SFP and LSFP prolonged activated partial thromboplastin (APTT), prothrombin (PT) and thrombin times (TT) significantly, indicating that these low MW polysaccharides possessed anticoagulant activity in the intrinsic, extrinsic, and common coagulation pathways. As these effects were related to the MW of the polysaccharides in APTT and TT but not in PT, the contents of the monosaccharide fucose and sulfate and the polysaccharide MW could have exerted combined effects. The details of this mechanism require further verification.

To examine whether general and abdominal adiposity was a risk factor for the new‐onset of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and the potential mediating effect of metabolic and inflammation status. A total of 492,998 individuals free of IBD recruited from 2006 to 2010 in the UK Biobank were included in our study, with ongoing follow‐up linking to the health‐related outcome. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to evaluate the associations between general adiposity (body mass index) and abdominal adiposity (waist circumference) and the subsequent risk of IBD and its subtype. We also investigated the potential mediating effects of metabolic and inflammation status by carrying out exploratory mediation analyses. During a median follow‐up of 12.5 years, we documented 2954 incident IBD cases (915 Crohn's disease [CD] and 2039 ulcerative colitis). After adjustment for important confounders, body mass index (hazard ratio [HR] highest quintile [Q5] vs. lowest quintile [Q1] = 1.18, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.04–1.32; P‐trend = 0.006) and waist circumference (HR Q5 vs. Q1= 1.30, 95% CI 1.14–1.49; P‐trend <0.001) showed a positive association with the risk of IBD. The associations were partially mediated by metabolic status (24%; 15%), C‐reactive protein (36%; 19%) and inflammation score (82%; 46%). Adiposity bore a risk factor for incident IBD, whereas unhealthy metabolism, especially inflammation, seemed to be an important intermediate condition between the association. Our findings provide evidence for possible mechanisms relating adiposity to IBD from an epidemiological perspective, and experimental studies are needed for further demonstration.

Purpose: In computer-aided diagnosis, the fusion of image features extracted from neural networks and clinical information is crucial to improve diagnostic accuracy. How to integrate low-dimensional clinical information (LDCF) with high-dimensional network features (HDNF) is an urgent problem to be solved. We offer a new network search framework to address this problem, which can provide optimized LDCF fusion and efficient dimensionality reduction in HDNF. Methods: OCIF innovatively uses Gaussian process optimization to explore the search space for the number of fully connected (FC) layers, the number of neurons in each FC layer, the activation function, the dropout factor, and whether to add clinical information to each FC layer. Moreover, OCIF employs transfer learning to reduce the training parameter space and improve search efficiency. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed OCIF, we utilized three popular end-to-end overall survival (OS) time prediction models to predict the three classes. Results: Our experimental results show that applying OCIF to a classical computer-aided diagnosis neural network can improve classification accuracy. Experiments on the 2020 BRATS dataset prove that OCIF achieves satisfactory performance, with an accuracy of 0.684, precision of 0.735, recall of 0.684, and F1-score of 0.675 on the OS time prediction task. Conclusion: OCIF effectively and creatively combines clinical information and network features, leveraging both clinical information and image features to enhance the accuracy of the final diagnosis. Our experiments demonstrate that the use of OCIF can significantly improve computer-aided diagnosis accuracy, and the approach has the potential to be extended to other medical classification tasks as well.

A novel Lyapunov-function-based event-triggered mechanism (ETM) for discrete-time linear leader-following multi-agent systems is proposed in this brief. Based on the constructed ETM, sufficient conditions to reach leader-following consensus asymptotically or exponentially are derived. Compared with the current results, the Lyapunov function no longer needs to be strictly monotonic decreasing under the designed ETM, which increases the triggering interval. The expected convergence rate can be achieved by the tunable parameters in the ETM. Particularly, the non-triviality of the introduced ETM is proved for some of the degraded systems. Finally, the obtained results are verified by a numerical example.

The relation of intake of sugary beverages and genetic predisposition to the long-term risk of dementia and brain structure remains unclear.

Neurotoxicity can be resulted from many diverse clinical drugs, which has been a cause of concern to human populations across the world. The detection of drug-induced neurotoxicity (DINeurot) potential with biological experimental methods always required a lot of budget and time. In addition, few studies have addressed the structural characteristics of neurotoxic chemicals. In this study, we focused on the computational modeling for drug-induced neurotoxicity with machine learning methods and the insights into the structural characteristics of neurotoxic chemicals. Based on the clinical drug data with neurotoxicity effects, we developed 35 different classifiers by combining five different machine learning methods and seven fingerprint packages. The best-performing model achieved good results on both 5-fold cross-validation (balanced accuracy of 76.51%, AUC value of 0.83, and MCC value of 0.52) and external validation (balanced accuracy of 83.63%, AUC value of 0.87, and MCC value of 0.67). The model can be freely accessed on the web server DINeuroTpredictor (http://dineurot.sapredictor.cn/). We also analyzed the distribution of several key molecular properties between neurotoxic and non-neurotoxic structures. The results indicated that several physicochemical properties were significantly different between the neurotoxic and non-neurotoxic compounds, including molecular polar surface area (MPSA), AlogP, the number of hydrogen bond acceptors (nHAcc) and donors (nHDon), the number of rotatable bonds (nRotB), and the number of aromatic rings (nAR). In addition, 18 structural alerts responsible for chemical neurotoxicity were identified. The structural alerts have been integrated with our web server SApredictor (http://www.sapredictor.cn). The results of this study could provide useful information for the understanding of the structural characteristics and computational prediction for chemical neurotoxicity.

ι-Carrageenan tetrasaccharide (ιCTs), a novel oligosaccharide, was hydrolyzed from ι-carrageenan with targeting marine tool-enzyme Cgi82A. Previously, we have found ιCTs exhibited a hypoglycemic effect, whether it could regulate lipid metabolism remains unknown. In this study, the insulin-resistant mice induced by high-fat–high-sucrose diet were orally administrated with ιCTs (30 mg/kg·bw) for 20 weeks. The results showed that the contents of triglyceride and cholesterol in both serum and liver were reduced by ιCTs, and their excretion in feces were promoted, suggesting lipid accumulation was inhibited. Intriguingly, the overall levels of bile acid in serum, liver, and feces were all raised by ιCTs. Given that bile acids are the essential signal factors for regulating lipid metabolism via the farnesoid-X-receptor (FXR), we conducted serum bile acid profile analysis and found that the levels of high-affinity agonists deoxycholic acid and lithocholic acid were decreased in the ιCTs group, showing that ιCTs failed to activate FXR. Western blot analysis showed that ιCTs downregulated hepatic FXR and small heterodimer partner (SHP) expression and increased downstream CYP7A1 expression via regulating the FXR–SHP signal to accelerate liver cholesterol conversion. Meanwhile, ιCTs decreased the expression of PXR and SREBP1c and elevated the expression of PPARα and CPT1α via regulating the FXR-PXR-SREBP1c/PPARα signal to inhibit fatty acid synthesis and promote fatty acid β-oxidation. To the best of our knowledge, this study for the first time reported that ιCTs alleviated liver lipid accumulation via the bile acid–FXR–SHP/PXR signal to regulate cholesterol conversion and fatty acid metabolism, which highlighted a new idea for ameliorating insulin resistance.

Cumulative preclinical evidence reported quercetin, a major flavonoid, can attenuate the disease activity of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). However, there is limited evidence that supports the benefits of quercetin for patients with IBD.

The brain edema following intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) plays a key role in the recovery process. Protocatechuic acid (PCA) has been proved possessing neuroprotection in ICH. Here we tried to explore its value in brain edema after ICH and reveal underlying mechanisms. ICH model was created in C57 mice using collagenase IV. PCA was injected intraperitoneally at 30 mg/kg every 24 h in PCA group. On day 3 after ICH, the water content of hemorrhagic ipsilateral hemisphere in PCA group was significantly reduced compared with vehicle group. AQP4, the main water channel, was remarkably decreased in PCA group. Additionally, ZO-1 and occludin expression were increased in PCA group. The bEnd.3 cells were cultured to understand the effect of PCA on the blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity. Compare to hemin treated group, plus PCA enhanced the expression of HO-1 and Nrf2 nuclear translocation. Furtherly, the overexpression of HO-1, ZO-1, occludin, in the PCA treatment group was inhibited after knockdown of Nrf2. Taken together, our results proved PCA alleviated brain edema and BBB disruption in ICH by promoting the Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway.

This paper proposes a high power-performance-area efficient background noise aware keyword-spotting (KWS) processor based on an optimized binarized weight network (BWN). To reduce the power consumption while maintaining the system recognition accuracy for different background noise, the KWS processor with a SNR prediction module can be adaptively configured to use dual computing modes (standard computing mode and approximate computing mode) for both high recognition accuracy under high background noise and ultra-low power consumption under low background noise. The mel-scale frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) module is optimized with approximate computing technologies, which can reduce the power consumption by up to $3.1\times $ and $5.7\times $ for high/low background noise, respectively. Based on the evaluation of the architecture design space exploration, an ultra-low power BWN accelerator with low voltage, area and leakage power and using precision self-adaptive approximate computing units was proposed. Evaluated under 22nm process technology, this work can support up to 10 keywords real time recognition with power consumption of $15.1~\mu \text{W}$ for high background noise and $10.8~\mu \text{W}$ for low background noise. Compared to the state-of-the-art KWS architectures, our work can achieve ultra-low power consumption (about $1.7\times $ reduced), while maintaining high system capability and adaptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) has a high morbidity and mortality rate. Excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) caused by primary and second brain injury can induce neuron death and inhibit neurological functional recovery after ICH. Therefore, exploring an effective way to noninvasively target hemorrhage sites to scavenge ROS is urgently needed. Inspired by the biological function of platelets to target injury vessel and repair injury blood vessels, platelet‐membrane‐modified polydopamine (Menp@PLT) nanoparticles are developed with targeting to hemorrhage sites of ICH. Results demonstrate that Menp@PLT nanoparticles can effectively achieve targeting to the location of intracranial hematoma. Furthermore, Menp@PLT with excellent anti‐ROS properties can scavenge ROS and improve neuroinflammation microenvironment of ICH. In addition, Menp@PLT may play a role in decreasing hemorrhage volume by repairing injury blood vessels. Combining platelet membrane and anti‐ROS nanoparticles for targeting brain hemorrhage sites provide a promising strategy for efficiently treating ICH. Platelet‐membrane‐coated polydopamine nanoparticles (Menp@PLT) are fabricated to improve the targetability and accumulation in the hemorrhage sites and further stop bleeding. In the meanwhile, Menp@PLT can protect damaged neurons by anti‐reactive oxygen species and anti‐reactive nitrogen species, improving the inflammatory microenvironment.

Reactive astrogliosis is a common response to insults to the central nervous system, but the mechanism remains unknown. In this study, we found the temporal and spatial differential expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and Vimentin in the intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) mouse brain, indicating that the de-differentiation and astroglial-mesenchymal transition (AMT) of astrocytes might be an early event in reactive astrogliosis. Further we verified the AMT finding in purified astrocyte cultures exposed to hemoglobin (Hb). Additionally, Connexin 43 (Cx43) downregulation and YAP nuclear translocation were observed in Hb-activated astrocytes. Knocking down Cx43 by siRNA triggered YAP nuclear translocation. Cx43 and YAP were physically associated as determined by immunofluorescence and co-immunoprecipitation. We propose that astrocytes undergo AMT during Hb-induced activation where Cx43 downregulation facilitates YAP nuclear translocation is a novel mechanism involved in this process. Cx43-YAP interaction may represent a potential therapeutic target for modulating astrocyte activation.

In time-domain simulations of sound propagation, solutions obtained from linearised Euler equations may suffer from numerical Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities in the presence of a sheared mean flow. The Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities are vortical disturbances that can grow boundlessly and eventually contaminate the solution field. Several methods were developed to eliminate this numerical vulnerability. However, each method relies on different key assumptions that can affect the accuracy of the solution. In this work, new methods are proposed to facilitate a stable and accurate numerical result. An artificial damping term is proposed with adaptive adjustment to stabilise the simulation by introducing additional damping effects on vortical components. Three gradient term modification methods are developed to allow accurate acoustic field computation with a minor side effect. The proposed methods are tested on four benchmark cases: i) acoustic wave refraction through a strongly sheared mean flow, ii) acoustic wave refraction through a weakly sheared mean flow, iii) vortical wave propagation, and iv) acoustic mode radiation from an unflanged duct. It is demonstrated that the proposed methods can suppress the numerical stability and obtain an accurately solved acoustic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cardioprotective diet has been previously reported to be inversely associated with the development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but whether it is beneficial to improve adverse outcomes in IBD remains unknown.

Introduction:Sleep duration and quality have been linked to atherosclerosis, however the effects on peripheral artery disease (PAD) specifically have not been well characterized. We conducted cohort, case-control, and Mendelian randomization analyses across three large multinational samples (Sweden, United Kingdom, United States) to evaluate associations between sleep traits and risk of PAD.Hypothesis:Abnormal sleep duration and poor sleep quality are associated with increased risk of PAD.Methods:Sleep traits (including duration, subjective quality, daytime napping, snoring, apnea, and insomnia) were assessed for associations with incident PAD using Cox proportional hazards regression within a cohort of 53,416 Swedish adults. Replication was sought in a case-control study of 28,123 PAD cases and 128,459 controls from the VA Million Veteran Program (MVP) and a cohort study of 452,028 individuals from the UK Biobank (UKB). Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) was used to estimate causal effects of sleep-related traits on PAD (31,307 PAD cases 211,753 controls).Results:Observational analyses demonstrated a U-shaped association between sleep duration and PAD risk. In Swedish adults, incident PAD risk was higher in those with short sleep (<5 hours; hazard ratio (HR) 1.74; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.31-2.31) or long sleep (≥8 hours; HR 1.24; 95% CI 1.08-1.43), compared to individuals with a sleep duration of 7 to <8 hours/night. This finding was supported by case-control analysis in MVP and cohort analysis in UKB. Observational analysis also revealed positive associations between poor sleep quality (HR 1.81; 95% CI 1.13-2.90) and daytime napping (HR 1.32; 95% CI 1.18-1.49) with PAD. MR analysis supported an inverse association between sleep duration (odds ratio per hour increase, 0.79, 95% CI, 0.55, 0.89) and PAD, and an association between short sleep and increased PAD (odds ratio, 1.20, 95% CI, 1.04-1.38). MR also found an association between insomnia with PAD (OR 1.10; 95% CI 1.05-1.15) and a reverse association of PAD on shorter sleep (OR 1.05; 95% CI 1.01-1.10).Conclusions:Short sleep duration and measures of poor sleep quality may be causal risk factors for PAD. Maintenance of healthy sleep habits may help prevent PAD.

In 2021, the price of silica fume had fallen to 400 RMB/ton in some areas, while that of cement had risen to 650 RMB/ton, which provided a realistic basis for applying silica fume in low- and medium-strength concrete. In this paper, the effects of adding a small amount of silica fume on the water demand, setting time, exothermic heat of hydration, fluidity, mechanical properties, and water absorption of mortar with 0.5%, 1.0%, 1.5%, 2.0%, 2.5% and 3.0% of silica fume were investigated respectively. XRD and TG-DTG were used for microscopic analysis. The results showed that silica fume improved the fluidity of the cement fly ash system and reduced the water demand of the cement fly ash system, and that the water demand of the paste was reduced by about 4.5%. Therefore, water or superplasticizers could be reduced while maintaining the same fluidity. The exotherm peak during the hydration reaction are reduced. The silica fume improved the later strength of the specimen, accompanied by a slight decrease in the early strength. The water absorption was significantly reduced. Silica fume consumed CH in the cement-fly ash system and promoted the production of C-S-H. Therefore, the cost of cement consumption and improve performance could be lowered by replacing cement with silica fume.

Currently, minimally invasive surgery is considered as a beneficial treatment of supratentorial spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (SICH). A new choice of minimally invasive surgery, translower-Rolandic-point approach (TLRPA) with modified craniotomy, is described in this study. A modified classification of striatocapsular SICH based on the computed tomography scans is also described. The surgical strategy of striatocapsular SICH based on the neuroimaging evaluation is proposed.

We report the electrochemical performance of a redox polymer-mediated glucose anode catalyzed by glucose oxidase and supported on a multiscale carbon material. The support is composed of carbon paper upon which is grown multiwall nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition combined with ohmic heating of the carbon paper. The material possessed 100-fold higher surface area and demonstrated tenfold higher electrochemical performance, compared to bare carbon paper. Maximum performance is limited by biocatalyst and reactant transport in the micro- and nanoscale pores of the support material.

We report the electrochemical performance of a redox polymer-mediated glucose anode catalyzed by glucose oxidase and supported on a multiscale carbon material. The support is comprised of carbon paper upon which is grown multiwall nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition combined with ohmic heating of the carbon paper. The material possessed 100-fold higher surface area, and electrochemical performance increased 10-fold, compared to bare carbon paper. Maximum performance is limited by a balance between catalyst activation and reactant transport in the void volume between carbon paper fibers.

We report the electrochemical performance of a redox polymer-mediated glucose anode catalyzed by glucose oxidase and supported on a multiscale carbon material. The support is composed of carbon paper upon which is grown multiwall nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition combined with ohmic heating of the carbon paper. The material possessed 100-fold higher surface area and demonstrated tenfold higher electrochemical performance, compared to bare carbon paper. Maximum performance is limited by biocatalyst and reactant transport in the micro- and nanoscale pores of the support material.

Due to the intricate underwater environment, underwater images frequently exhibit issues such as low contrast, detail loss, and color distortion, which significantly affect underwater operations. To alleviate these concerns and improve image quality, multi-scale cross-layer feature interaction GAN for underwater image enhancement model (MCFIGAN) is proposed in this paper. In the proposed model, we have designed a cross-layer feature interaction module (CLFIM) that fosters the fusion and transmission of features at various levels. This approach aims to extract more comprehensive feature information and enhance the robustness of the network model. Additionally, we have constructed a multi-scale feature module (MSFEM) to extract features at different levels and scales, enabling the model to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the object. By utilizing CLFIM and MSFEM, the generator is capable of producing a generated image that contains a wealth of feature information. Then, an enhanced discriminator module (EDM) is designed to improve the model's ability to identify generated images, thereby encouraging the generator network to generate more realistic underwater images. Finally, several training sessions utilizing multiple joint losses yield underwater images with characteristics of high contrast and rich detail. Through simulation experiments conducted on EUVP dataset and UIEB dataset, our proposed model is found to be superior to related models in terms of visual effect and quantitative index, particularly in contrast enhancement, detail recovery, and color restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]