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Summary Recent attempts have been made to direct the sensory neurotisation of free superficial circumflex iliac artery (SCIA) flaps. However, donor nerves enabling sensory recovery are limited. We report our findings in fifteen patients who underwent distal limb defect reconstruction using a sensate SCIA flap, including the lateral cutaneous branch of the subcostal nerve (LCSN), between August 2017 and September 2018. The distance from the anterosuperior iliac spine to the point where the LCSN crossed the iliac crest ranged between 6.5 and 10 cm. The diameter ranged between 1.5 and 4.0 mm. The flap size ranged between 8 × 4 and 13 × 10 cm2. All of the flaps survived uneventfully. Tests of sensory modalities, including the Semmes-Weinstein (SW) touch, vibration, pinprick, temperature and static two-point discrimination (s2PD) tests were applied in nine regions of each flap post-operatively. One or more modalities were present in at least one region at 6 months post-operatively, and the recovery of vibration perception was more consistent than that of SW touch and pinprick perception. The recovery of s2PD was noted in 4 cases over a follow-up period of more than 12 months. A reliable sensate flap with the LCSN can be considered as an attractive option for the sensory reconstruction of distal limb defects of moderate size.

Stripe noise removal from remote sensing imagery is a key preprocessing step for many applications, such as urban planning, military, and environmental monitoring. Two significant priors of the stripe are low-rankness and group sparsity, which play a central role in many destriping methods. However, for oblique stripes, these two priors are no longer explicitly applicable. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a novel sheared decomposition framework for oblique stripe removal. The main idea is to perform a shear operation on the observed image, so that the oblique stripe is transformed to nearly vertical lines. For the stripe component, we characterize the low-rankness and group sparsity priors in the sheared domain. For the image component, we characterize the smoothness prior in the original domain by unidirectional total variation (UTV), which can preserve the strong edges and geometric features while suppressing stripes. To solve the proposed model, we design an efficient alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm with guaranteed convergence. Experiments using simulated and real data show that the proposed method can remove the oblique stripe effectively and outperform the state-of-the-art methods qualitatively and quantitatively.

Although sodium and water reabsorption by the kidney plays a major role in maintaining body fluid homeostasis, the seasonal response of renal morphology and the factors involved in water and salt regulation are not well known, especially in reptiles. Eremias multiocellata is a typical desert-dwelling lizard. Here, we compared water and salt regulation of E. multiocellata in winter (hibernation), spring (emerging from hibernation), and summer (active) according to histomorphometry and the expression of genes such as those encoding aquaporins (AQP1, AQP2, AQP3), the Na

Transplant vasculopathy is one of the major causes of chronic rejection after solid organ transplantation. The pathogenic mechanisms of transplant vasculopathy are still poorly understood. Herein, we summarize current evidence suggesting that activation of the tunica adventitia may be involved in the pathogenesis of transplant vasculopathy. Adventitia is an early responder to various vascular injuries and plays an integral role in eliciting vascular inflammation and remodeling. Accumulation of macrophages in the adventitia promotes the development of vascular remodeling by releasing a variety of paracrine factors that have profound impacts on vascular mural cells. Targeting adventitial macrophages has been shown to be effective for repressing transplantation-induced arterial remodeling in animal models. Adventitia also fosters angiogenesis, and neovascularization of the adventitial layer may facilitate the transport of inflammatory cells through the arterial wall. Further investigations are warranted to clarify whether inhibiting adventitial oxidative stress and/or adventitial neovascularization are better strategies for preventing transplant vasculopathy.

A one-step in-situ hydrothermal treatment is carried out on pure Mg to prepare magnesium hydroxide coating with enhanced corrosion resistance. A uniform and compact coating with about 17 μm in thickness was formed on pure Mg substrate by hydrothermal treatment at 150 ℃ for 5 h with pH value equaling to 10. The coating displayed a dense self-assembled cage-like braiding structure and well bonded with the substrate. The sample with this coating exhibited the most positive corrosion potential and the lowest corrosion current density during electrochemical test in simulated body fluid (SBF). The relationship between the morphology, packing models and size of particles with different preparation conditions was discussed.

Cell apoptosis is involved in acute brain injury after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). The protein cytokeratin-18 (CK-18) is cleaved by the action of caspases during apoptosis, and the resulting fragments are released into the blood as caspase-cleaved CK (CCCK)-18. Our study examined the relationship between circulating CCCK-18 levels and long-term clinical outcomes among aSAH patients.We recruited 128 aSAH patients and 128 controls (matched on age and sex). Serum was collected at admission to the emergency department. Unfavorable outcome was defined as the Glasgow Outcome Score scores of 1-3. After a 6-month follow-up period, outcomes were assessed using a logistic regression analyses. The prognostic predictive values were evaluated according to receiver operating curves analysis.aSAH patients had higher plasma CCCK-18 levels compared to controls (235.1 ± 86.8 U/L vs. 25.6 ± 23.4 U/L, P0.001). CCCK-18 was independently associated with World Federation of Neurological Surgeons (WFNS) scores (t=4.460, P0.001) and modified Fisher scores (t=3.781, P0.001). Furthermore, CCCK-18 levels were markedly higher among patients with an unfavorable outcome and among non-survivors. CCCK-18 was yet identified as an independent prognostic predictor for mortality (odds ratio, 5.769; 95% confidence interval, 1.196-27.832; P=0.029) and unfavorable outcome (odds ratio, 4.909; 95% confidence interval, 1.521-15.838; P=0.008), as well as had similar predictive values for them compared with WFNS scores and modified Fisher scores.High circulating CCCK-18 levels were associated with injury severity and a poor clinical outcome after aSAH and CCCK-18 had the potential to be a good prognostic biomarker for aSAH.

Considering the inherent characteristics of incomplete fingerprint: local feature loss and global information distortion, the recognition progress has been mainly restricted by two critical problems: how to precisely extract informative features and still with compact representation of the incomplete fingerprint; and how to effectively measure the similarity between fingerprint images. In this paper, to handle the first problem, both the minutiae and orientation field feature are extracted and then fused to get a more comprehensive feature with scale and rotation invariability. Dealing with the second one, the pattern entropy is introduced to robustly measure the similarity of two incomplete fingerprints. Extensive experiments have been conducted on both those popular fingerprint databases and our extended databases containing more incomplete fingerprints. Meanwhile, thorough performance comparisons have been made with existing approaches. Experimental results show that our approach has more efficient ability especially in incomplete fingerprint recognition, and also performs well in both accuracy and efficiency.

The thermal conductivity of individual pitch-derived carbon fibers was measured in the temperature range 100–400 K by a T type method, in which a hot wire served both as a heating source and thermometer, and the electrical and thermal properties of the hot wire were measured by direct current heating. When a tested carbon fiber was attached to the center position of the hot wire, the thermal conductivity of the fiber was determined by a comparison of the average temperature rise of the hot wire with and without the fiber. Results show that the thermal conductivity of the fiber was limited by boundary scattering below 300 K, and saturated around 350 K at a value of about 800 W/(m·K). An unexpectedly high thermal conductivity of about 920 W/(m·K) was observed at around 400 K. The effect of the thermal contact resistance on the measurement was estimated by changing the length of the fiber in the same contact conditions and the radiation effect was also discussed. The uncertainty of the thermal conductivity was estimated to be ± 13%.

To improve the antifouling property of polypropylene hollow fiber microporous membranes (PPHFMMs) in a membrane bioreactor (MBR) for wastewater treatment, PPHFMMs were subjected to surface modification by NH 3 plasma treatment. Structural and morphological changes of the membranes were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Water contact angle, which reflects the hydrophilicity of the membrane surface, was measured by the sessile drop method. Results of XPS clearly indicated that the plasma treatment introduced nitrogen- and oxygen-containing polar groups on the membrane surface. The water contact angle of the modified membrane reduced with the decrease of the initial NH 3 pressure in the plasma reactor. To assess the relation between the plasma treatment and the membrane fouling in an MBR, membrane filtration for activated sludge was carried out using synthetic wastewater. PPHFMMs after NH 3 plasma treatment showed better flux recovery after cleaning than that of the unmodified membrane. Under the operating conditions with 8–12 h hydraulic retention time and 6.2 g/L sludge concentration in the MBR, the removal efficiency of COD and NH 3 –N was above 95% and around 60%, respectively, for a 350 mg/L COD and a 10–15 mg/L NH 3 –N fed to the bioreactor.

Poly(acrylonitrile-co-N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone)s (PANCNVP) were synthesized by water-phase precipitation copolymerization (WPPCP) with sodium chlorate–sodium metabisulfite as an oxidant/reducer initiator system. The copolymers were also synthesized by a solution copolymerization (SCP) initiated with azobis(isobutyronitrile) for comparison. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were used to characterize the copolymers. It was found that the copolymerization yield, the molecular weight of the copolymers, and the N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone (NVP) conversion for WPPCP were much higher than those for SCP. Results indicated that WPPCP was a ‘green’ and effective method to incorporate NVP into polyacrylonitrile. The surface properties of the copolymer dense membranes were studied by water contact angle, protein adsorption, and platelet adhesion measurements. Typical results demonstrated that the introduction of NVP had little influence on the static, advancing, and receding contact angles of the dense membrane surface. However, the bovine serum albumin adsorption and the platelet adhesion were remarkably suppressed with the increase in NVP content in the copolymers. When the mole fraction of NVP in the copolymers reached 14.6%, little platelet adhesion took place. These results revealed that the hemocompatibility of polyacrylonitrile could be greatly improved by the incorporation of NVP.

To improve the antifouling property of polypropylene hollow fiber microporous membranes (PPHFMMs) in a membrane-bioreactor (MBR) for wastewater treatment, the PPHFMMs were subjected to surface modification by CO2 plasma treatment. Structural and morphological changes on the membrane surface were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Water contact angle, which reflects the hydrophilicity of the membrane surface, was measured by the sessile drop method. Results of XPS clearly indicated that the plasma treatment introduced oxygen containing polar groups on the membrane surface. The static water contact angle of the modified membrane reduced obviously at first and then kept almost constant with the increase of CO2 plasma treatment time. To assess the relation between the plasma treatment and the membrane fouling in a MBR, filtration for activated sludge was carried out using synthetic wastewater. The PPHFMMs after CO2 plasma treatment showed better flux recovery after cleaning than that of the unmodified membrane. Fouling index (FI) for the CO2 plasma treated PPHFMMs was lower than that of the unmodified PPHFMM.

This study investigated whether adenosine A1 receptors could modulate respiratory rhythm in mammals. Experiments were performed in in vitro brainstem slice preparations from neonatal rats. These preparations included the medial region of Nucleus Retrofacialis (mNRF) with the hypoglossal nerve (XII nerve) rootlets retained. The rhythmical discharges of the biphasic expiratory (biphasic E) neurons/inspiratory neurons (I neurons) and activities of the XII nerve rootlets were simultaneously recorded by using extracellular microelectrodes and suction electrodes, respectively. Roles of adenosine A1 receptors in modulation of respiratory rhythm were investigated by administration of the adenosine A1 receptor agonist R-phenylisopropyl-adenosine (R-PIA, 10 microM) and its specific antagonist 8-cyclopentyl-1,3-dipropylxanthine (DPCPX, 2 microM). DPCPX decreased the respiratory period (27.19%) and expiratory duration (28.27%) of biphasic E neurons and at the same time increased the peak discharge frequency (48.13%). By contrast, R-PIA produced opposite effects. On the other hand, the effects of DPCPX and R-PIA on the I neurons were similar to that on the biphasic E neurons except that R-PIA shortened the discharge duration of I neurons (34.12%) and decreased the peak discharge frequency (37.75%) in the middle phase of inspiration, but not in the initial and terminal phases. These results suggest that adenosine A1 receptors are involved in the phase-switching between expiration and inspiration by affecting biphasic E neurons. Activation of adenosine A1 receptors may modulate the inhibitory synaptic inputs from I neurons to biphasic E neurons.

The success in synthesizing a variety of nanostructured materials in recent years have provided a new degree of freedom for the development of advanced polymer materials for gas separation. In this paper, a series of pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA)/oxydianiline (ODA) polyimide (PI) membranes filling with polystyrene (PS) and poly(styrene-co-4-vinylpyridine) (PSVP)-nanoparticles were fabricated and their gas separation properties for CO2, O2, N2 and CH4 were measured. Concerning the PI/PS-nanoparticle composite membranes, the gas permeabilities and selectivities decrease with the increase of PS-nanoparticles in the membranes. These are due to the increase in gas diffusion coefficients and the decrease in diffusion selectivities. For PI/PSVP-nanoparticle composite membranes, both increase in gas permeabilities and selectivities are observed when the PSVP-nanoparticles increase from 10 to 20 wt.% in the membranes, while both the diffusion coefficients and diffusion selectivities show decrease. It was found that the membrane containing 20% PSVP-nanoparticles shows both high gas permeability and high permselectivity towards CO2. These results may be ascribed to the high solubility of CO2 and O2 in the pyridine-containing polymers and the relative homogenous distribution of PSVP-nanoparticle in the PI matrix. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to characterize the structure of the nanoparticles and the composite membranes. Temperature effects on the gas permeabilities and diffusivities of the membranes were studied.

Surface modification of microporous polypropylene hollow fiber membranes was performed by graft polymerization of acrylic acid. The effects of temperature, polymerization medium, monomer concentration and multifunctional cross-linker on the graft polymerization were studied. The grafting degree on the polypropylene membrane can be greatly increased upon the addition of divinylbenzene (DVB). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) pictures demonstrated that PAA grafted mainly on the surface of the membrane. Mercury porosimetry analysis revealed that the grafting also took place within the pores. Contact angle and absorbed water measurements showed excellent wetting properties with water for the grafted membranes. The grafted membrane did not show high flux for ultrapure water because the grafting of AA plugs the pores of the membrane.