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Existing biohashing authentication schemes usually store bioinformation in the cloud, whose storage method can face the problems of bioinformation leakage and tampering, and single point of failure. To address the above problems, a ciphertext speech biohashing authentication scheme based on chaotic system and improved public chain is proposed. First, the fusion features are extracted and generated with the inner product of 3D chaotic system to generate the biohashing sequence. Second, the original speech is encrypted and uploaded to the InterPlanetary file system and then, uploaded to the blockchain after the data are encrypted. Finally, the server matches the hash sequence queried on the chain with the to-be-authenticated hash at the user's end using the Hamming distance. The experimental results show that the biohashing algorithm in this paper has better distinguishability, robustness, security and time efficiency. The key space of the speech encryption algorithm is 2 256 , which can well resist the exhaustive attack and ensure the security during speech authentication. In this paper, the combination of on-chain and off-chain storage of speech information can prevent the problem of bioinformation leakage and tampering, as well as avoiding the problem of single point of failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & Aims: Gut–vascular barrier (GVB) dysfunction has been shown to be a prerequisite for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) development. However, the causes of GVB disruption and the underlying mechanisms are still elusive. Here, we explored whether and how Escherichia coli (E. coli) NF73‐1, a pathogenic E. coli strain isolated from nonalcoholic steatohepatitis patients, contributes to NAFLD by modulating the GVB. Methods: C57BL/6J mice were fed with high‐fat diet (HFD) or normal diet in the presence or absence of E. coli NF73‐1 for the indicated time periods. Intestinal barrier function and infiltration of immune cells were evaluated in these mice. Endothelial cells were exposed to E. coli NF73‐1 for barrier integrity analysis. Results: HFD‐induced GVB disruption preceded the damage of intestinal epithelial barrier (IEB) as well as intestinal and hepatic inflammatory changes and can be reversed by vascular endothelial growth factor A blockade. Antibiotic treatment prevented mice from HFD‐induced liver steatosis by restoration of the GVB. Notably, E. coli NF73‐1 caused a more conspicuous damage of GVB than that of the IEB and contributed to NAFLD development. Mechanistically, E. coli NF73‐1 dismantled the GVB by inhibiting the Wnt/β‐catenin signalling pathway. Activation of Wnt/β‐catenin improved the GVB and impeded the translocation of E. coli NF73‐1 into the liver in vitro and in vivo. Conclusions: E. coli NF73‐1 disrupts GVB and aggravates NAFLD via inhibiting the Wnt/β‐catenin signalling pathway. Targeting E. coli NF73‐1 or selectively enhancing the GVB may act as potential avenues for the prevention and treatment of NAFLD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing activatable fluorescent probes with superlative fluorescence enhancement factor (F/F0) to improve the signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratio is still an urgent issue. "AND" molecular logic gates are emerging as a useful tool for enhanced probes selectivity and accuracy. Here, an "AND" logic gate is developed as super‐enhancers for designing activatable probes with huge F/F0 and S/N ratio. It utilizes lipid‐droplets (LDs) as controllable background input and sets the target analyte as variable input. The fluorescence is tremendously quenching due to double locking, thus an extreme F/F0 ratio of target analyte is obtained. Importantly, this probe can transfer to LDs after a response occurs. The target analyte can be directly visualized through the spatial location without a control group. Accordingly, a peroxynitrite (ONOO−) activatable probe (CNP2‐B) is de novo designed. The F/F0 of CNP2‐B achieves 2600 after reacting with ONOO−. Furthermore, CNP2‐B can transfer from mitochondria to lipid droplets after being activated. The higher selectivity and S/N ratio of CNP2‐B are obtained than commercial probe 3'‐(p‐hydroxyphenyl) fluorescein (HPFin vitro and in vivo. Therefore, the atherosclerotic plaques at mouse models are delineated clearly after administration with in situ CNP2‐B probe gel. Such input controllable "AND" logic gate is envisioned to execute more imaging tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low-voltage droop of high-voltage pulses is required to provide stable pulsed electric fields in many applications. Increasing the capacitance of energy storage capacitors increases both the size and the cost of the system. In this paper, four compensation stages based on the resonant circuit have been inserted into a 16-stage solid-state Marx generator to compensate for the voltage droop in different conditions. The nearly linear part of the sinusoidal voltage is precisely added to the load during discharging as compensation, and the rectangular pulsed voltage with little droop can be realized. Different numbers of compensation stages and different resonant inductances can compensate the droop to different levels, which means the compensation effect is also adjustable. Moreover, these compensation stages can operate as common stages in Marx generators as long as we open-circuit the resonant circuits. Since the capacitors in resonant compensation stages are also charged in parallel with capacitors in common stages, no auxiliary power supply is required. Simulating and experimental results show that the droop of a 9 kV pulse can be ideally compensated over a 500 Ω resistive load at various pulse widths. The pulse width should be shorter than the length of the nearly linear part of the sinusoidal voltage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The previous activatable probe toward one analyte can still produce imprecise signal as a result of the challenge cased by accurate identification in complex biological environment. As smarter molecules, dual-locked probes are able to respond to two different analyte with one or more output signals, which display significantly reduced background interference and increased spatial resolution. In this study, a smart cysteine/lipid droplets sequence-activated dual-locked fluorescent probe CN–NO 2 has been designed and synthesized for the detection of tumor tissues. The recognition group of CN–NO 2 removed after reacting with cysteine (Cys) and undergoing intramolecular rearrangement to generate complete fluorophores. This structure had a strong solvent effect; it could recognize lipid droplets (LDs) in cells, thus exhibiting fluorescence without secondary molecular adjustment. The fluorescence of CN–NO 2 was enhanced 1752-fold after double unlocking. Importantly, the unlocking process only takes 10 min. Furthermore, the fluorescence of CN–NO 2 was amplified remarkable and anchored at LDs after reacting with Cys in A549 cells. Therefore, CN–NO 2 clearly indicated the site of mouse xenograft tumor in vivo. Such sequence-activated dual-locked fluorescent probes are envisioned to execute more analysis and diagnostic tasks giving these unique characteristics. • The CN–NO 2 was enhanced 1752-fold after cysteine/lipid droplets double unlocking, and the unlocking process only takes 10 min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic pain intensity estimation has great potential in current rehabilitation medicine, and patients' health status information can be obtained through the analysis of facial images. At present, deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have made great progress in many fields, including natural language processing, image classification and action recognition. Motivated by the current achievements, a novel end-to-end hybrid network is proposed to extract multidimensional features from image sequences, which is composed of 3D convolution, 2D convolution and 1D convolution. Specifically, the 3D convolutional neural network (3D CNN) is designed to capture the spatiotemporal features, and the 2D convolutional neural network (2D CNN) is designed to capture the spatial features, while the 1D convolutional neural network (1D CNN) is mainly used to capture the geometric information from facial landmarks. Finally, the features obtained by the three different networks are fused together for regression. The proposed HybNet is evaluated on UNBC-McMaster Shoulder Pain Expression Archive Database, and the experimental results show that it can effectively extract the discriminative high-level features and can achieve competitive performance with the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, electrochemical sensors for nucleic acid testing based on CRISPR/Cas12a technology have attracted widespread interest due to their ease of operation and high detection sensitivity. Here, a label-free electrochemical sensor amplified by primer exchange reaction (PER), hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and CRISPR/Cas12a system was developed for analyzing miRNA- 155 and PCB 77. In the presence of targets, PER was initiated, whose products could be used to trigger the trans-cleavage activity of Cas12a for the single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) on the electrode. Afterwards, with the amplification of HCR on the electrode and electrostatic adsorption of Ru(NH 3) 6 3+, the concentration of the targets could be indicated by the DPV intensity with a low background signal. The detection limits for miRNA- 155 and PCB 77 were estimated to be 67 aM and 6.9 pg/L, respectively. This work provides a versatile method for sensitive detection of different targets using the same crRNA and can be used in various biochemical investigations. • A label-free electrochemical sensor was used for the detection of two targets. • PER, CRISPR/Cas system and HCR were applied for signal amplification. • CRISPR/Cas system can decrease the background signal without the usage of PAN. • The same crRNA can be used to detect different targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) score, regarded as the effective indicator of patient nutrition, has been demonstrated to be related to prognosis of numerous tumours. Nevertheless, the significance of CONUT for gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) remains unclear. This study intended to clarify the association between CONUT and the prognosis of GISTs. Methods: Three hundred and fifty‐five patients with GISTs undergoing surgical resection at our center were retrospectively assessed. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to help determine the cut‐off value of CONUT score. Relapse‐free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) were assessed by Kaplan–Meier curve analysis. Prognostic factors for RFS and OS were examined by Cox proportional hazards models. Results: A total of 355 patients were enrolled in this study. Areas under the curve (AUC) were 0.638 for CONUT score, and the cut‐off value of CONUT was shown to be three. Kaplan–Meier curve analysis showed that high CONUT score was linked to poorer RFS and OS. Univariate and multivariate analyses ultimately revealed that CONUT was a risk factor for RFS and OS, independent of demographics and clinicopathological tumour characteristics. Conclusions: CONUT score was an effective and novel predictor for prognosis of GIST patients treated with surgery, indicating its potential as a prognostic marker in the overall management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Acute tonsillitis is a common disease in otorhinolaryngology. Meteorological factors can affect the incidence of many infectious diseases. This study aims to analyze the correlation between acute tonsillitis and meteorological conditions. Materials and Methods: We collected the meteorological data, including daily temperature, humidity, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) of Shanghai, China, from 2014 to 2015. The monthly number of acute tonsillitis cases in our hospital was also calculated and used as the outcome variable. The associations between them were evaluated, respectively. Results: The average number of patients diagnosed with acute tonsillitis in our hospital per month was 68.67 ± 18.67 from 2014 to 2015. The average temperature, humidity, and PM2.5 of Shanghai during the defined period was 16.84 °C ± 7.80 °C, 75.93% ± 5.45%, and 52.38 ± 14.23 μg/m3, respectively. The temperature was significantly positively associated with the acute tonsillitis cases number both in Pearson correlation analysis (R = 0.423, P =.039) and in multivariate regression analysis (coefficient =2.194, P =.012). However, no correlation between the acute tonsillitis cases number and relative humidity or PM2.5 was found through a multivariate regression model (P =.225 and P =.243), respectively. Conclusion: The high temperature was associated with an increased incidence of acute tonsillitis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess any differences in spatial listening ability of cochlear implant recipients when using both or only one of two bilateral cochlear implants (BCIs) for stimuli originating from behind the subject. Twelve loudspeakers were placed in the rear horizontal plane of the subjects to test the sound localisation performance of BCI users and normal-hearing listeners (NHLs) with or without interfering noise. Stimuli were presented via two rear loudspeakers simultaneously during the speech recognition test. In the tone recognition test, another anechoic chamber was used with stimuli presenting from a loudspeaker behind the participants. Twenty-seven NHLs and eleven BCI users. Average root-mean-square (RMS) error for the bilateral condition was significantly lower than that for the right and left cochlear implant (CI) conditions with or without interfering noises (p < 0.05). Average speech or tone recognition scores for the bilateral condition and the right and left CI conditions were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). Sound localisation with BCIs was significantly more accurate than with either implant alone. Speech and tone recognition scores were not better with two compared to those of one activated implant. Given the small number of subjects, the results should be considered as preliminary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the privacy and security issues of sensitive speech data in cloud storage, and how to achieve efficient retrieval with privacy-preserving for encrypted speech data in cloud storage, a searchable encryption over encrypted speech retrieval scheme in cloud storage was proposed. Firstly, the data owner encrypts the original speech data adopting symmetric encryption algorithm Lorenz chaotic mapping. Secondly, the encrypted speech data is uploaded to the cloud server for storage, and meanwhile the Mel frequency cepstrum coefficient (MFCC) features of original speech are extracted as the input of the convolutional neural network (CNN) to execute the deep semantic feature extraction, which is taken as the speech keywords. Finally, the extracted speech keywords are encrypted and stored in the cloud. When the authorized user sends a retrieval request, the trained CNN is utilized to extract the keywords of the speech to be retrieved, and the search trapdoor is generated and sent to the cloud server. In the process of retrieval, the Euclidean distance is used to match the encrypted keywords with the search trapdoor. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed scheme has higher security and retrieval accuracy, and can be suitable for the encrypted storage of speech data and efficient secure retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work develops a novel photoelectrochemical sensor for the detection of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) based on the composite of UCNPs with semiconductors and conformational changes in the DNA structure. Firstly, SnS 2 , ZnIn 2 S 4 and UCNPs were assembled on the surface of the ITO electrode. Then Au NPs were dropped, which could facilitate the coupling of CdSe NPs modified DNA1 via Au–S bond, giving an ITO/SnS 2 /ZnIn 2 S 4 /UCNPs/CdSe heterojunction structure. When irradiated with 980 nm near-infrared (NIR) light, the UV–visible light emitted by the UCNPs could excite the nanocomposite, producing an enhanced photoelectric reaction. Subsequently, CEA aptamer and DNA2-modified SiO 2 were added to form a Y-shaped DNA structure. At this time, the photocurrent was significantly reduced by the combination of the light-blocking effect of SiO 2 and the departure of CdSe NPs from the electrode surface. When the target CEA was added, the recognition between CEA and the aptamer led to the collapse of the Y-shaped DNA structure, the restoration of hairpin DNA and the proximity of CdSe to the electrode. Accordingly, the photocurrent signals enhanced again. Under optimal experimental conditions, the detection limit as low as 0.3 pg mL−1 was obtained with good selectivity, achieving a sensitive "on-off-on" photoelectrochemical sensor for CEA detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R4363 --> 826.6 --> Background: Previous studies reported inconsistent results regarding altered gut microbiome in patients with Crohn's disease (CD), likely due to the large impact of genetic polymorphisms and environmental factors on the structure of the gut microbiota. We aim to investigate the altered microbiome in CD with a cohort that minimizes the impact of irrelevant genetic and environmental factors on the gut microbiota. Method: Stool samples and clinical records were collected from 91 patients withCD and their healthy siblings in the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat‐sen University in Guangzhou, China, between March 2014 and December 2018. Fecal DNA was isolated and the V5‐V6 region of the 16S rRNA gene was sequenced on a MiSeq platform. Data was processed with QIIME2. Spearman analysis was performed to identify the microbial features correlated with inflammatory markers. Result: Compared to healthy siblings, CD patients exhibited reduced alpha diversities based on the metrics of Chao1, Shannon, and observed speciesat the ASV level (P<0.05). Beta diversity was significantly different between study groups according to UniFrac based principle coordinate analysis (P<0.001). Altered abundances were observed at various taxonomic levels comparing between CD patients and their healthy siblings, including increased abundance in Escherichia‐Shigella and Veillonella, and decreased abundance in Lachnospiraceae, Prevotella 9 and Faecalibacterium in CD patients. Spearman analysis identified significant correlations between Escherichia‐ Shigella and Lachnospiraceae with inflammatory markers erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C‐reactive protein, and white blood cell count (Fig.1). Discussion: By comparing between CD patients with their siblings, the impact of the compounding genetic and environmental factors on the gut microbita was minimized. This approach allowed the identification of CD specific microbial fearures that are correlated with inflammatory markers. Further study along this line may establish CD specific microbial targets for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R2848 --> 826.10 --> Background: NLRP3 inflammasome is implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Since guanylate binding protein 5 (GBP5) induces the NLRP3 inflammasome activity, we aim to investigate the potential role of GBP5 in IBD pathogenesis. Methods: The expression of GBP5, NLRP3 inflammasome and related cytokines and chemokines were examined in two cohorts of IBD patients and healthy controls, by microarray transcriptome analysis, quantitative real time PCR, Western blot and Luminex Multi‐Analyte Profiling technology. Cellular and subcellular localization of GBP5 in colonic biopsies were examined by immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence with confocal microscopy. For functional studies, GBP5 expression was induced by IFNγ or silenced by siRNA or CRISPR/CAS9 technique. Results: Expression of GBP5 was elevated in colonic mucosa in two geographically and culturally distinct IBD cohorts. In colonic tissues of IBD patients, the expression of GBP5 was mainly confined to immune cells and the levels of GBP5 expression were correlated with those of the inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. In cultured T and macrophage cells, expression of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines were increased when GBP5 was induced, while GBP5 deficiency leads to decreased expression of the proinflammatory mediators including gasdermin D, caspase 1 and pro‐IL1β. Conclusions: GBP5 is required in the expression of many inflammatory cytokines and chemokines in intestinal immune cells. In addition, GBP5 may up‐regulate inflammatory reactions through an inflammasome mediated mechanism. Highly elevated GBP5 expression at the inflamed colonic mucosa in two geographically and culturally distinct IBD cohorts indicates that GBP5 plays a common and important role in IBD pathogenesis, and therefore, is a potential therapeutic target for the management of IBD patients of various genetic and environmental backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]