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Accurate identification of fungal species is crucial for mycological research, relying significantly on experienced taxonomists’ ability to recognize fungal morphology. With the dwindling number of taxonomists, developing a rapid, accurate, and automated fungal identification method is essential, promising to markedly decrease the time and resources needed for such tasks. To address the challenges in the automatic identification of nematode-trapping fungi (NTF, belong to Orbiliaceae, Orbiliomycetes, a group of filamentous fungi that catch nematodes in soil), specifically focusing on their conidia which are often aggregated and morphologically similar, we developed an enhanced method. Our approach integrates an efficient channel attention (ECA) mechanism within the backbone layer of YOLOv8l, improving the algorithm’s capability to detect global information effectively. This adjustment significantly optimizes the detection and differentiation of limited features and small-sized conidia among aggregated samples. The experimental outcomes demonstrated that our method increases precision by 0.3%, recall by 1.8%, and mean average precision (mAP) by 0.4%, surpassing the performance of existing target detection algorithms. In addition, this method accurately identified the aggregated fungal conidia and distinguished morphologically similar spores. In conclusion, the system accurately detects and recognizes the conidia of NTF in mixed spore environments, thus providing crucial technical support for the automatic detection and early prediction of NTF.

Introduction: Cold and exercise are two important stimuli affecting the secretion of osteokines and adipomyokines, which often occur simultaneously. However, few studies have investigated the changes in osteokines and adipomyokines induced by exercise during severe cold and their corresponding associations. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the changes in sclerostin and meteorin-like (metrnl) protein before and after cold exercise (ice swimming [IS]) and observe their correlation.Methods: For this, 56 daily ice swimmers’ data were included in this study. Serum sclerostin and metrnl were measured 30 min before IS and 30 min after. The fat mass, visceral fat area, fat-free mass, skeletal muscle mass, lumbar spine, and femoral neck bone mineral density of the ice swimmers were measured.Results: After IS, sclerostin exhibited significant decreases, whereas metrnl showed no significant change. In addition, the baseline level of sclerostin and the decrease in sclerostin were positively correlated with serum metrnl after adjusting for age, gender, and body composition indicators.Discussion: IS caused a significant decrease in sclerostin but did not affect metrnl. Furthermore, the associations between sclerostin and metrnl suggested a correlation between osteokines and adipomyokines; this encourages future exploration of the interconnection between bone, muscle, and fat, which will be beneficial for identifying potential common therapeutic targets for diseases such as osteoporosis, sarcopenia, and obesity.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a severe condition that leads to brain damage and affects brain function. Importantly, TBI incurs public health costs due to its high mortality, and effective treatment for TBI is still lacking. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) has a neuroprotective effect that can reduce oxidative, apoptosis, and inflammatory processes. Administration of DHA after TBI attenuates oxidative stress and protein accumulation and is regarded as a potential therapeutic. Iduna is a regulator of parthanatos, and upregulation of Iduna reduces cellular damage and mitochondrial dysfunction. Thus, we speculated that overexpression of Iduna might promote DHA therapy in the treatment of TBI. Here, we found that after combination overexpression of Iduna and DHA in a mouse model of TBI, the expression of inflammatory factors was reduced, while the secretion of neuroprotective factors was increased. In addition, we found that these effects might be mediated by the Wnt/MDM2 pathway, and Iduna might be a therapeutic target for TBI.

Estrogen-related receptor alpha can significantly affect cell metabolism and play key regulatory roles in healthy and diseased organisms. ERRα is also related to the onset and progression of various cancer types. ERRα is primarily expressed in metabolically active tissues and regulates the transcription of metabolic genes in such tissues. It coordinates metabolism and energy demand, affects osteoblasts, osteoclasts, and chondrocytes, promotes muscle regeneration, participates in angiogenesis, and regulates cell aging. In this study, the literature related to the identification of ERRα in skeletal, muscular, and vascular systems was reviewed to further elucidate this receptor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]