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Background and Objective: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), particularly bone MSCs (BMSCs) offer great potentials for targeted therapeutic applications owing to their migratory and differentiation capacities. Significant advances have been achieved in the differentiation of hepatocyte or hepatocyte-like cells both in vitro and in vivo. However, there is limited knowledge on the differentiation of BMSCs into bipotential hepatic progenitor cells or cholangiocyte. This study reviews the potentials and advances in using MSCs as vehicles for targeted drug delivery and proposes a new method for the induction of differentiation in rat BMSCs into hepatic progenitor cells in vitro and assesses the differential and migratory capacities. Methods: The BMSCs of Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were harvested from the femur and the tibiae of the rats. After isolation and culturing, BMSCs from Passage 1 were used for the study. The in vitro differentiation of the hepatic progenitor cells was performed using a 2-step induction approach after 5-day serum deprivation from the BMSCs and culturing in Dulbecco's modified eagle medium. Spontaneous in vitro differentiation of BMSCs was examined in the absence of growth factors for 15 days as control treatment. Hepatocytes differentiation was achieved by exposing the culture to collagen type I-coated plates. Cholangiocytes differentiation was achieved with replating the BMC-HepPCs on a layer of Matrigel. Immunofluorescence was conducted on twelve-well plates to determine cell differentiations. Real-Time Quantitative Reverse Transcription PCR (qRTPCR) was used to determine the total RNA extracted using the Trizol LS reagent. In the hepatocyte differentiation group, after periodic acid-schiff (PAS) staining for glycogen, inverted microscope was used to determine differentiations and undifferentiated BMC-HepPCs served as controls. The amount of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) uptake by the BMSCs-derived hepatocytes was assessed using fluorescence microscopy. The secretion of rat albumin was quantified using a quantitative ELISA kit. Results: Differentiation induction is indicative of the sequential supplementation of sodium butyrate and cytokines, which are involved in the embryonic development of the mammalian liver. Hepatic progenitor cells, derived from bone marrow, can be differentiated bidirectionally in vitro into both hepatocyte and cholangiocyte cell-lines. The differentiated cells, including hepatic progenitor cells, hepatocytes, and bile duct-like cells, were identified and analyzed at mRNA and protein levels. Conclusion: Our findings show that BMSCs can be utilized as novel bipotential hepatic progenitor cells and thereby for hepatobiliary disease treatment or hepatobiliary tissue-engineering.

Obesity has become an epidemic where it happens drastically among developing countries. Studies suggested that dietary intake are able to influence human health issues including obesity. Prebiotics are food ingredients that can positively contribute to human health by influencing the balance in gut microbiota. Thus, prebiotic dietary can selectively stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut, which could be a strategy to address obesity issues. This includes resistant starch (RS), which is a fermentable prebiotic ingredient that is able to contribute in colonic health. Therefore, it is reviewed in this article that RS as a soluble fiber with prebiotic potential for its ability to resist digestion and passes through the colon as well as positively stimulating the fermentation of gut microbiota. Also, metabolites from the colonic fermentation of RS have been exhibited in many studies. Whereby, it is reported that RS stimulates the gut signaling hormones that are responsible for controlling food appetite, preventing fat accumulation and thus, helps in body weight management. With this knowledge, this review suggested that RS may be an option to combat the development of obesity.

With the increasing demand for computer-aided diagnosis technology in the medical field, convolutional neural network (CNN) has been widely used in recent years. The training of CNNs requires a large number of medical images. However, the pediatric CXR data are difficult to obtain and often suffer from imbalance problems. To augment the image data, the researchers augment the dataset with flipping, scaling, and increasing contrast. But this will lead to the problem of single samples, resulting in a large number of samples with no application value. In this paper, we propose a generative adversarial networks based on real sample feature fusion, called RS-FFGAN. It can synthesize realistic pediatric CXR and improve the quality of the generated composite image, solve the problem of unstable training, and more importantly, improve the prediction accuracy of the classification model under the condition of unbalanced data. We detect the quality and diversity of synthetic images by using IS and FID, the RS-FFGAN synthetic image has the lowest FID value, which is 32.73 for the Normal class and 57.55 for the Pneumonia class. The mean IS is the highest with 1.92 for the Normal class and 1.80 for the Pneumonia class. On small data sets and unbalanced data sets, using RS-FFGAN can improve the prediction accuracy of classification model by 5.88% and 15.62% respectively. The results show that using RS-FFGAN to synthesize images can balance the real data distribution and significantly improve the classification performance of CNN.

Conventional CMOS devices are facing an increasing number of challenges as their feature sizes scale down. Graphene nanoribbon (GNR) based devices are shown to be a promising replacement of traditional CMOS at future technology nodes. However, all previous works on GNRs focus at the device level. In order to integrate these devices into electronic systems, routing becomes a key issue. In this article, the GNR routing problem is studied for the first time. We formulate the GNR routing problem as a minimum hybrid-cost shortest path problem on triangular mesh (“hybrid” means that we need to consider both the length and the bending of the routing path). We show that by graph expansion, this minimum hybrid-cost shortest path problem can be solved by applying the conventional shortest path algorithm on the expanded graph. Experimental results show that our GNR routing algorithm effectively handles the hybrid cost.

In order to solve the difficult profile and flatness control problem of wide non-oriented electrical steel sheets, the factors such as the relationship between strip crown control and strip width, the relationship between the maximum wearing value of work roll and the number of a rolling campaign and the wear contour change of work roll were analyzed on the basis of industrial test. Through analyzing the rolling process characteristics of non-oriented electrical steel sheets, the ASR (asymmetry self-compensating work rolls) shape control technology and its roll shifting strategy of the wider non-oriented electrical steel sheets was proposed and developed. When the technology was applied, the number of the wide non-oriented electrical steel (2.3 mm × 1280 mm) in one rolling campaign rose from 40 coils of the trial production to 70 coils of the industrial production, the ratio of the measured strip crown less than 45 μm was increased from 50.0% to 94.9%, and the ratio of the measured strip crown more than 60 μm was decreased from 20.0% to 0.7%.

Previous works on PCB bus routing assume matched pin ordering on both sides. But in practice, the pin ordering might be mismatched and the nets become twisted. In this article, we propose a preprocessing step to untangle such twisted nets. We also introduce a practical routing style, which we call single-detour routing, to simplify the untangling problem. We then present a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of single-detour routing solutions. Furthermore, we present a dynamic-programming-based algorithm to solve the single-detour untangling problem with consideration of wire capacity between adjacent pins. Our algorithm produces an optimal single-detour routing solution that rematches the pin ordering. By integrating our algorithm into the bus router in a previous length-matching router, we show that many routing problems that cannot be solved previously can now be solved with insignificant increase in runtime.

The article focuses on research on the use of Acudyne Durable Hold Resin (DHR) hair fixative polymer as an ingredient that is compatible in thermal styling. It states that thermal styling may include a curling iron, flat iron and blow dryer. It notes that Acudyne can be formulated into various hair styling formulations such as mousse, spray gel and hair spray pump to give thermal styling property. The formulations used in the study, such as denatured ethanol and glycerin, are also presented.

In order to further investigate the mechanisms of action of berberine (Ber), we assessed the effects of Ber on the mRNA expression of nitric oxide synthases (NOS) in rat corpus cavernosum. After incubation with Ber for 1 or 3 h respectively, the levels of NOS mRNA were examined by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Our results showed that there were iNOS and eNOS mRNA expression in rat corpus cavernosum. Ber enhanced eNOS mRNA expression in rat penis, but exhibited no effect on the expression of iNOS mRNA (P>0.05). The present study indicated that the relaxation of Ber involved the NO-cGMP signal thansduction pathway. The enhancing effect of Ber on eNOS mRNA expression might associated with its relaxation of corpus cavernosum.

Thoracentesis and tube thoracostomy are common procedures with bleeding risks, but existing guidelines may be overly conservative. We reviewed the evidence on the safety of thoracentesis and tube thoracostomy in patients with uncorrected coagulopathy.

To investigate the effects of WIN 55, 212-2 onIKin cultured rat trigeminal ganglion (TG) neurons, whole-cell patch clamp techniques were used to record theIKbefore and after WIN 55,212-2 perfusion at different concentrations. 30 μmol/L WIN 55,212-2 markedly (35.7%±7.3%P<0.01,n=8) inhibitedIKcurrents, and the currents were partially recovered after washing. 30 μmol/L WIN 55, 212-2 also induced a significant depolarizing shift in conductance-voltage parameters (control: V0.5=10.43±4.25 mV, k=16.27±3.86; WIN 55,212-2: V0.5=24.71±3.91 mV, k=16.69±2.75;n=8,P<0.01 for V0.5). 0.01 μmol/L WIN 55,212-2 slightly (27.0%±7.9%,P<0.05,n=7) increasedIKcurrents, but had no significant change in conductance-voltage parameters (control: V0.5=10.74±5.27 mV, k=17. 33±2.96; WIN 55, 212-2: V0.5=11.06±2.05 mV, k=19.69±6.60;n=7,P>0.05 for V0.5and k). These results suggested that WIN 55, 212-2 has dual action, which might be through different receptors.

According to the syndrome differentiation, 50 cases of cervical spondylopathy were treated by puncturing the distal acupoints and performing massage manipulation on the local affected area. After 2 courses of treatment, 35 cases were cured, 8 cases were markedly effective, 6 cases were improved, 1 case was ineffective.

Several letters to the editor are presented including a comment on an advice on growing fuchsias in the June 2010 issue, a unique home-grown organic winter melons and a baby who loves gardening.