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AbstractMicrofluidic technology has emerged as a powerful tool in studying arterial thrombosis, allowing researchers to construct artificial blood vessels and replicate the hemodynamics of blood flow. This technology has led to significant advancements in understanding thrombosis and platelet adhesion and aggregation. Microfluidic models have various types and functions, and by studying the fabrication methods and working principles of microfluidic chips, applicable methods can be selected according to specific needs. The rapid development of microfluidic integrated system and modular microfluidic system makes arterial thrombosis research more diversified and automated, but its standardization still needs to be solved urgently. One key advantage of microfluidic technology is the ability to precisely control fluid flow in microchannels and to analyze platelet behavior under different shear forces and flow rates. This allows researchers to study the physiological and pathological processes of blood flow, shedding light on the underlying mechanisms of arterial thrombosis. In conclusion, microfluidic technology has revolutionized the study of arterial thrombosis by enabling the construction of artificial blood vessels and accurately reproducing hemodynamics. In the future, microfluidics will place greater emphasis on versatility and automation, holding great promise for advancing antithrombotic therapeutic and prophylactic measures.

With increasing anthropogenic activities, freshwater ecosystems around the world are becoming increasingly affected by various pressures, including eutrophication, overfishing, and irrational stocking, which may have a negative impact on the food web structure. Despite the extensive research and proposed management measures for eutrophic lakes, there are only few analysis on long-term monitoring data regarding fishery resources. Additionally, there is a lack of evaluation and prediction of the effectiveness of current fish management policies. To remedy this, we analyzed long-term monitoring data from Lake Taihu, China, a severely eutrophicated lake with a skewed fish size structure exhibiting dominance of small individuals. We first constructed 14 Ecopath models to investigate how trophic interactions and biomass fluxes changed from 2007 to 2020. Subsequently, the Ecosim model was used to predict how the biomass of fish and the ecosystem network respond to the initiated 10-years fishing ban. Our results demonstrate long-term changes in fish biomass and ecosystem stability. The analyses revealed that 1) the biomass development in different feeding types of fish is controlled by human activities (mainly catches and stocking) and trophic interactions and 2) the rate of decline in ecosystem network stability slows down during the fishing ban. The primary focus of this study was to fill the gap in long-term serial studies of fish monitoring data and ecosystem stability in the lake and, for the first time, to predict the outcome of the fishing ban from an ecosystem perspective using the Ecosim model. Overall, our results emphasize the importance of rational stocking and fishing policies and provide a better understanding of the changes in the ecological dynamics in Lake Taihu of relevance for the management and restoration of the lake.

Abstract Biomanipulation has been widely used in the ecological restoration of eutrophic lakes for decades. However, biomanipulation is prone to failure if external nutrient loads are not reduced. In order to explore the importance of filter‐feeding fish and bivalves on algal control, an outdoor mesocosm experiment was conducted using different nutrient concentrations. Four treatments simulating daily loads of nutrients in Lake Taihu were studied: current, two times, and three times average daily loads of nutrients with both fish (Aristichthys nobilis) and Asian clam (Corbicula fluminea) and as a control current daily loads without fish or bivalves. Results showed that stocking of filter‐feeding fish and bivalves (80 g m−3 bighead carp; 200 g cm−2 clams) at two times daily nutrient loads could effectively control water column Chl a concentrations and phytoplankton biomass. At higher nutrient concentrations (TN ≥ 260 μg L−1 d−1; TP ≥ 10 μg L−1 d−1), top‐down control of filter‐feeding fish and bivalves was less effective and bottom‐up effects resulted in significant increases of Chl a concentration. Thus, as phytoplankton biomass in freshwater ecosystems is determined by both the top‐down effects of predators and the bottom‐up effects of nutrients, external loadings should be controlled when filter‐feeding fish and bivalves are used for algal control to ensure the efficacy of biomanipulation.

BackgroundThe mechanisms of hypertrophic scar formation and its tissue inflammation remain unknown.MethodsWe collected 33 hypertrophic scar (HS) and 36 normal skin (NS) tissues, and detected the tissue inflammation and bacteria using HE staining, Gram staining, and transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry for MCP-1, TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-8. In addition, the samples were assayed by 16S rRNA sequencing to investigate the microbiota diversity in HS, and the correlation between the microbiota and the indices of Vancouver Scar Scale(VSS)score.ResultsHE staining showed that a dramatically increased number of inflammatory cells accumulated in HS compared with NS, and an enhanced number of bacteria colonies was found in HS by Gram staining, even individual bacteria could be clearly observed by TEM. In situ hybridization demonstrated that the bacteria and inflammation cells co-localized in the HS tissues, and immunohistochemistry indicated the expression of MCP-1, TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-8 were significantly upregulated in HS than that in NS. In addition, there was a significantly different microbiota composition between HS and NS. At the phylum level, Firmicutes was significantly higher in HS than NS. At the genus level, S. aureus was the dominant species, which was significantly higher in HS than NS, and was strongly correlated with VSS indices.ConclusionMicrobiome dysbiosis, dominated by S. aureus, occurred in HS formation, which is correlated with chronic inflammation and scar formation, targeting the microbiome dysbiosis is perhaps a supplementary way for future scar management.

AbstractAquaculture in lakes is an important human activity that could accelerate eutrophication. Its impacts on aquatic ecosystems have attracted extensive attention. This study was carried out in Gaoyou Lake, China. We investigated environmental variables and phytoplankton in areas with different aquaculture intensities over four seasons. Marked differences in diversity, biomass and phytoplankton community structure were observed across areas. The 59 phytoplankton taxa identified could be divided into 20 functional groups (PFGs), of which groups B, D, E, J, MP, P, S1, W1 and Y were dominant PFGs in different areas. Total phosphorus (TP), ratio of nitrogen and phosphorus (TN/TP) and chemical oxygen demand (CODMn) were important driving factors for spatial differences in phytoplankton functional groups. Aquaculture altered the phytoplankton community structure, leading to a significant increase in phytoplankton biomass and diversity, especially cyanobacterial biomass. However, phytoplankton biomass and diversity could be significantly reduced and restored to natural levels after the cessation of aquaculture. This study clarified the effects of aquaculture activity on the phytoplankton community, thereby providing fundamental information for better understanding the impacts of aquaculture on lake eutrophication.

The division of labor among workers is a defining characteristic of social insects and plays a pivotal role in enhancing the competitive advantage of their colony. Juvenile hormone (JH) has long been hypothesized to be the essential driver in regulating the division of labor due to its ability to accelerate behavioral transitions in social insects, such as honeybees. The regulation of behavioral transitions by JH in the red imported fire ant (RIFA), Solenopsis invicta, a typical social pest, is unclear. Through video capture and analysis, we investigated the effects of the juvenile hormone analogue (JHA) methoprene on brood care, phototaxis behavior, and threat responsiveness of RIFA nurse workers. Our results showed that the JHA application significantly reduced the time and frequency of brood care behavior by nurse workers while increasing their walking distance and activity time in the light area. Additionally, the application of JHA made ants become excited, indicating a significant improvement in their activity level (movement distance, time, and speed). Furthermore, it was observed that the application of JHA did not affect the threat responsiveness of nurse workers towards stimuli (nestmates or non-nestmates). Our study demonstrates that the application of JHA reduced brood care behavior and enhanced phototaxis in nurse workers, which may reveal the role of JH in facilitating behavioral transitions in RIFA from intranidal tasks to extranidal activity. This study provides an experimental basis for further elucidating the mechanism underlying the division of labor in social insects.

Soft errors, aging effects and process variations have become the three most critical reliability issues for nanoscale complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits. In this paper, the effects of bias temperature instability (BTI) and process variations on the threshold voltage of MOS devices are theoretically deduced, and the drift of the threshold voltage under the synergistic effect of BTI and process variations is analyzed. Based on the deduced threshold voltage drift formula under the synergistic effect, the critical charge and delay of different logic gates under different aging times in NanGate’s 45 nm process are simulated and analyzed. A method based on the change in the critical charge and delay of the soft error rate (SER) calculation considering BTI effect and process variations is given, and the effectiveness of our method comprehensively demonstrated using the ISCAS85,89 benchmarks. As a result, we can observe that the effect of only considering the BTI effect on the critical charge of the circuit is smaller than that of considering both the BTI effect and process variations. The simulation results show that with increasing aging time, the synergistic effect of BTI and process variations makes the increase in the soft error rate more serious than the impact of either effect alone.

Sertraline (SER) is one of the most commonly detected antidepressants in the aquatic environment that can negatively affect aquatic organisms at low concentrations. Despite some knowledge on its acute toxicity to fish, the effects of chronic SER exposure remain poorly understood along with any underlying mechanisms of SER-induced toxicity. To address this knowledge gap, the effects of chronic exposure to three SER concentrations from low to high were investigated in zebrafish. Juvenile zebrafish were exposed to three concentrations of 1, 10, or 100 μg/L of SER for 28 d, after which indicators of oxidative stress and neurotoxicity in the brain were measured. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity was significantly enhanced by SER at 1 up to 100 μg/L, and catalase (CAT) activity was significantly induced by SER at 1 or 10 μg/L. The activity of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) was significantly induced by 10 and 100 μg/L of SER, and the serotonin (5-HT) level was significantly increased by all three concentrations of SER. To ascertain mechanisms of SER-induced toxicity, transcriptomics was conducted in the brain of zebrafish following 100 μg/L SER exposure. The molecular signaling pathways connected with circadian system and the immune system were significantly altered in the zebrafish brain. Based on transcriptomic data, the expression levels of six circadian clock genes were measured, and three genes were significantly altered in relative abundance in fish from all experimental treatments with SER, including cryptochrome circadian regulator 2 (cry2), period circadian clock 2 (per2), and period circadian clock 3 (per3). We hypothesize that the circadian system may be related to SER-induced neurotoxicity and oxidative stress in the central nervous system. This study reveals potential mechanisms and key events (i.e., oxidative stress and neurotoxicity) associated with SER-induced toxicity, and improves understanding of the molecular and biochemical pathways putatively perturbed by SER.

Machine learning assisted diagnosis of acromegaly from facial photographs has been proved feasible in recent years. According to our previous research, facial and limb changes exist in patients with acromegaly at early stage. We aimed to facilitate the process of early self-screening for acromegaly from hand photographs by using a deep-learning approach. In this study, a dataset containing hand photographs of 635 acromegaly patients and 192 normal people were used to train a Deep Convolution Neural Network (DCNN). We augmented these images with tailed raw data. The prediction is performed in an end-to-end paradigm without manual pre-processing, from the input photograph to the final prediction. The trained models were evaluated on a separate dataset to validate the effectiveness. Different kinds of advanced DCNN architecture were explored in this novel task and they showed significant performance compared with the results from human doctors specialized in pituitary adenoma. We further used heat-map to provide visual explanations to illustrate how the DCNN diagnosed the acromegaly. The final result of our experiment showed a sensitivity of 0.983, a specificity of 0.920, a PPV of 0.966, a NPV of 0.958 and a F1-score of 0.974. In our method, the sensitivity was higher than doctors' predictions, which indicates that our method could effectively help people detect acromegaly by themselves. Furthermore, our algorithm paid more attention to fingers and joints on which human doctors focused. This is the first study to investigate whether it is possible to detect acromegaly by machine learning from hand photographs and compare the result with human doctors specialized in pituitary adenoma. This study provided an easy-to-use tool for early self-screening of acromegaly for people without medical knowledge, so that acromegaly patients can get more timely treatment.

BackgroundCurrently, it is difficult to estimate the possibility of recurrence of nonfunctioning pituitary adenomas (NFPAs). Markers such as Ki-67 or transcription factors rely on postoperative pathology, while few indices can be used for preoperative prediction. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the predictive effectiveness of supra-intrasellar volume and tumor-carotid distance based on measurements derived from preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data.MethodNinety-eight cases of NFPAs were evaluated, along with their clinical characteristics and MRI features. Four radiologic indices were analyzed, including intrasellar tumor volume, suprasellar tumor volume, maximum horizontal tumor diameter, and intercarotid distance. The ratio of supra-intrasellar volume and ratio of tumor-carotid distance were measured using 3D Slicer software, and the sum of two ratios was defined as the V-D value. The correlation between recurrence and multiple factors was analyzed using univariate and multivariate logistic regression and Kaplan-Meier analysis, and ROC curves were used to estimate the prognostic performance of radiologic measurements in NFPAs.ResultThe supra-intrasellar volume ratio, tumor-carotid distance ratio and V-D value were significantly correlated with the recurrence of NFPAs. The predictive importance of the V-D value reached 84.5%, with a sensitivity of 83.7% and specificity of 67.3%. The cutoff limit of the V-D value was 1.53, and patients with V-D values higher than 1.53 tended to relapse much earlier.ConclusionThe V-D value has predictive importance for the recurrence of NFPAs preoperatively. Patients with higher V-D values will undergo recurrence earlier and should be given greater consideration in terms of surgery and follow-up time.

Farming operation and amino acid profiles of pond-reared Chinese mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis (Milne Edwards, 1853), collected from different areas in Jiangsu Province, China were investigated and compared with the aim to elucidate how farming practices affected the nutritional values of three edible tissues (muscle, hepatopancreas and gonad) of crab. The crab pond aquaculture practices including snail input, macrophytes coverage, total commercial feed, the ratio of trash fish to total feed, were much higher in Gaochun and Jintan than that in other sites (having larger pond size), which leads to higher average individual body weight and commercial yields. Further, the mean body weight, muscle weight, carapace length and width, and the ratio of gonad to hepatopancreas were significantly higher in Jintan, Suzhou and Gaochun areas than in other regions. Amino acid assessment showed that all crabs collected delivered high-quality protein (Amino acid score >1 except Valine), the main amino acids being glutamic acid, aspartic acid, and alanine. Significant differences in amino acid profiles were observed between sites, tissues and sexes. Muscles were rich in total amino acids, essential amino acids, and delicious amino acids, followed by gonads and hepatopancreas. The contents of essential amino acids in crab muscles from Gaochun, Jintan, Suzhou and Guannan were significantly higher than those from Suqian, Sihong and Xinghua. All the amino acids except Serine and Glycine were significantly higher in gonads from males than from females. The redundancy analysis revealed that the snail input, trash fish ratio to the total feed, macrophytes coverage and total trash fish supply explained 84.3% of the variation in the amino acid content and structure in crabs from Gaochun, Jintan and Suzhou. Overall, our results show that mitten crabs collected in Jiangsu province had good nutritional quality suitable for human dietary needs, and that farming practices, especially degree of fish-source protein feeding, influence the amino acids composition of crabs.

Sertraline (SER) is one of the most frequently detected antidepressant drugs in aquatic environments. However, knowledge regarding SER-induced behavioral alterations in fish is insufficient, as well as the mechanisms underlying SER-induced toxicity. The present study aimed to determine behavioral and molecular responses in larval fish following SER exposure with a focus on its mode of action. Zebrafish embryos (~6 h-post-fertilization, hpf) were exposed to one of three concentrations of SER (1, 10, 100 μg/L) for 6 days, respectively. Evaluated parameters included development, behavior, transcripts related to serotonin signaling, serotonin levels, and acetylcholinesterase activity. Accelerated hatching of zebrafish embryos was observed for those fish exposed to 100 μg/L SER at 54 hpf. Locomotor activity (e.g. distance moved and mobile cumulative duration) was significantly reduced in larval zebrafish following exposure to 10 and 100 μg/L SER. Conversely, larval fish showed increased dark-avoidance after exposure to 1–100 μg/L SER. Of the measured transcripts related to serotonin signaling, only serotonin transporter (serta) and serotonin receptor 2c (5-ht2c) mRNA levels were increased in fish in response to 10 μg/L SER treatment. However, serotonin levels were unaltered in larvae exposed to SER. There were no differences among groups in acetylcholinesterase activity at any concentration tested. Taking together, the results evidenced that exposure to SER alters behavioral responses in early-staged zebrafish, which may be related to the abnormal expression of 5-ht2c. This study elucidates molecular responses to SER and characterizes targets that may be sensitive to antidepressant pharmaceuticals in larval fish.

A rapid degradation of aquatic vegetations in Taihu Lake has roused a wide attention in recent years. Giving large-scale harvesting activity on aquatic vegetation since 2012, whether water eutrophication or the human harvest activity induced the degradation remains controversial and unclear. In this study, based on Landsat and HJ-CCD data acquired from 1984 to 2016 and a 12-year field observation (2005–2016) of water quality, a method was proposed to quantitatively assess impacts of harvesting activity and water quality change on degradations of both floating-leaved aquatic vegetation (FAV) and submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in Taihu Lake. First, areas of FAV and SAV covers from 1984 to 2016 in Taihu Lake were mapped using the satellite data, and then the mapped areas were modified to those on a reference date by using phenological curves of FAV and SAV covers. Next, correlations between water quality data and FAV and SAV covers were analyzed by using Pearson correlation analysis based on the data before implementing the human harvesting activity (i.e., before 2012), and multiple general linear models were established based on the selected water quality variables with p-value

Pen aquaculture is the main form of aquaculture in some shallow lakes in eastern China. It is valuable to map the spatiotemporal changes of pen aquaculture in eutrophic lakes to assess its effect on water quality, thereby helping the relevant decision-making agencies to manage the water quality (WQ) of lakes. In this study, an automatic approach for extracting the pen aquaculture area was developed based on Landsat data. The approach integrates five algorithms, including grey transformation, discrete wavelet transform, fast Fourier transform, singular value decomposition and k-nearest neighbor classification. It was successfully applied in the automatic mapping of the pen aquaculture areas in Lake Yangcheng from 1990 to 2016. The overall accuracies were greater than 92%. The result indicted that the practice of pen aquaculture experienced five stages, with the general area increasing in the beginning and decreasing by the end of the last stage. Meanwhile, the changes of nine WQ parameters observed from 2000 to 2016, such as ammonia (NH3-N), pH, total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), chlorophyll a, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemiluminescence detection of permanganate index (CODMn), Secchi disk depth (SDD) and dissolved oxygen (DO), were analyzed in the lake sectors of Lake Yangcheng, and then their relationships were explored with the percentage of pen aquaculture area. The result suggested that the percentage of pen aquaculture area exhibits significantly positive correlations with NH3-N, TN, TP, chlorophyll a, BOD and CODMn, but significantly negative correlations with SDD and DO. The experimental results may offer an important implication for managing similar shallow lakes with pen aquaculture expansion and water pollution problems.

Much attention is being paid to using high-performance convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in the area of ship detection in optical remoting sensing (ORS) images. However, the problem of false negatives (FNs) caused by side-by-side ships cannot be solved, and the number of false positives (FPs) remains high. This paper uses a DLA-34 network with deformable convolution layers as the backbone. The network has two priority branches: a recall-priority branch for reducing the number of FNs, and a precision-priority branch for reducing the number of FPs. In our single-shot detection method, the recall-priority branch is based on an anchor-free module without non-maximum suppression (NMS), while the precision-priority branch utilizes an anchor-based module with NMS. We perform recall-priority branch functions based on the output part of the CenterNet object detector to precisely predict center points of bounding boxes. The Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN), combined with the inference part of YOLOv3, is used to improve the precision of precision-priority branch. Finally, the boxes from two branches merge, and we propose priority-based selection (PBS) for choosing the accurate ones. Results show that our proposed method sharply improves the recall rate of side-by-side ships and significantly reduces the number of false alarms. Our method also achieves the best trade-off on our improved version of HRSC2016 dataset, with 95.57% AP at 56 frames per second on an Nvidia RTX-2080 Ti GPU. Compared with the HRSC2016 dataset, not only are our annotations more accurate, but our dataset also contains more images and samples. Our evaluation metrics also included tests on small ships and incomplete forms of ships.

Superhydrophobic surfaces have shown utility applications in drag reduction field. A novel method based on simulation analysis and test experiments is proposed to fabricate a superhydrophobic surface with 3D flower-like micro and nano-structures on a steel ball under an O _2 rich environment. The superhydrophobic steel surface has water CA of 166 ± 1.5°. The sliding angle is less than 2°. The experiment and the simulation of the superhydrophobic and the untreated steel ball fall under water are built to prove the validity of the method of reducing water resistance. The drag reduction ratio of the superhydrophobic steel ball is beyond 53% opposed to the untreated surface under water. A model simulation is built to simulate and analyze the solid-liquid interface drag reduction mechanism of superhydrophobic surface based on theoretical analysis. The result testifies the rationality of the drag reduction experiment.

We examined the food preference of Chinese mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis (H. Milne Edwards, 1853), under food shortage, habitat choice in the presence of predators, and cannibalistic behavior by comparing their response to the popular culture plant Elodea nuttallii and the structurally more complex Myriophyllum verticillatum L. in a series of mesocosm experiments. Mitten crabs were found to consume and thus reduce the biomass of Elodea, whereas no negative impact on Myriophyllum biomass was recorded. In the absence of adult crabs, juveniles preferred to settle in Elodea habitats (appearance frequency among the plants: 64.2 ± 5.9%) but selected for Myriophyllum instead when adult crabs were present (appearance frequency among the plants: 59.5 ± 4.9%). The mortality rate of mitten crabs in the absence of plant shelter was higher under food shortage, primarily due to cannibalism. The proportion of molting crabs dying in the structurally more complex Myriophyllum habitats was significantly lower than in the less complex Elodea habitats, indicating that Myriophyllum provides better protection from cannibalistic behavior, likely due to its structurally more complex canopy. Stable isotope analyses of crab samples revealed a trophic shift in both δ13C and δ15N (Δδ13C: 2.2⁻4.0‰; Δδ15N: 1.5⁻2.8‰) during the experimental period. Significant positive correlations between body mass and δ13C and δ15N were recorded, suggesting that cannibalistic feeding might further increase crab growth and lead to ontogenetic increases in trophic position with increasing size. Our study overall demonstrates that a combination of submerged aquatic vegetation functioning as a highly suitable food with other less palatable plant species acting as efficient refuges against predators may be the optimal method of plant stocking in mitten crab aquacultures to ensure both high crab growth and a high survival rate.

BACKGROUND: Non-reactive platelet counts elevation occurs mainly in myeloproliferative disorders (MPDs), which have been reported to be closely associated with JAK2 V617F mutation. Complete blood cell count (CBC) is essential in diagnosis of MPDs, however, the impact of JAK2 V617F mutation on the patients' hemogram variation remains not clear. METHODS: JAK2 V617F mutation was detected by allele specific real-time quantitative fluorescence PCR (AS-qPCR). RESULTS: Of the 402 non-reactive platelet elevating patients, JAK2 V617F mutation was detected in 222 (55.2%) patients. RBC counts, WBC counts, platelet-large contrast ratio (P-LCR), platelet distribution width (PDW) and mean platelet volume (MPV) were much higher in JAK2 V617F mutated patients, except platelet counts. In addition, when the patients were classified into subgroups by blood cell counts, it was found that JAK2 V617F mutation rate increased progressively with the increase of RBC counts and WBC counts, other than platelet counts. Furthermore, trilineage hyperplasia group showed highest JAK2 V617F mutation rate (93.26%), followed by the bilineage hyperplasia groups. Lastly, JAK2 V617F mutant allele burden was found much higher in polycythemia vera (PV) patients [median(P25-P75): 45.02%(35.12%-54.22%)] than in essential thrombocythemia (ET) patients [median(P25-P75): 28.23%(17.77%-41.66%)], and that it increased with WBC counts (r = 0.393, p = 0.000) and RBC counts(r = 0.215, p = 0.001), other than platelet counts (r = -0.051, p = 0.452). Further analysis revealed that in ET patients, JAK2 V617F mutant allele burden correlated with WBC counts and platelet counts positively, other than RBC counts, while in PV patients, it correlated with WBC counts and RBC counts positively, but not platelet counts. CONCLUSIONS: JAK2 V617F mutation occurs frequently in patients with non-reactive elevated platelet counts. The presence of JAK2 V617F mutation has great impact on hemogram variation, including RBC counts, WBC counts, platelet parameters and lineage hyperplasia, but not on platelet counts. Besides, JAK2 V617F mutant allele burden affects the blood cell proliferation pattern.