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The nucleus accumbens (NAc) plays an important role in various emotional and motivational behaviors that rely on heightened wakefulness. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between arousal and emotion regulation in NAc remain unclear. Here, we investigated the roles of a specific subset of inhibitory corticotropin-releasing hormone neurons in the NAc (NAcCRH) in regulating arousal and emotional behaviors in mice. We found an increased activity of NAcCRH neurons during wakefulness and rewarding stimulation. Activation of NAcCRH neurons converts NREM or REM sleep to wakefulness, while inhibition of these neurons attenuates wakefulness. Remarkably, activation of NAcCRH neurons induces a place preference response (PPR) and decreased basal anxiety level, whereas their inactivation induces a place aversion response and anxious state. NAcCRH neurons are identified as the major NAc projection neurons to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). Furthermore, activation of the NAcCRH-BNST pathway similarly induced wakefulness and positive emotional behaviors. Taken together, we identified a basal forebrain CRH pathway that promotes the arousal associated with positive affective states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sketch face recognition has recently gained significant attention in the field of computer vision due to its ability to quickly identify matched pairs of optical and sketch images. This technology has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations. However, there are still challenges that need to be addressed in sketch face recognition algorithms, such as modal differences and limited sample sizes. To overcome these issues, this study proposes a Residual Serialized Cross Grouping Transformer (RSCGT), which contains a residual serialized module to reduce the computation complexity, a two-layer Cross Grouping Transformer module that is capable of extracting modality-invariant context features, a domain adaptive module to mitigate the impact of modal differences. Additionally, we introduce a meta-learning training strategy to augment the generalization ability of this model. Experimental results demonstrate that the RSCGT achieves high accuracy in sketch face recognition tasks, even with small-scale datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semi-supervised object detection aims to enhance object detectors by utilizing a large number of unlabeled images, which has gained increasing attention in natural scenes. However, when these methods are directly applied to scenes with tiny objects, they face the challenge of selecting pseudo-labels with high localization quality due to the minuscule and blurred characteristics of these objects. To address this issue, we propose a novel method called semi-supervised tiny object detection (STOD). Firstly, to enhance the localization accuracy of pseudo-labels, we design a dense IoU-aware head that evaluates the quality of bounding box localization by incorporating additional predicted overlap values. Secondly, to mine more potential pseudo-labels, we propose a GMM-based multi-threshold pseudo-labels mining module that dynamically generates multiple thresholds using classification scores and overlap values to classify bounding boxes into strong positive and weak positive pseudo-labels. Lastly, we design the localization-aware weighting loss to incorporate the localization quality of both positive and negative samples in order to enhance the accuracy of pseudo-label localization. The experimental results show that STOD achieves comparable performance when compared to both fully and semi-supervised methods. Notably, on the VisDrone-Partial benchmark, STOD achieves outstanding results by outperforming our baseline model with improvements of 3.1 mAP, 5.7 A P 50 , and 3.0 A P 75 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is a major global health concern due to its high mortality and disability rates. Hemorrhagic transformation, a common complication of AIS, leads to poor prognosis yet lacks effective treatments. Preclinical studies indicate that hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatment within 12 h of AIS onset alleviates ischemia/reperfusion injuries, including hemorrhagic transformation. However, clinical trials have yielded conflicting results, suggesting some underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we confirmed that HBO treatments beginning within 1 h post reperfusion significantly alleviated the haemorrhage and neurological deficits in hyperglycemic transient middle cerebral arterial occlusion (tMCAO) mice, partly due to the inhibition of the NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated pro-inflammatory response in microglia. Notably, reactive oxygen species (ROS) mediate the anti-inflammatory and protective effect of early HBO treatment, as edaravone and N-Acetyl-l-Cysteine (NAC), two commonly used antioxidants, reversed the suppressive effect of HBO treatment on NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated inflammation in microglia. Furthermore, NAC countered the protective effect of early HBO treatment in tMCAO mice with hyperglycemia. These findings support that early HBO treatment is a promising intervention for AIS, however, caution is warranted when combining antioxidants with HBO treatment. Further assessments are needed to clarify the role of antioxidants in HBO therapy for AIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies suggest that interdisciplinary research fosters creativity and breakthroughs, there has been no quantitative study to confirm this belief. In recent years, several indicators have been developed to measure novelty or disruption in research. Compared with the citation impact, this type of indicator can more directly characterize research quality and contribution. Based on the F1000 Prime database and Scopus datasets accessed via ICSR Lab, F1000 novelty tags and two disruption indices (DI1 and DI5) were used in this study for the assessment of research quality and contribution, and it was explored whether interdisciplinarity is more likely to produce novel or disruptive research. Interestingly, DI1 and DI5 exhibit different relationships with F1000 novelty tags; the reason for this may be that DI5 highlights disruptive research within a given discipline and amplifies the disruptive signal within that discipline. Furthermore, it is found that interdisciplinarity (RS and LCDiv) is positively associated with F1000 novelty tags and the disruption indices (DI1 and DI5). As a result, it is demonstrated that interdisciplinarity helps to produce novel or disruptive research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this work is to evaluate generation and metals recycling potentials of retired mobile phones in Korea. The generation estimation is conducted with the sales&new method and statistic data, such as sales of mobile phones and amount of the subscribers. The result shows that there are 17.99 million of mobile phones retired in 2022, compared 13.12 million in 2001. Accordingly, the deduced lifetime has minimum and maximum values in 2003 and 2020, which are 2.02 and 4.33 years, compared with 4.16 years in 2022 and 2.21 years in 2001. The deduced lifetime trends to increase with the increased values of subscribers and the fluctuated values of sales. The crosscheck testifies to the veracity of the result in comparison with the actual condition. The amount and dynamic of critical metals are also calculated with the content and amount of retired mobile phones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pigments produced by micro-organisms could contribute to their pathogenesis and resistance. The investigation into the red pigment of R. mucilaginosa and its ability to survive and resist has not yet been explored. This study aimed to investigate the survival and resistance of the R. mucilaginosa CQMU1 strain following inhibition of pigment production by naftifine and its underlying mechanism. The red-pigmented Rhodotorula mucilaginosa CQMU1 yeast was isolated from an infected toenail of a patient with onychomycosis. Cultivation of R. mucilaginosa in liquid and solid medium showed the effect of naftifine after treatment. Then, analysis of phagocytosis and tolerance to heat or chemicals of R. mucilaginosa was used to evaluate the survival and resistance of yeast to different treatments. Naftifine reversibly inhibited the pigmentation of R. mucilaginosa CQMU1 in solid and liquid media. Depigmented R. mucilaginosa CQMU1 showed increased susceptibility toward murine macrophage cells RAW264.7 and reduced resistance toward different types of chemicals, such as 1.5-M NaCl and 0.5% Congo red. Inhibition of pigment production by naftifine affected the survival and growth of R. mucilaginosa and its resistance to heat and certain chemicals. The results obtained could further elucidate the target of new mycosis treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purposes: Increased number of studies reveal the crucial role of the Cyclic GMP–AMP synthase/stimulator of interferon genes (cGAS/STING) pathway in anti-tumor immunity. In this study, we aim to explore the effect of cGAS/STING on tumor immune microenvironment of melanoma after carbon ion radiotherapy (CIRT) and the underlying mechanism. Methods: C57BL/6 mouse tumor models were used to evaluate the efficacy of different treatments (X-ray, carbon ion, PD-L1 inhibitor and combination therapies) on tumor growth and process. Mass cytometry was performed to assess tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). DNA damage response (DDR) and cGAS/STING pathway were investigated by immunofluorescence-co-localization assays, γ-H2AX, P53-binding protein 1 (53BP1), Breast Cancer 1 (BRCA1), and cGAS measurements. Results: Carbon ion irradiation caused more DNA damages and cGAS–STING pathway activation compared with X-ray irradiation, and the former slowed the melanoma growth in syngeneic model. Although X-ray irradiation is not sensitive for melanoma treatment, carbon ion irradiation showed a significant anti-tumor effect for melanoma treatment. TILs analysis revealed that CIRT boosted the infiltration of natural killer (NK), CD4+, and CD8+ T cells, meanwhile increased the number of immune checkpoint (programmed death-1, PD-1, lymphocyte activation gene 3, LAG-3 and T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing protein 3, TIM-3). Moreover, CIRT increased PD-L1 exposure on cell surface compared with X-ray group. Furthermore, CIRT combined with PD-L1 inhibitor therapy increased the number of T cells and NK cells in melanoma, and slowed the growth of melanoma compared with other therapies. Conclusions: Our findings showed that CIRT displayed biological effects by increasing DNA damages of tumor cells and improving immunity in melanoma, which indicated that CIRT might be a potential synergetic treatment for radiotherapy and radioimmunotherapy in melanoma patients. Our works put forward a new insight to provide an effective strategy for melanoma therapy. These findings may help in the design of strategies on melanoma in clinical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cryptochromes (CRYs) are vital regulators of blue light-dependent photoresponses, and multiple CRYs were characterized in basal eudicot-sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera). However, how blue light senses and regulates photomorphogenesis in sacred lotus remains unexplored. In this study, we found that sacred lotus Cryptochrome 1a (NnCRY1a) regulated photomorphogenesis in a blue light-dependent manner. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that NnCRY1a was closer to CRY1 from another basal eudicot. NnCRY1a showed a dynamic tissue expression pattern in the sacred lotus. NnCRY1a was sensitive to blue light but not in a dose-dependent manner. Over-expression of NnCRY1a in Arabidopsis led to a shorter hypocotyl length under blue light, and NnCRY1a partially rescued the long hypocotyl phenotype of the atcry1 mutant. NnCRY1a interacted with both AtCOP1 and NnCOP1 to deactivate the COP1/SPA complex, thus stimulating the accumulation of AtHY5 mRNAs under blue light. Overall, CRY1 has a conserved function in blue light-mediated hypocotyl elongation from core eudicot-Arabidopsis to the basal eudicot-sacred lotus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency degree of freedom of optical photons has been recently explored for efficient quantum information processing. Significant reduction in hardware resources and enhancement of quantum functions can be expected by leveraging the large number of frequency modes. Here, we develope an integrated photonic platform for the generation and parallel processing of quantum frequency combs (QFCs). Cavity-enhanced parametric down-conversion with Sagnac configuration is implemented to generate QFCs with identical spectral distributions. On-chip quantum interference of different frequency modes is simultaneously realized with the same photonic circuit. High interference visibility is maintained across all frequency modes with the identical circuit setting. This enables the on-chip reconfiguration of QFCs. By deterministically separating QFCs without spectral filtering, we further demonstrate high-dimensional Hong-Ou-Mandel effect. Our work provides the critical step for the efficient implementation of quantum information processing with integrated photonics using the frequency degree of freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reverse-selective membranes have attracted considerable interest for bioethanol production. However, to date, the reverse-separation performance of ethanol/water is poor and the separation mechanism is unclear. Graphene-based membranes with tunable apertures and functional groups have shown substantial potential for use in molecular separation. Using molecular dynamics simulations, for the first time, we reveal two-way selectivity in ethanol/water separation through functional graphene membranes. Pristine graphene (PG) exhibits reverse-selective behavior with higher ethanol fluxes than water, resulting from the preferential adsorption for ethanol. Color flow mappings show that this ethanol-permselective process is initiated by the presence of ethanol-enriched and water-barren pores; this has not been reported in previous studies. In contrast, water molecules are preferred for hydroxylated graphene membranes because of the synergistic effects of molecular sieving and functional-group attraction. A simulation of the operando condition shows that the PG membrane with an aperture size of 3.8 Å achieves good separation performance, with an ethanol/water separation factor of 34 and a flux value of 69.3 kg·m−2·h−1·bar−1. This study provides new insights into the reverse-selective mechanism of porous graphene membranes and a new avenue for efficient biofuel production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanochannels in laminated graphene oxide nanosheets featuring confined mass transport have attracted interest in multiple research fields. The use of nanochannels for reverse osmosis is a prospect for developing next-generation synthetic water-treatment membranes. The robustness of nanochannels under high-pressure conditions is vital for effectively separating water and ions with sub-nanometer precision. Although several strategies have been developed to address this issue, the inconsistent response of nanochannels to external conditions used in membrane processes has rarely been investigated. In this study, we develop a robust interlayer channel by balancing the associated chemistry and confinement stability to exclude salt solutes. We build a series of membrane nanochannels with similar physical dimensions but different channel functionalities and reveal their divergent deformation behaviors under different conditions. The deformation constraint effectively endows the nanochannel with rapid deformation recovery and excellent ion exclusion performance under variable pressure conditions. This study can help understand the deformation behavior of two-dimensional nanochannels in pressure-driven membrane processes and develop strategies for the corresponding deformation constraints regarding the pore wall and interior. Nanochannels in laminated graphene oxide nanosheets featuring confined mass transport have attracted interest in multiple research fields. As an important aspect for efficient pressure-driven membrane processes, authors investigate the response and deformation behaviours of such nanochannels to different external conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyaluronidase (HAase) can depolymerize mucopolysaccharide hyaluronic acid (HA) to increase the efficacy of drug diffusion in the case of pathogenic bacteria. Due to its widespread medical applications, HAase originating from microorganisms has attracted significant attention. In this study, the HAase-producing bacterium Bacillus sp. CQMU-D was isolated from soil and identified based on its morphology and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Enzyme activity was detected by measuring the content of reducing sugar in HA degradation products with 3,5-dinitrosalicylic acid (DNSA) or p-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde (DMAB) as the detection reagent. The results revealed that HAase reached maximum activity after 48 h of cultivation. Gene function annotation after full-length sequencing showed increased transport and metabolic activities associated with HAase. Additionally, the HAase gene of Bacillus sp. CQMU-D was different from the existing microbial HAase, and its protein was predicted to be a stable secretory protein with a conserved GAG_Lyase domain. These results characterized a new HAase-producing Bacillus from the soil via enzyme activity and bioinformatic analysis, expanding the knowledge on Bacillus HAase for potential industrial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). Several factors, including neuroinflammation, neuronal excitotoxicity, genetic mutations and incorrect protein folding are involved in PD pathophysiology. However, the precise mechanism that contributes to the decreased number of dopaminergic neurons is unknown. A growing body of research suggests that oxidative stress is a major factor in PD. Therefore, antioxidant therapy is an important approach for treating PD. The thioredoxin system is an important antioxidant system, and thioredoxin reductase 1 (TR1) is a major member of the thioredoxin system. The present study demonstrates that oxidative stress is increased and that the expression of TR1 is decreased in the SNc of A53T mice; TR1 has emerged as an important antioxidant agent in dopaminergic neurons. Therefore, we over-expressed TR1 in the MPP+-induced cellular model and in the A53T transgenic mouse model of PD. We confirmed that the overexpression of TR1 in neuronal cells decreased DNA damage and malondialdehyde (MDA) and ROS generation, increased T-SOD and GSH production, and decreased the ER stress, and autophagy in the PD model. In summary, our findings demonstrate that the overexpression of TR1 could be effective as a novel neuroprotective strategy for PD. This research suggests a novel direction in the treatment of PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrochemical CO2 reduction (ECR) is highly attractive to curb global warming. The knowledge on the evolution of catalysts and identification of active sites during the reaction is important, but still limited. Here, we report an efficient catalyst (Ag-D) with suitable defect concentration operando formed during ECR within several minutes. Utilizing the powerful fast operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy, the evolving electronic and crystal structures are unraveled under ECR condition. The catalyst exhibits a ~100% faradaic efficiency and negligible performance degradation over a 120-hour test at a moderate overpotential of 0.7 V in an H-cell reactor and a current density of ~180 mA cm−2 at −1.0 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode in a flow-cell reactor. Density functional theory calculations indicate that the adsorption of intermediate COOH could be enhanced and the free energy of the reaction pathways could be optimized by an appropriate defect concentration, rationalizing the experimental observation. Efficient electrocatalysts are crucial to the electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction. Here, the authors use the fast operando technique to explore a silver-based catalyst with improved catalytic performance benefiting from the suitable defect structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The polyaniline/reduced graphene oxide (PANI/RGO) modified interdigital electrode (IDE) has been successfully fabricated by in situ electrochemical reduction and electrochemical polymerization through cyclic voltammetry. The morphology and topography of PANI/RGO characterized by SEM and AFM display intercross-linked dendritic structure in three dimensions, and it is favorable for the detection of nitrite due to its large surface area, which can provide the large electrocatalytic active surface and various diffusion paths for nitrite. Herein, the obtained PANI/RGO/IDE was employed for the electrochemical monitoring platform of nitrite for the first time and the electrochemical performance of the as-developed sensor was investigated via cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. At the optimum conditions, the PANI/RGO/IDE has a linear response in the range from 0.4 to 183.7 mM with a sensitivity of 457.4 μA mM−1 cm−2 and a detection limit of 0.1 μM. Moreover, the obtained PANI/RGO/IDE with excellent long-term stability and reproducibility also can be employed for practical application for the determination of nitrite in tap water, the results show that the recovery rate is desirable. It is expected that IDE can be employed as the substrate electrode decorated with various materials to construct high-performance electrochemical sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leptodermis is a taxonomically problematic genus, and little information about its palynology was known previously. In order to find taxonomic informative characters for species delimitation and their systematic implications, 105 pollen samples, representing 28 species and four varieties, were observed and analyzed. Phylogenetic inference was also conducted based on six chloroplast fragments from 32 taxa to trace the evolutionary trend of pollen characters in Leptodermis. Results showed that two types of pollen can be identified based on the aperture number and position, viz. zonoaperturate pollen with 3 or 4 colpi situated equatorially and pantoaperturate pollen with 6 to 15 apertures evenly spread over the surface forming a polygonal platelike pattern. Pollen polymorphism was rarely observed in a few Leptodermis species. Pollen dimorphism also occurs in Leptodermis, in which the muri are smooth in pollen from pin flowers whereas have minute granules in pollen from thrum flowers. Phylogenetic mapping demonstrated that each of the nine clades matched well with aperture number and position and the 3-colpate condition was plesiomorphic. In Leptodermis, pantoaperturate grains evolved three times independently and were apomorphic. In addition, the frequent occurrence of pollen polymorphism in some species might be explained by shifts among 3-colpate, 4-colpate, and pantoaperturate pollen grains. The pollen-type mapping to the phylogenetic tree revealed that the aperture number and position could well match different phylogenetic clades, suggesting that pollen morphology could provide useful information for taxonomic and systematic studies in Leptodermis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to being grown on industry-standard orientation, vertical [100] oriented nanowires present novel families of facets and related cross-sectional shapes. These nanowires are engineered to achieve a number of facet combinations and cross-sectional shapes, by varying their growth parameters within ranges that facilitate vertical growth. In situ post-growth annealing technique is used to realise other combinations that are unattainable solely using growth parameters. Two examples of possible novel radial heterostructures grown on these vertical [100] oriented nanowire facets are presented, demonstrating their potential in future applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of two different methods of silicon doping in AlGaN layer, that is, modulation-doping (MD) and delta-doping (DD), on the optical and electrical performance of deep ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (DUV-LEDs) has been investigated. Both the photoluminescence and electroluminescence intensities in the Si-DD structure are stronger than those obtained by the Si-MD method, while the forward voltage and reverse leakage current are slightly smaller in the DD structure than that in the MD structure. Compared with the MD structure, the DD structure shows higher capacitance-voltage characteristics. This study suggests that the DD method can improve the optical and electrical performance of DUV-LEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new heterogeneous pulse-coupled neural network (HPCNN) is proposed to prune the boundary effects in image quantization. An oscillating sine–cosine pulse-coupled neural network (SC-PCNN) is combined with the morphological algorithm and two classical PCNNs which have different parameters corresponding to different image regions to form the proposed new HPCNN model (SC-HPCNN). This model retains the natural characteristics of classical PCNN while revealing its own merits; when it is used to accomplish image quantization, the quantization noise and boundary effects are removed dramatically, without significantly degrading image quality. Furthermore, experimental results also show that the proposed model outperforms previous approaches, and it operates in accordance with the characteristics of the human visual system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer poses a threat to the lives of many women. Breast density is a closely related indicator of breast cancer risk. The aim of this paper is to propose a classification system for breast density, which can appropriately segment the glandular tissue from the whole breast and to achieve a better classification result. A new threshold method is applied to segment the breast glandular tissue. The gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) is implemented to extract the texture features of the glandular tissue. Meanwhile, we obtain three statistical features (mean, skewness, kurtosis). In addition, the calculated breast density that is served as a new feature is added to the feature vectors. The mixed feature vectors are classified by Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Ultimate Learning Machine (ELM). Ten-fold cross-validation is used to verify the classifier performance. The system using the SVM achieves 96.19% accuracy for three density types in the MIAS database and achieves 96.35% accuracy of four density types in the DDSM database. The accuracy in the database mixed with the local database was 95.01% and there are three density types in the mixed database. The experimental results indicate that the system proposed has a better performance in breast density classification. The system proposed in this paper can be considered to help the physician to classify breast density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, recent pulse coupled neural networks (PCNN) model's development, especially in the fields related to the image processing, were surveyed. Our review aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of selected researches from past few decades, having powerful methods to infer the area of study. In this paper, all selected references are categorized in three groups, on the basis of neurons structure, parameters setting, and the inherent characteristics of PCNN. Various applications of these models were mentioned and underlying difficulties, limitations, merits and disadvantages were discussed in applying these models. The researchers will find it helpful to choose and use the appropriate model for a better application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on direct limits and inverse limits in the category with generalized pseudo-effect algebras (GPEAs for short) as objects and GPEA-morphisms as morphisms. We show that direct limits exist in the category of GPEAs and direct limits of GPEAs satisfy the Riesz decomposition properties whenever the directed systems of GPEAs satisfy the Riesz decomposition properties. Then, we give a condition under which the quotient of a direct limit of GPEAs is a direct limit of quotients of GPEAs. Moreover, we prove that if inverse systems of GPEAs satisfy the Riesz decomposition properties, then inverse limits also satisfy the Riesz decomposition properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-performance humidity sensor based on multilayer-structured poly-vanadium acid/polyaniline (V/PANI) composite was reported in this paper. Two-layer-structured V/PANI composite was fabricated by dip-coating poly-vanadium acid and electrochemically polymerizing PANI onto the interdigitated gold electrode in sequence, and then the process could be repeated to prepare the second two-layer-structured V/PANI composite. The crystalline phase properties and structural characteristics of the poly-vanadium acid, PANI, and V/PANI composite were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and UV-visible spectroscopy, respectively. The morphological characteristics of the first two-layer-structured V/PANI composite and multilayer-structured V/PANI composite were characterized by scanning electron microscopy. Additionally, sensors based on the multilayer-structured V/PANI composite showed good humidity sensing properties. For instance, its impedance changed linearly for approximately four orders of magnitude in a wide range of 11-97% RH. Furthermore, it displayed small hysteresis (~5% RH), fast response (t90% of 8 s and 12 s for adsorption and desorption processes, respectively), good stability. The possible sensing mechanism was analyzed by considering the special multilayer structure and using complex impedance spectra and the corresponding equivalent circuit of the sensor. The measurement results highlight the multilayer-structured V/PANI composite film is a candidate material for constructing humidity sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a 3D micro-nano material, layered double hydroxides have been widely used in many fields, especially for reinforced composite materials. In this paper, LiAl-LDHs was obtained by a hydrothermal method. In order to investigate the effects of LiAl-LDHs on the early hydration of calcium sulphoaluminate (CSA) cement paste, compressive strength, setting time and hydration heat were tested while X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scaning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis were employed. The results indicated that LiAl-LDHs could significantly improve the early compressive strength and shorten the setting time of calcium sulphoaluminate cement paste with 3wt% concentration. Besides, the hydration exothermic rate within 5 h was accelerated with increasing LiAl-LDHs content. Moreover, the addition of LiAl-LDHs did not result in the formation of a new phase, but increased the quantity of hydration products providing higher compressive strength, shorter setting time and denser microstructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: As gallbladder diseases including gallstone and cholecystitis are mainly diagnosed by using ultra-sonographic examinations, we propose a novel method to segment the gallbladder and gallstones in ultrasound images. Methods: The method is divided into five steps. Firstly, a modified Otsu algorithm is combined with the anisotropic diffusion to reduce speckle noise and enhance image contrast. The Otsu algorithm separates distinctly the weak edge regions from the central region of the gallbladder. Secondly, a global morphology filtering algorithm is adopted for acquiring the fine gallbladder region. Thirdly, a parameter-adaptive pulse-coupled neural network (PA-PCNN) is employed to obtain the high-intensity regions including gallstones. Fourthly, a modified region-growing algorithm is used to eliminate physicians' labeled regions and avoid over-segmentation of gallstones. It also has good self-adaptability within the growth cycle in light of the specified growing and terminating conditions. Fifthly, the smoothing contours of the detected gallbladder and gallstones are obtained by the locally weighted regression smoothing (LOESS). Results: We test the proposed method on the clinical data from Gansu Provincial Hospital of China and obtain encouraging results. For the gallbladder and gallstones, average similarity percent of contours (EVA) containing metrics dice's similarity , overlap fraction and overlap value is 86.01 and 79.81%, respectively; position error is 1.7675 and 0.5414 mm, respectively; runtime is 4.2211 and 0.6603 s, respectively. Our method then achieves competitive performance compared with the state-of-the-art methods. Conclusions: The proposed method is potential to assist physicians for diagnosing the gallbladder disease rapidly and effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because depth information has shown its effectiveness in scene classification, RGB-D sensor-based scene classification has received wide attention. However, when images are polluted by noise in the transmission process, the recognition rate will decline significantly. Furthermore, after adopting feature representation schemes, the dimensionality of concatenated features that are extracted from the RGB image and depth image pair is very high. Therefore, a new dimensional reduction algorithm called Cauchy estimator discriminant learning (CEDL) is presented in this paper. CEDL simultaneously addresses two goals: (1) to decrease negative influences to some extent when there is noise in the input samples; (2) to preserve the local and global geometry structure of the input samples. Experiments with the frequently used NYU Depth V1 dataset suggest the effectiveness of CEDL compared with other state-of-the-art scene classification methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer is becoming a leading death of women all over the world; clinical experiments demonstrate that early detection and accurate diagnosis can increase the potential of treatment. In order to improve the breast cancer diagnosis precision, this paper presents a novel automated segmentation and classification method for mammograms. We conduct the experiment on both DDSM database and MIAS database, firstly extract the region of interests (ROIs) with chain codes and using the rough set (RS) method to enhance the ROIs, secondly segment the mass region from the location ROIs with an improved vector field convolution (VFC) snake and following extract features from the mass region and its surroundings, and then establish features database with 32 dimensions; finally, these features are used as input to several classification techniques. In our work, the random forest is used and compared with support vector machine (SVM), genetic algorithm support vector machine (GA-SVM), particle swarm optimization support vector machine (PSO-SVM), and decision tree. The effectiveness of our method is evaluated by a comprehensive and objective evaluation system; also, Matthew's correlation coefficient (MCC) indicator is used. Among the state-of-the-art classifiers, our method achieves the best performance with best accuracy of 97.73 %, and the MCC value reaches 0.8668 and 0.8652 in unique DDSM database and both two databases, respectively. Experimental results prove that the proposed method outperforms the other methods; it could consider applying in CAD systems to assist the physicians for breast cancer diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lycium barbarum polysaccharide (LBP) is extracted from the traditional Chinese herb Lycium barbarum, and has potential anticancer activity. However, the detailed mechanisms are largely unknown. The purpose of this study was to observe the anticancer effect of LBP on human gastric cancer, and its possible mechanisms. Human gastric cancer MGC-803 and SGC-7901 cells were treated with various concentrations of LBP for 1–5 days, and cell growth was measured by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide assay. Distribution of the cell cycle was analyzed by flow cytometry. Western blotting was used to indicate changes in the level of cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs). LBP treatment inhibited growth of MGC-803 and SGC-7901 cells, with cell-cycle arrest at the G0/G1 and S phase, respectively. We believe that this is the first study to show that LBP arrested different cell lines from the same types of cancer at different phases. The changes in cell-cycle-associated protein, cyclins, and CDKs were consistent with the changes in cell-cycle distribution. This study suggests that induction of cell-cycle arrest participates in the anticancer activity of LBP on gastric cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing concern of using smallpox virus as biological weapons for terrorist attack, there is renewed interest in studying the pathogenesis of human smallpox and development of new therapies. Animal models are highly demanded for efficacy and safety examination of new vaccines and therapeutic drugs. Here, we demonstrated that both wild type and immunodeficient rats infected with an engineered vaccinia virus carrying Firefly luciferase reporter gene (rTV-Fluc) could recapitulate infectious and clinical features of human smallpox. Vaccinia viral infection in wild type Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats displayed a diffusible pattern in various organs, including liver, head and limbs. The intensity of bioluminescence generated from rTV-Fluc correlated well with viral loads in tissues. Moreover, neutralizing antibodies had a protective effect against virus reinfection. The recombination activating gene 2 (Rag2) knockout rats generated by transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) technology were further used to examine the infectivity of the rTV-Fluc in immunodeficient populations. Here we demonstrated that Rag2-/- rats were more susceptible to rTV-Fluc than SD rats with a slower virus clearance rate. Therefore, the rTV-Fluc/SD rats and rTV-Fluc/Rag2-/- rats are suitable visualization models, which recapitulate wild type or immunodeficient populations respectively, for testing human smallpox vaccine and antiviral drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]