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ABSTRACTThe microbe Paecilomyces cicadae (Miquel) Samson (P. cicadae) is an asexual strain of Cordyceps cicadae (C. cicadae) used in traditional Chinese medicine. Due to the abundance of secondary metabolites found in cultured metabolites, including polysaccharides, hyaluronic acid, ergosterol peroxide, and active nucleosides, P. cicadae and/or C. cicadae exhibit several therapeutic activities, including immunoregulatory, antioxidant, and anti-diabetic effects. Given the great attention for health care and the desirable medical value of C. cicadae and/or P. cicadae, they are becoming potential alternatives of Cordyceps sinensis (C. sinensis). Although there are many studies on P. cicadae/C. cicadae, most of them are experimental research articles. There are limited reviews to summarize the latest researches on P. cicadae/C. cicadae. This review mainly focuses on the metabolites, physiological activities and mechanisms of action of P. cicadae and/or C. cicadae. This review can serve as a theoretical basis for the more efficient use of this medicinal fungus.

A negative index metamaterial (NIM) at ultraviolet range is constructed with stacked plasmonic waveguides. Based on the waveguides performing antisymmetric modes, the negative refractions of both wavevector and energy flow are realized when a TM-polarized light with a wavelength of 365 nm incidents on the plane of the layers. It is proved that the NIM could be introduced into subwavelength photolithography for extending working distance. Both theoretical and experimental results indicate that the patterns with a feature size of 160 nm can be reproduced in photoresist with a 100 nm-thick air working distance. Moreover, arbitrary two-dimensional patterns with a depth reach 160 nm can be obtained without diffraction fringe by employing a nonpolarized light. This design gives new insights into the manipulation of light. The improved working distance, well-shaped patterns over large area present an innovative method for improving subwavelength photolithography.

Dispersion control is crucial in optical systems, and chromatic aberration is an important factor affecting imaging quality in imaging systems. Due to the inherent property of materials, dispersion engineering is complex and needs to trade off other aberration in traditional ways. Although metasurface offers an effective method to overcome these limits and results in well-engineered dispersion, off-axis dispersion control is still a challenging topic. In this paper, we design a single-layer metalens which is capable of focusing at three wavelengths (473 nm, 532 nm, and 632 nm) with different incident angles (0°, -17° and 17°) into the same point. We also demonstrate that this metalens can provide an alternative for the bulky color synthetic prism in a 3-chips digital micromirror device (DMD) laser projection system. Through this approach, various off-axis dispersion controlling optical devices could be realized.

To address the challenges of low accuracy and suboptimal real-time performance in fall detection, caused by lighting variations, occlusions, and complex human poses, a novel fall detection algorithm, FDT-YOLO, has been developed. This algorithm builds upon an improved YOLOv8 framework, featuring significant modifications for improved performance. The C2f module in the backbone network has been replaced with the FasterNet module. This substitution enhances feature reuse effectively and reduces computational complexity. Additionally, a deformable convolution module has been added to the neck section. This helps to decrease missed and false detections significantly, which are often caused by dramatic changes in fall poses. Furthermore, the triplet attention mechanism has been incorporated during multi-scale fusion. This mechanism effectively suppresses background interference, focusing more on the target area, thereby improving detection accuracy and robustness. Experimental results have demonstrated that improvements in FDT-YOLO lead to notable enhancements. The mean Average Precision (mAP) at an Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold of 0.5 has been increased from 94.9% to 96.2%. The mAP for the range of 0.5 to 0.95 has been raised from 84.2% to 85.9%. Additionally, the parameter count has been reduced to 9.9 million, which not only enhances detection accuracy but also significantly reduces the rate of false detections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irradiation with ultraviolet A (UVA) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of skin photoaging since it increases oxidative stress and inflammation in the epidermis. There is an urgent need to screen, investigate, and apply the potential anti-photoaging active ingredients. Agaricus blazei Murill (ABM) polysaccharides have a wide range of promising pharmacological applications. Previous studies have confirmed their antioxidant effect, but whether it has an anti-photoaging effect is unclear. In this study, two ABM polysaccharides (AB-J and AB-K) were obtained to discuss the potential photodamage-protective capacity. The free radical scavenging abilities in vitro, the safety assessment, and their protective effects and mechanisms on UVA-induced human fibroblasts (HSFs) were evaluated. The intracellular antioxidant enzyme levels and extracellular matrix proteins, such as COL-I and ELN, were significantly accelerated, and metalloproteinases (MMP-1, and MMP-9) were decreased by AB-J and AB-K. The Keap-1-Nrf2/ARE signaling pathway was activated, thus inducing the upregulated expression of downstream genes (Ho-1 and Nqo-1). The suppression of P38 and Jnk1 by AB-J and AB-K was speculated to be the inducer of the activation of the Keap-1-Nrf2/ARE signaling pathway. Owing to the excellent exhibition of AB-J, its safety assessment and the structural characterization are discussed further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UVB radiation is known to induce photodamage to the skin, disrupt the skin barrier, elicit cutaneous inflammation, and accelerate the aging process. Agaricus blazei Murill (ABM) is an edible medicinal and nutritional fungus. One of its constituents, Agaricus blazei Murill polysaccharide (ABP), has been reported to exhibit antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and immunomodulatory effects, which suggests potential effects that protect against photodamage. In this study, a UVB-induced photodamage HaCaT model was established to investigate the potential reparative effects of ABP and its two constituents (A1 and A2). Firstly, two purified polysaccharides, A1 and A2, were obtained by DEAE-52 cellulose column chromatography, and their physical properties and chemical structures were studied. A1 and A2 exhibited a network-like microstructure, with molecular weights of 1.5 × 104 Da and 6.5 × 104 Da, respectively. The effects of A1 and A2 on cell proliferation, the mitochondrial membrane potential, and inflammatory factors were also explored. The results show that A1 and A2 significantly promoted cell proliferation, enhanced the mitochondrial membrane potential, suppressed the expression of inflammatory factors interleukin-1β (IL-1β), interleukin-8 (IL-8), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), and increased the relative content of filaggrin (FLG) and aquaporin-3 (AQP3). The down-regulated JAK-STAT signaling pathway was found to play a role in the response to photodamage. These findings underscore the potential of ABP to ameliorate UVB-induced skin damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]