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The most crucial task of petroleum geology is to explore oil and gas reservoirs in the deep underground. As one of the analysis techniques in petroleum geological research, rock thin section identification method includes particle segmentation, which is one of the key steps. A conventional sandstone thin section image typically contains hundreds of mineral particles with blurred boundaries and complex microstructures inside the particles. Moreover, the complex lithology and low porosity of tight sandstone make traditional image segmentation methods unsuitable for solving the complex thin section segmentation problems. This paper combines petrology and image processing technologies. First, polarised sequence images are aligned, and then the images are transformed to the HSV colour space to extract pores. Second, particles are extracted according to their extinction characteristics. Last, a concavity and corner detection matching method is used to process the extracted particles, thereby completing the segmentation of sandstone thin section images. The experimental results show that our proposed method can more accurately fit the boundaries of mineral particles in sandstone images than existing image segmentation methods. Additionally, when applied in actual production scenarios, our method exhibits excellent performance, greatly improving thin section identification efficiency and significantly assisting experts in identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With different polarity responses, coumarin and 4,4‐difluoro‐4‐bora‐3a,4a‐diaza‐s‐indacene (BODIPY) were hybridised to construct polarity fluorescent sensors, CBDP and iso‐CBDP, to overcome the disadvantages of solvatochromic sensors in ratiometric polarity sensing. Only CBDP displayed an emission ratio (ICou/IBDP, coumarin to BODIPY emissions) that increased with an exponential dependence on medium relative permittivity over a wide polarity range (ϵr<57.9). This sensing ability of CBDP was not affected by medium pH; viscosity; and most intracellular species, especially reactive oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur species. Apart from local cytoplasmic polarity quantification through lambda imaging, CBDP enables real‐time ratiometric imaging for intracellular polarity oscillation induced by oxidative stimulation. Ratiometric polarity flow cytometry was developed, for the first time, with CBDP, which demonstrated that a high concentration H2O2 induced cytoplasmic polarity enhancement, whereas pre‐incubation with N‐acetyl‐ l‐cysteine inhibited this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Information: The purinergic ligand-gated ion channel 7 receptor (P2X7R) is an ATP-gated ion channel that transmits extracellular signals and induces corresponding biological effects, transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1) is a non-selective cation channel that maintains normal physiological functions; numerous studies showed that P2X7R and TRPV1 are associated with inflammatory reactions., Results: The effect of P2X7R knockdown in satellite glial cells (SGCs) on neuronal TRPV1 expression under high glucose and high free fat (HGHF) environment was investigated. P2X7 short hairpin RNA (shRNA) was utilized to downregulate P2X7R in SGCs, and treated and untreated SGCs were co-cultured with neuronal cell lines. The expression levels of inflammatory factors and signaling pathways in SGCs and neurons were measured using Western blot analysis, RT-qPCR, immunofluorescence, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Results suggested that P2X7 shRNA reduced the expression levels of P2X7R protein and mRNA in SGCs surrounding DRG neurons and downregulated the release of tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-1 beta via the Ca 2+ /p38 MAPK/NF-κB pathway. Additionally, the downregulation of P2X7R might decrease TRPV1 expression in neurons via the Ca 2+ /PKC-ɛ/p38 MAPK pathway., Conclusions: Reducing P2X7R expression in SCGs in an HGHF environment could decrease neuronal TRPV1 expression via the Ca 2+ /PKC-ɛ/p38 MAPK pathway., (© 2024 Société Française des Microscopies and Société de Biologie Cellulaire de France. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)