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Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a highly prevalent liver disease that is closely related to obesity and metabolic disorders. 5-methoxyflavone (5-MF) is a flavonoid with DNA polymerase-β inhibitory properties. In this study, we explored the effects of 5-MF on NAFLD and its potential mechanisms using oleic acid/palmitic acid-treated HepG2 cells and high-fat diet-fed C57BL/6J mice. Our results showed that 5-MF not only alleviated fat deposition and hepatic steatosis, but also improved oxidative damage. In addition, 5-MF has the effect of alleviating disorders of glucose metabolism and enhancing energy expenditure in HFD-induced obese mice. Mechanistically, reverse screening methods and molecular docking analysis were used in combination, and revealed that cytochrome P450 1A1 (CYP1A1) is the target for 5-MF. Further experiments showed that 5-MF ameliorated triglycerides deposition by inhibiting the enzyme activity and protein expression of CYP1A1. In conclusion, 5-MF provides a novel strategy for the prevention and treatment of high-fat-induced NAFLD.

Plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA) was elevated in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or heart failure (HF). However, whether cfDNA could serve as a predictor for risk of HF after AMI remains unknown. In this study, we conducted a pilot prospective cohort study in which 98 AMI patients were enrolled from a single center to assess the association between cfDNA levels at admission and risk of HF in an AMI population. Patients with cfDNA above the median level (14.39 ng/mL) showed higher low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, cardiac troponin I (cTnI), and soluble suppression of tumorigenicity 2 (sST2) levels compared with patients below the median. cfDNA was positively correlated with cTnI (

The green leadership (GL) concept has significantly gained popularity over the last decade. Consequently, more research has been conducted on this emerging leadership concept, emphasizing leadership styles that promote the green environment so that sustainable goals can be achieved. In the present research, leaders’ emotional intelligence (EI) is positioned as a mediating variable between GL and employees’ green organizational citizenship behavior (GOCB). The data of this research comprised managerial and non-managerial staff from the manufacturing and service industries. A PLS-SEM was used to evaluate the relationship between the various factors among 422 employees. The empirical findings indicated that GL and GOCB had a favorable and robust relationship. The results of the study also suggested that a leader’s EI mediates the influence of green leadership on their employees’ green organizational citizenship behavior. Green leadership is essential in creating sustainable environmental behaviors among employees. It can strengthen leaders’ EI, which successively helps them to garner positivity and foster an environment of mutual harmony and cooperation in the workplace to support pro-environmental policies. Overall, our study contributes to and advances previous studies and shows that green leadership plays a critical role in influencing a leader’s own EI which, in turn, predicts the green OCB of their employees in the workplace.

The discussion on employee burnout (BOT) has existed in academic literature for a long time. While BOT was identified as a personal issue, there is a lack of a system approach solution. In this regard, a milestone was achieved in 2019 when the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a new definition of BOT, recognising it as an occupational phenomenon, thereby placing a greater responsibility on organisational leadership to manage it. Since then, different leadership models have been proposed by scholars to reduce the effect of BOT in an organisation. Humble leadership (HL), as a people-first approach, has recently gained importance in organisational management literature. Studies have indicated that HL significantly influences different employee outcomes. However, research on the significance of HL to mitigate BOT of employees was scarce—similarly, on the underlying mechanisms of how and why. While HL has the potential to reduce BOT in an organisation, little or no research has studied it. Acknowledging these knowledge gaps, the basic aim of this study is to enrich the existing body of knowledge by proposing HL as an effective organisational management strategy to reduce the effect of BOT in the healthcare sector. The study introduces two mediators, work engagement (WREN) and subjective wellbeing (SUBW), to explain the underlying mechanism between HL and BOT. The conditional indirect role of altruism (ALM) was also tested. The data were obtained from hospital employees by employing a survey method (questionnaire, n = 303). Structural equation model (SEM) was considered for testing the hypothesised model to study the interrelationships between variables. The results confirmed that the manifestation of HL in an organisation reduces BOT significantly, and WREN and SUBW mediate this relationship. The study also demonstrates the buffering effect of ALM in the above-proposed relationships. The empirical findings offer multiple contributions in theory and practice, among which the most important one was to realise the profound importance of HL in reducing the effect of BOT in healthcare management.

Globally, employee burnout (EBO) is a black swan in healthcare management. Previous organizational management literature shows that EBO was often misunderstood by assuming it as a personal issue. However, the new definition by the World Health Organization (WHO) clearly indicates that EBO is an occupational phenomenon that places responsibility on organizations to manage it. Although recent evidence suggests ethical leadership (ELP) style may be important to mitigate EBO, shockingly, such relationships were not tested in healthcare systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Filling this knowledge gap in the existing body of knowledge, this study aimed to investigate the ELP–EBO relationship. To explain the underlying mechanism of how ELP reduces EBO, this study included two psychological factors as a mediator and a moderator: altruism (AL) and intrinsic motivation (IM). The data were obtained from hospital employees via a self-administered questionnaire (n = 289, paper-pencil method). A hypothetical framework was designed and tested for empirical validation through structural equation modeling (SEM). Empirical evidence confirmed that ELP reduces the risk of burnout among hospital employees, and AL mediates this relationship. The results also confirmed the conditional indirect role of IM in the above proposed mediated relationship. This study’s outcomes can help hospital administration deal with EBO’s epidemic in an ELP framework. Other, different implications have also been discussed in detail.

Mitigating environmental crises requires efforts to reduce carbon emission at every level and segment of an economy. In this respect, the energy sector is blamed for increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) throughout the globe. Specifically, it was specified that electrical energy contributes to 35% of the world’s GHG emissions. Without a doubt, the topics related to clean and green energies remained a part of academic discussion; however, a critical knowledge gap exists in most studies. That is, most of the prior literature focused only on the production side (supply side) of electrical energy, neglecting the consumption side (consumption at the level of individuals). Given that a significant amount of electricity has been consumed by the individuals in buildings (homes, offices, or others) for heating and cooling purposes, it is important to promote a target-specific (energy-specific) pro-environmental behavior (TSPEB) of individuals. However, such a debate did not receive any significant attention previously. Further, psychological factors such as employees’ environmental commitment (EEC) and green self-efficacy (GSE) were identified as critical mediators to drive different employees’ outcomes, but the mediating effect of EEC and GSE was not tested earlier to foster TSPEB in a CSR framework. The data for the current work were collected from employees of different hotels in a developing country by employing a survey strategy (n = 383). The structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data, which confirmed that hospitality employees’ CSR perceptions could improve TSPEB. The statistical results also confirmed the significant mediating effects of EEC and GSE. The finding of this study will help the hospitality sector to improve its efforts for de-carbonization by improving the energy consumption behavior of employees as an outcome of CSR.

This study analyzes the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fulfillment on corporate risk-taking to assist stakeholders in identifying the “double-edged sword” role of CSR activities and provide empirical evidence for enterprises to properly carry out CSR activities. The results show that the self-interest instrumentalization of CSR activities intensifies agency conflict, and CSR fulfillment weakens risk-taking to a certain extent. When CSR fulfillment reaches a certain value, CSR activities can improve risk-taking. Then, CSR fulfillment and risk-taking show a U-shaped relationship. Further analysis shows that the impacts of CSR on debt financing and R&D input reflect the U-shaped effect pathways of CSR fulfillment on risk-taking. Finally, it is suggested that CSR activities should be avoided to become the “self-interest tool” of the management. The regulators guide enterprises to break through the inflection point of the U-shaped effect and consider more for the stakeholders’ overall interests. Additionally, the regulators establish an effective compensation system to ensure that the enterprises with adequate CSR fulfillment obtain high-quality capital resources and promote the sustainable development of the capital market.

Listening to employees’ concerns reduces their dissatisfaction, but moreover, for an organization to achieve sustainable success, employees must raise their creative voice and give their input in decision-making without the fear of rejection in a psychologically safe environment. Ethical leaders facilitate such a participative style of management. A bureaucratic culture, as is generally encountered in Pakistan’s work settings, poses real challenges to those who dare to speak up, therefore the importance of ethical leadership, leader–member exchange (LMX), and psychological safety cannot be neglected as coping mechanisms to sustain the employee voice for mutual gains. To investigate ethical leadership’s mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions on voice behavior, we examined a moderated mediation model with the leader–member exchange as a moderator and psychological safety as a mediator. Grounded in social exchange theory (SET), the current study uniquely posits and tests that employees feel psychologically safe in the presence of an ethical leader with whom they have high-quality social exchanges. Data were collected from 281 employees from the public corporations and private enterprises of the petroleum sector of Karachi. Results of the analysis, through SPSS and AMOS, revealed that psychological safety mediated the relationship of ethical leadership and voice behavior, while the indirect effect of ethical leadership on voice behavior (via psychological safety) is stronger for those employees who enjoy high-quality exchanges with ethical leaders. LMX was also found to moderate the relationship between ethical leadership and voice behavior. Contributions, recommendations, and limitations of the current study and further research areas are also discussed. The study offers practical insight on the mechanism of ethical leadership on employee voice behavior and recommends leaders to develop social exchanges to improve voice behavior for sustainable success.

Liver is an important organ for fat metabolism. Excessive intake of a high-fat/energy diet is a major cause of hepatic steatosis and its complications such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Supplementation with lycopene, a natural compound, is effective in lowering triglyceride levels in the liver, although the underlying mechanism at the translational level is unclear. In this study, mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) to induce hepatic steatosis and treated with or without lycopene. Translation omics and transcriptome sequencing were performed on the liver to explore the regulatory mechanism of lycopene in liver steatosis induced by HFD, and identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). We identified 1,358 DEGs at the translational level. Through transcriptomics and translatomics joint analysis, we narrowed the range of functional genes to 112 DEGs and found that lycopene may affect lipid metabolism by regulating the expression of LPIN1 at the transcriptional and translational levels. This study provides a powerful tool for translatome and transcriptome integration and a new strategy for the screening of candidate genes.

Background The prognostic value of human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM) is unknown. Methods A total of 103 patients with ICM were prospectively enrolled in this study from Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital between February 2019 and June 2019. All patients were tested for HE4 levels at baseline and follow-up. Endpoints of the study included cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization. Results A total of 96 patients with ICM were included for analysis. After a mean follow-up period of 263 (153–313) days, cardiovascular events were observed in 45 patients. Serum HE4 levels in patients with events were significantly higher than those in patients without events [188.70 (113.35–326.82) pmol/L versus 92.90 (61.50–123.20) pmol/L, P 2: 9.602, hazard ratio (HR): 1.003, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.001–1.005, P = 0.002] and age [χ2: 4.55, HR: 1.044, 95% CI: 1.003–1.085, P = 0.033] were independent predictors of events. After adjusting for age and sex, the risk of events in patients with HE4 > 100.2 pmol/L was higher than that in patients with HE4 ≤ 100.2 pmol/L [HR: 3.372, 95% CI: 1.409–8.065, P Conclusion HE4 is an independent predictor of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related rehospitalization in patients with ICM.

Background Dapagliflozin, a selective inhibitor of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2), can reduce cardiovascular events and mortality in patients with heart failure. A number of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the beneficial effects of SGLT2 inhibitors. The purpose of this study was to determine whether dapagliflozin can improve pulmonary vascular remodelling and the efficacy of dapagliflozin as an add-on therapy to sildenafil in rats with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Methods A monocrotaline (MCT)-induced PAH rat model was used in our study. MCT-injected rats were randomly divided into four groups and treated for 3 weeks with daily per os treatment with vehicle, dapagliflozin (1 mg/kg/day), sildenafil (25 mg/kg/day), or a combination of dapagliflozin (1 mg/kg/day) and sildenafil (25 mg/kg/day). Haemodynamic measurements, histological analysis, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and western blotting analysis were employed to detect the changes in PAH rats after treatments. Results Dapagliflozin significantly attenuated MCT-induced increases in right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) and right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH) in PAH rats. Dapagliflozin effectively decreased the thickening of pulmonary artery media and decreased the muscularization of pulmonary arterioles in PAH rats. Moreover, dapagliflozin attenuated nucleotide-binding domain-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome activation in lung tissues and the levels of interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-18 (IL-18) in plasma. However, dapagliflozin as an add-on therapy to sildenafil in rats with PAH did not show a more pronounced beneficial effect on right ventricular systolic pressure and pulmonary vascular remodelling in MCT rats than sildenafil alone. Conclusions Dapagliflozin reduces right ventricular systolic pressure and pulmonary vascular remodelling in a rat model of PAH. However, combination therapy with dapagliflozin and sildenafil was not more effective than monotherapy with sildenafil in PAH rats.

One of the most exciting issues in the digital economy has been sustainability supply chain management. There are many articles on this area and several different viewpoints. This work focuses on assessing the sustainability of supply chain management based on two main measurements. Firstly, the value of ecological, environmental, and social measurement indicators and the extent of the challenge in collecting information. The objective of this article is to improve the precision of the assessment. A Sustainable Policies for Supply Chain Management (SP-SCM)is proposed in this article. The suggested framework is a synthesis of quality function deployment (QFD) with plithogenic set grouping processes.A summation function is applied: the perception of the decision-maker of criteria required to assess the viability of the supply chain, the measurement criteria dependent on the specifications, and the difficulties in collecting details. This research submitted a real-world test case on the sugar industry to test the proposed framework. In evaluating the sustainability of the supply chain policy, the findings revealed the performance efficiency of the proposed system.

The homogenization of the banking segment has made it difficult for banking institutions to practice the quality of services that are needed in order to retain consumers. Thus, these days, finding ways to increase consumer loyalty&mdash, especially green loyalty&mdash, has become a challenge for the banking industry around the planet. Research has long acknowledged that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a strategic concern that could help organizations to increase consumer loyalty. However, the impact of CSR practices on green consumer loyalty is rarely addressed in the extant literature. Hence, the present research investigated the impact of CSR on green consumer loyalty with the mediating effect of co-creation in the banking industry of Pakistan. The study also introduced green banking initiatives as a moderator between the mediated relation of CSR and green consumer loyalty, with the intention that such a moderator would strengthen this indirect relationship. The structural equation modeling technique was used for the data analysis. The results confirm that CSR enhances consumer loyalty, and that co-creation partially mediates this relationship. Furthermore, green banking initiatives further strengthen this relation. The results of the current survey could help banking institutions learn how they can develop core strategic considerations based on the integration of CSR co-creation and green banking initiatives.

Doxorubicin (DOX) is a widely used cytotoxic drug whose application is limited by its severe side effects. Little was known regarding how to offset its side effects. Therefore this study aims to explore the role of miR-200a-3p in DOX-induced cardiotoxicity and its possible mechanism. DOX-induced myocardial injury rat models were established, which were then injected with miR-200a-3p inhibitor (miR-200a-3p suppression) to observe the effects of miR-200a-3p on cell proliferation, and apoptosis. Heart function and weights of rat models were also measured. Cardiomyocytes were induced by DOX, in which PEG3 knockdown or corresponding plasmids were transfected to assess the possible effect of PEG3 on cell activity. Dual luciferase reporter assay was applied to verify the binding of PEG3 with miR-200a-3p. Elevated levels of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) and left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP), as well as suppressed left ventricular systolic pressure (LVSP) and ± dp/dt max were showed in myocardial injury rat models. DOX induced myocardial injury and increased miR-200a-3p expression levels. miR-200a-3p inhibitor could partially attenuate DOX-induced cardiotoxicity in rat models, while PEG3 could regulate myocardial injury in DOX-treated cell models. miR-200a-3p, by targeting PEG3 through SIRT1/NF-κB signal pathway, regulated cell proliferation, inflammation and apoptosis of myocardiocytes. The results in current study demonstrated that miR-200a-3p regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis of cardiomyocytes by targeting PEG3 through SIRT1/NF-κB signal pathway. This result may provide a potential clue for the treatment of DOX-induced cardiotoxicity.

Despite the growing academic interest in transformational leadership and employee creativity, the banking sector has not yet received enough consideration. Mostly, the banking sector was assumed to be an inappropriate setting for employee creativity as it is a tightly supervised and controlled segment of an economy. Nevertheless, some research studies in advanced nations emphasized the significance of employee creativity in a banking context. However, the case of developing countries (e.g., Pakistan) has remained an understudied area. Against this background, the objective of this study was to examine the relationships between transformational leadership (TL), perceived organizational support (POS), and employee creativity (EC) through work engagement (WE). Some private banks were selected, situated in a large metropolitan city, with data collected for the present research by a self-administered questionnaire. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was employed to analyze data. It was observed that TL and POS induce EC, whereas WE mediated these relationships. These findings may help policymakers of the banking industry to improve employee creativity through WE.

Creativity at the level of employees is of utmost importance for every sector of an economy, with no exception to a healthcare system. The reason why employee creativity is important lies in the fact that employees have profound knowledge of their job and thus can serve as a source of meaningful innovation in an organization. Research shows that employee creativity is largely dependent on leadership. Corporate leaders significantly influence subordinates’ behavior. However, with the economic development, globalization, and changing business environment, a traditional authoritative leadership style can no longer be effective in understanding employees’ psychological needs to foster their creative behavior. In this regard, the role of inclusive leadership as an effective organizational management strategy was recently discussed in literature at different levels. It was also stated that an inclusive leader could foster employee creativity. However, such relationships in healthcare systems of developing economies have largely remained under-explored previously. We explored employee creativity in a healthcare context of a developing economy in an inclusive leadership framework to bridge such knowledge gaps. We also investigated the mediating roles of psychological safety and polychronicity in the above-stated relationship. We collected the data from hospital employees through a questionnaire (paper–pencil method). A hypothetical model was developed, which was tested through structural equation modeling in AMOS. Based upon the statistical outcomes, we found that an inclusive leadership style in a hospital can significantly foster employee creativity, whereas psychological safety and polychronicity mediate this relationship. This study offers different theoretical and practical insights, especially to a healthcare system. An important finding was that an inclusive leader can motivate the followers to be more creative. This finding is significant for a hospital because creative employees provide a hospital with a solid competitive base.

Technological advancement and the highly competitive nature of business have forced organizations to use multiple strategies to streamline their business operations. Current research investigates the relationship between sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and business performance, focusing on operational and financial performance. It provides insights into the operational structure, resource utilization, and the identification of strategic tools needed to strengthen organizational performance. The researchers conducted unstructured interviews with 41 industrialists and analyzed them via open-source coding and deducing reasoning. A questionnaire was developed by analyzing critical scientific literature and unstructured interviews. Empirical responses were taken from 202 industrial corporations. The structural analyses indicate that the effective execution of SSCM significantly improves firms’ operational and financial performance. The findings also provide detailed information about different components of SSCM, namely supply chain strategy (SCS), supply chain network design (SCND), organizational structure, and information system, and explain how it relates to the previous literature review by using a multivariate statistical analysis, followed by structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings of current research highlight the significant role of SSC in accelerating firms’ operational and financial performance and suggest that SSCM should be taken as a secondary strategy and must be integrated with the overall business strategy.

Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial part in a country’s economic growth and sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between innovation and the performance of SMEs. An external environmental factor acts as a moderating variable between the exogenous and endogenous variables. Data were collected from 350 textile SMEs operating in Pakistan using a cross-sectional study design through self-administered questionnaires. Of these, only 335 surveys were valid for further analysis. The structural equational modeling technique was used for analyzing the data and testing the hypotheses that innovation and the external environment affect an SME’s performance. The results indicate a significant association between innovation and SME performance, and the external environment has a moderating impact on innovation and SME performance. This paper offers valuable recommendations to senior managers and owners of SMEs to consider the innovation and external environment as crucial factors when assessing their SME’s performance. This study contributes towards the body of knowledge on this subject and can help practitioners and researchers explore the effects of innovation and the external environment on the performance of SMEs.

Monitoring copper (Cu) species in bio-samples is critical for the investigation and auxiliary diagnosis of Cu-metabolism disorders. Herein, a target-triggered DNAzyme walker, consisting of Carboxyfluorescein (FAM)-labeled substrates of the Cu-DNAzyme (Cu-Sub) coated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) (AuNPs@FAM-Cu-Sub track) and the enzyme chain of the Cu-DNAzyme (Cu-Enzy) functionalized magnetic beads (MBs@Cu-Enzy 3D walking unit), was designed for the sensitive detection of copper species. Upon addition of copper ion (Cu2+), DNAzyme was activated and triggered the walking process, thereby releasing FAM-labeled fragments and recovering fluorescence. When compared with free-running Cu-Enzy or co-conjugated Cu-Enzy on AuNPs walking units, the MBs@Cu-Enzy walking unit exhibited a higher cleavage efficiency, shorter detection time (40 min), and a lower limit of detection (LOD = 3 nM). This improved performance was mainly attributed to multivalent interactions between the 3D track and the 3D walking unit which dramatically increased the affinity and cleavage efficiency. Importantly, good accuracy was observed for copper species analysis in clinical serum samples (n = 130), relative to other instrumentation, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) (P > 0.01). The serum detection data indicated that total, exchangeable and relative exchangeable Cu variables could serve as potential indicators for the auxiliary diagnosis of Cu-related disorders. Thus, our target-triggered DNAzyme walker provides improved technical support for the in-depth study of clinical Cu metabolic-related diseases.

Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury is one of the most prevalent cardiovascular diseases, known for its high mortality and morbidity worldwide. Based on pre-existing evidence, LGALS3 has been found to be closely associated with cardiac diseases. Hence, the objective of our study is to explore the potential function of KCNQ1OT1/microRNA-204-5p (miR-204-5p)/ LGALS3 axis on myocardial IR injury and the underlying mechanism. A myocardial IR injury mouse model was established in vivo and an in vitro cardiomyocyte model was induced by hypoxia/Reoxygenation exposure. Next, gain- and loss-of-function experiments were employed in order to measure the viability and apoptosis of cardiomyocytes and the area of ischemic infarct by CCK-8, TUNEL staining and Evans blue/TTC double staining. LGALS3 was found to be highly expressed in myocardial IR injury. The downregulation of LGALS3 resulted in the alleviation of myocardial IR injury in mouse models. In addition, KCNQ1OT1 could promote the LGALS3 expression by binding to miR-204-5p, which led to aggravated myocardial IR injury. In conclusion, KCNQ1OT1 binds to miR-204-5p to exacerbate myocardial IR injury in mice through the up-regulation of LGALS3, providing a novel insight for myocardial IR injury treatment.

microRNAs (miRs) are essential in the development of heart failure. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of microRNA-330 (miR-330) on left ventricular remodeling via the TGF-β1/Smad3 signaling pathway by targeting the sex-determining region Y (SRY) in mice with myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (MIRI). Differentially expressed gene (DEG) in myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (IR) was screened out and the miR that targeted the DEG was also predicted and verified. A model of MIRI was established to detect the expression of miR-330, SRY, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β1), and Sekelsky mothers against dpp3 (Smad3). To further investigate the role of miR-330 in MIRI with the involvement of SRY and TGF-β1/Smad3 signaling pathway, the modeled mice were treated with different mimic, inhibitor, or small interfering RNA (siRNA) to observe the changes of the related gene expression, as well as the myocardial infarction size and volume of myocardial collagen. SRY was screened out and verified as a target gene of miR-330. The MIRI mice showed enlarged myocardial infarction size, increased volume of myocardial collagen, increased expression of miR-330, TGF-β1 and Smad3, while decreased the expression of SRY. The MIRI mice treated with miR-330 inhibitor showed decreased myocardial infarction size, the volume of myocardial collagen, and expression of TGF-β1 and Smad3 but promoted expression of SRY. Our findings demonstrated that downregulated miR-330 could suppress left ventricular remodeling to inhibit the activation of the TGF-β1/Smad3 signaling pathway via negatively targeting of SRY in mice with MIRI. This can be a potential target in the strategy to attenuate patient suffering.

Absorption and backscattering coefficients, two important inherent optical properties of water, play a significant role in environmental monitoring and the study of biogeochemical cycles. In this study, the optical classification of turbid eutrophic inland Case II water was the basis for the development of an IOP-retrieval algorithm. Results show that the water can be divided into two types with different optical characteristics using the spectral slope defined as the spectrum slope of remote sensing reflectance between a 677 nm absorption valley and a 701 nm reflection peak at a threshold value of 0.32. A method of segmented simulation was proposed to model a backscattering coefficient at wavelength 400–800 nm, in which the backscattering coefficient at wavelength 400–685 nm was simulated using a power function and the backscattering coefficient at a wavelength greater than 685 nm was regarded as constant. The simulation precision of this proposed segmented simulation method was much higher than the precision using a power function. Based on the quasi-analytical algorithm (QAA) algorithm proposed by Lee et al. , two algorithms using reference bands 550 and 675 nm separately for estimating a backscattering coefficient were developed. Weight coefficients of the two retrieval algorithms were also calculated based on their estimation errors. The optimal backscattering coefficient was determined through a multimodel collaborative retrieval method. Finally, the total absorption coefficient was derived from a bio-optical model introduced by Lee et al. Accuracy assessment results demonstrated that the proposed IOP-retrieval algorithm using double reference bands (QAA-DB) and based on the optical classification algorithm can be successfully applied to optically complex eutrophic inland waters with a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 19.71% and root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.3933.

Aiming at the complexity of ground objects in urban area, and the difficulty in distinguishing ground objects using spectral characteristics, we extracted normalized different indexes, namely Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI ) and Normalized Difference Building Index (NDBI) , as the key auxiliary information for land use classification of urban area. To solve problems of RBF neural network, such as local minimum values and discrete output value in output layer, we used max-min distance means to initialize RBF center, and introduced equilibrium factor into Gauss function to improve RBF neural network learning algorithm. On this basis, a new urban area classification model was proposed based on improved RBF network and normalized difference indexes. At last, NanChong city in SiChuan province of China was taken as the study area, and TM images was used as experiment data to test the model proposed in this paper. The results showed that, based on the improved RBF network, with the help of spectral band information, the classification overall accuracy was 89.97%, Kappa coefficient was 0.88; using both spectral band information and normalized difference indexes, the classification overall accuracy was 95.02%, Kappa coefficient is 0.94, the classification overall accuracy was improved by 5.05%. Also, the experiment results showed that, with the help of spectral band information and normalized difference indexes, the classification overall accuracy of MLC, BP and improved RBF network was 90.12%, 93.63%, 95.02%, respectively, which means RBF has an advantage of fusing geological parameters in classification.