Search

Melanoma is a highly aggressive cancer which often forms metastatic tumors in the lung, leading to sharply reduced patients’ survival rate. Effectively treating these tumors thus could improve late stage melanoma with lung metastasis. In this study, we fabricated a Cys-Arg-Glu-Lys-Ala with N-methylated Glu (CR(NMe)EKA) decorated disk shaped nano vehicle to co-deliver tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) and paclitaxel (PTX) to lung melanoma tumor sites (TRAIL-[ND-PTX]CR(NMe)EKA). These nanodisks displayed better tumor-targeting and penetration capability than spherical nanoparticles, while the fibronectin-targeting CR(NMe)EKA motif also increased the tumor accumulation of loaded drugs. The combined usage of TRAIL and PTX both killed tumor cells and reduced local nutrition supply, leading to stronger overall anti-tumor effect. This TRAIL-[ND-PTX]CR(NMe)EKA system performed remarkably better than free paclitaxel and also significantly elongated survival rate of melanoma lung metastasis bearing mice, without displaying significant toxicity. Hence, this designing strategy and the fabricated nanoplatform possess potential for further development.

In this work, one 8-shaped metasurface (MS) is proposed, which consists of a square array of 8-shaped conducting patches printed on a grounded dielectric substrate and covered by a top dielectric layer. Because the MS is symmetric with respect to both the x- and y-axes, and the phase difference between the reflection coefficients rxx and ryy is close to + 90° in an ultra-wide frequency band, it can be used as an ultra-wideband linear-to-circular polarization converter. Simulation results show that the MS can realize high-efficiency and ultra-wideband linear-to-circular polarization conversion under both u- and v-polarized incidences; the axial ratio (AR) of the reflected wave is below 3 dB in the ultra-wide frequency band of 6.45–24.20 GHz, which is corresponding to a relative bandwidth of 116%; in addition, the polarization conversion rate (PCR) can be maintained larger than 99.5% in the frequency range of 6.78–23.70 GHz, which occupies 95.3% of the 3 dB-axial-ratio-band. Finally, an experimental verification is carried out, a good agreement between the experimental and simulation results is observed.

Background Anti-inflammatory approaches are emerging as a new strategy for the treatment of depressive disorders. Ginsenoside Rb1 (GRb1), a major component of Panax ginseng, can inhibit inflammatory cascade and alleviate depressive-like behaviors. Microglia can promote or inhibit adult hippocampal neurogenesis according to their functional phenotypes. Here, we examine whether GRb1 may exert antidepressant effects by promoting a pro-neurogenic phenotype of microglia and thereby increasing neurogenesis. Methods The antidepressant effects of GRb1 or the licensed antidepressant imipramine (IMI) were assessed in chronic mild stress (CMS)-exposed male mice. The depressive-like behaviors of mice were evaluated by sucrose preference test, forced swimming test (FST), and tail suspension test (TST). The microglial phenotypes were identified by pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine expression and morphological properties, analyzed by RT-qPCR, western blotting, and immunofluorescence staining. The effect of GRb1-treated microglia on adult hippocampal neurogenesis in vivo and in vitro was detected using immunofluorescence staining. Results Behavioral assessment indicated that GRb1 or IMI treatment alleviated depressive-like behaviors in CMS-exposed mice. Immunofluorescence examination demonstrated that GRb1 induced a pro-neurogenic phenotype of microglia via activating PPARγ in vivo and in vitro, which were effectively reversed by the PPARγ inhibitor GW9662. In addition, GRb1-treated microglia increased the proliferation and differentiation of neural precursor cells. Conclusions These findings demonstrated that GRb1 alleviated depressive-like behaviors of CMS-exposed male mice mainly through PPARγ-mediated microglial activation and improvement of adult hippocampus neurogenesis.

Currently, prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in males and chemotherapy is often essential for treating advanced prostate cancer. However, common chemotherapies for prostate cancer suffer from serious adverse effects due to poor drug targeting ability and tissue penetration, even with the help of conventional drug delivery systems. Here, encouraged by recent studies showing possible drug retention and tissue penetration advantages of unconventional non-spherical nanoparticles over conventional spherical nanoparticles, we design and construct a novel non-spherical nanodisk drug delivery system for treating prostate cancer. In order to enhance tumor-targeting capability, these nanodisks are further modified with targeting peptide CR(NMe)EKA, which recognizes extracellular matrix fibronectin and its complexes specifically expressed on the walls of tumor vessels and in tumor stroma. Compared with conventional nanospheres, the nanodisks achieve much higher drug accumulation at prostate tumor sites. When loaded with paclitaxel, the CR(NMe)EKA-modified nanodisks display superior antitumor efficacy to free paclitaxel, unmodified nanodisks and nanospheres. In summary, our study provides an attractive therapeutic strategy for targeted therapy against prostate cancer with simple preparation, high efficiency and low toxicity, and supplements a theoretical support for treatments realized by different shaped nanoplatforms. Our study also offers valuable data for understanding biological effects of non-spherical nanodisks and highlights the great potential of unconventional nanoparticles in biomedical applications.

Aiming at the properties of the palm bio-impedance spectroscopy (PBIS) data and shortage of the existing algorithms, this paper proposed a kind of the PBIS identification method based on immune clone. This method mainly consisted of three parts, which are data normalization, feature selection and matching. The PBIS algorithm constructed a new classifier based on the immune clone selection algorithm (ICSA) and the hidden space support vector machine (HSSVM), called the ICSA-HSSVM. It was compared with other classifiers such as Euclidean distance, cosine distance and support vector machine (SVM). The experimental results show that the proposed classification method can achieve more than 95% accuracy in identity recognition. The PBIS biometric identification tech depends on the human body inherent characteristics to carry out the status identification so as to overcome the drawbacks of traditional information safety tech status identification. The main advantages of PBIS algorithm include four aspects. The first is the uniqueness, universality, stability, easy collection, and it is basically not being subject to the influence of pathological changes in the human body positions. The second is not sensitive to the environment and the excellent recognition performance can be obtained through the method easily. The three is high stability and uniqueness when it is served as the biometric potentiality, being in agreement with biometric identification requirements. (4) The four is able to resist against counterfeiting attacks effectively. The method proposed in this paper is of great theoretical and practical values in the fields of national public security, internet information security, military communication security, micro-blog micro-message public opinion supervision.

The Yanshan movement/orogeny has been proposed for 90 years, which is of special significance in the history of geological research in China. This study conducted a review by synthesizing major achievements regarding episodic deformation features, sedimentary and magmatic records of the Yanshan orogeny in China, and clarified the episodic tectono-magmatism and its geodynamic origins. The tectonic implications of the Yanshan orogeny are discussed in the context of global plate tectonics and supercontinent reconstruction. Lines of evidence from structural, sedimentary and magmatic data suggest that the Yanshan orogeny represents a regional-scale tectonic event that affected the entire China continent in late Mesozoic period. Numerous age and structural constraints consistently indicate that the Yanshan orogeny was initiated in the Jurassic (at ∼170±5 Ma). and was characterized by alternating stages of crustal shortening at ∼170–136 Ma, crustal extension at ∼135–90 Ma, and weak shortening at ∼80 Ma. The 170–136 Ma crustal shortening was reflected in the generation of two regional stratigraphic unconformities (the Tiaojishan and Zhangjiakou unconformities), which were initially named the A and B episodes of “the Yanshan Orogeny” by Mr. Wong Wenhao in 1928. Geodynamically, the Yanshan orogeny in East Asia was associated with nearly coeval oceanic subduction and continental convergence in the Paleo-Pacific, Neo-Tethys, and Mongol-Okhotsk tectonic domains. As a consequence, three giant accretionary-collisional tectonic systems were formed along the continental margins of East Asia, i.e., the Mongol-Okhotsk, Bangonghu-Nujiang, and SE China subduction- and collision-related accretionary systems. The Yanshan orogeny induced widespread crustal-scale folding and thrusting, tectonic reactivation of long-lived zones of crustal weakness, and extensive magmatism and mineralization in intraplate regions. Based on the time principle of supercontinent assembly and break-up, we propose that the mid-Late Jurassic multi-plate convergence in East Asia might represent the initiation of the assembly of the Amasia supercontinent, and the Yanshan orogeny might be the first “stirrings” that is a prerequisite for the birth of the Amasia supercontinent.

ispartof: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS vol:10 issue:1 ispartof: location:England status: published

Brominated diphenyl ethers-209 (BDE-209), a toxic and stably retardant, is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant and commonly used in daily consumer products. The Cenococcum geophilum and Laccaria amethystina were used to inoculate Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii Parl) seedlings, using root chamber experiments to check their potential for improving host growth and the capacity in establishing in persistent organic pollutants (POPs)-contaminated environments. The results showed that the inoculation with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi significantly (p < 0.01) improved the growth and reduced the concentrations of BDE-209 in needles and stems of pine seedlings planted in polluted soils. The transfer ratio (calculated as the ratio between the concentrations in needles and roots) and the root concentration factor (calculated as the ratio of the concentration in roots to soil) decreased significantly (p < 0.01), when inoculated with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi compared to without. However, inoculated with ECM fungi (EMF) increased the concentration of BDE-209 in tube soil (soil collected from tube where seedlings were grown) significantly (p < 0.01), especially C. geophilum, which has a rich mycelium system. The capability of EMF accumulation and enrichment of BDE-209 in the contaminated soil, from distance to root zone, reduced the risks of the spread and leaching of organic pollutants to the crops around. The pine inoculated with EMF can be considered to have a potential in forestation and remediating BDE-209 contaminated areas by the way of phytostabilisation pollutants.

To solve the low detection efficiency problem of Constrained Energy Minimization (CEM) method used for hyperspectral remote sensing imagery, this paper firstly presents two improved detection methods: principal component CEM (PCCEM) and matrix taper CEM (MTCEM). Then, based on these two methods, a more optimized Two-Time detection (TTD) method is proposed. Primarily, the targets of interest in the hyperspectral image are detected by using the PCCEM and MTCEM method. Then the autocorrelation matrix of non-target pixels is estimated according to the target detection results. Finally, based on this autocorrelation matrix, a new weight vector is constructed for the second detection. Under the effect of this new weight vector, the output energy of the target can be kept at unity and the output energy of the background is suppressed at the same time. Then, the improvement of target detection result can be realized. Experimental results on a real world hyperspectral data show the efficiency of the proposed TTD method to improve the detection performance.

To further improve target detection performance of hyperspectral image, this paper presents a novel method named multi-scale analysis-based target detection (MATD). The proposed method first applies multi-scale wavelet analysis technology to extract multi-scale features of hyperspectral data. Then, these features are converted into a tensor form, and is processed and analyzed by using tensor analysis method. Through solving the tensor subspace, the reduced-dimension feature coefficients can be extracted. Finally, based on these feature coefficients, a better target detection result can be obtained by using the detection algorithm. Experimental results of real world hyperspectral data show that the proposed MATD method can effectively improve detection performance.

The Simpson Golabi Behmel Syndrome (SGBS) pre-adipocyte cell strain is widely considered to be a representative in vitro model of human white pre-adipocytes. A recent study suggested that SGBS adipocytes exhibit an unexpected transient brown phenotype. Here, we comprehensively examined key differences between SGBS adipocytes and primary human white subcutaneous (PHWSC) adipocytes. RNA-Seq analysis revealed that extracellular matrix (ECM)-receptor interaction and metabolic pathways were the top two KEGG pathways significantly enriched in SGBS adipocytes, which included positively enriched mitochondrial respiration and oxidation pathways. Compared to PHWSC adipocytes, SGBS adipocytes showed not only greater induction of adipogenic gene expression during differentiation but also increased levels of UCP1 mRNA and protein expression. Functionally, SGBS adipocytes displayed higher ISO-induced basal leak respiration and overall oxygen consumption rate, along with increased triglyceride accumulation and insulin-stimulated glucose uptake. In conclusion, we confirmed that SGBS adipocytes, which are considered of white adipose tissue origin can shift towards a brown/beige adipocyte phenotype. These differences indicate SGBS cells may help to identify mechanisms leading to browning, and inform our understanding for the use of SGBS vis-à-vis primary human subcutaneous adipocytes as a human white adipocyte model, guiding the selection of appropriate cell models in future metabolic research.

To solve the problem of low detection efficiency of present hyperspectral band selection methods, a new band selection method based on curve area and genetic theory (CAGT) is proposed in this paper. Primarily, the method uses the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve as a band selection criterion to measure the target detection effect of the band; then construct fitness function based on this criterion and use genetic algorithm to optimize the band selection. Finally, the band subset with better target detection result can be obtained. Therefore, both data dimensionality reduction and improvement of target detection result can be realized at the same time. Experimental results on a real world hyperspectral data show the efficiency of the proposed CAGT method to improve the detection performance.

A hyperspectral remote sensing image data cube often contains dozens to hundreds of bands. This creates great difficulties in image data processing and target detection, which is known as “Hughes phenomenon”. Currently, there are great many methods of dimensionality reduction in the field of classification in the hyperspectral remote sensing image, but rarely in target detection. Thus, this paper introduces a new band removed selection (BRS) method to target detection for reducing dimensions in Hyperspectral, which includes the ways of “direct out” and “sort out” on the bad bands. And, a more optimized removed selection method was obtained after the integration of those two ways. This method not only plays the role of dimensionality reduction, but also can effectively improve the effect of target detection. From the experiment, the proposed BRS is proved to be effective and feasible with the actual hyperspectral images.