•An integrated view on different protein kinases and sirtuins in MSCs is provided.•The regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis and metabolism in MSCs are summarized.•Recent advances in mitochondrial ...dynamics and transfer are discussed.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are characterized to have the capacity of self-renewal and the potential to differentiate into mesoderm, ectoderm-like and endoderm-like cells. MSCs hold great promise for cell therapies due to their multipotency in vitro and therapeutic advantage of hypo-immunogenicity and lower tumorigenicity. Moreover, it has been shown that MSCs can serve as a vehicle to transfer mitochondria into cells after cell transplantation. Mitochondria produce most of the energy through oxidative phosphorylation in differentiated cells. It has been increasingly clear that the switch of energy supply from glycolysis to aerobic metabolism is essential for successful differentiation of MSCs. Post-translational modifications of proteins have been established to regulate mitochondrial function and metabolic shift during MSCs differentiation. In this article, we review and provide an integrated view on the roles of different protein kinases and sirtuins in the maintenance and differentiation of MSCs. Importantly, we provide evidence to suggest that alteration in the expression of Sirt3 and Sirt5 and relative changes in the acylation levels of mitochondrial proteins might be involved in the activation of mitochondrial function and adipogenic differentiation of adipose-derived MSCs. We summarize their roles in the regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis and metabolism, oxidative responses and differentiation of MSCs. On the other hand, we discuss recent advances in the study of mitochondrial dynamics and mitochondrial transfer as well as their roles in the differentiation and therapeutic application of MSCs to improve cell function in vitro and in animal models. Accumulating evidence has substantiated that the therapeutic potential of MSCs is conferred not only by cell replacement and paracrine effects but also by transferring mitochondria into injured tissues or cells to modulate the cellular metabolism in situ. Therefore, elucidation of the underlying mechanisms in the regulation of mitochondrial metabolism of MSCs may ultimately improve therapeutic outcomes of stem cell therapy in the future.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Computational Thinking (CT) is seen as an important competence that is required in order to adapt to the future. However, educators, especially K-12 teachers and researchers, have not clearly ...identified how to teach it. In this study, a meta-review of the studies published in academic journals from 2006 to 2017 was conducted to analyze application courses, adopted learning strategies, participants, teaching tools, programming languages, and course categories of CT education. From the review results, it was found that the promotion of CT in education has made great progress in the last decade. In addition to the increasing number of CT studies in different countries, the subjects, research issues, and teaching tools have also become more diverse in recent years. It was also found that CT has mainly been applied to the activities of program design and computer science, while some studies are related to other subjects. Meanwhile, most of the studies adopted Project-Based Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Cooperative Learning, and Game-based Learning in the CT activities. In other words, such activities as aesthetic experience, design-based learning, and storytelling have been relatively less frequently adopted. Most of the studies focused on programming skills training and mathematical computing, while some adopted a cross-domain teaching mode to enable students to manage and analyze materials of various domains by computing. In addition, since the cognitive ability of students of different ages varies, the CT ability cultivation methods and content criteria should vary accordingly. Moreover, most studies reported the learners' CT performance and perspectives, while their information society ability was seldom trained. Accordingly, the research trends and potential research issues of CT are proposed as a reference for researchers, instructors, and policy makers.
•A meta-review of selected SSCI/SCI journal CT studies for 2006–2017 is reported.•The number of CT studies shows an obviously increasing trend in recent years.•Program design was the most common subject used to convey CT instruction.•Visual programming languages were the most common instruments of CT instruction.•PBL, CL, and GBL were the top strategies used for CT instruction.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
•Development of remoteness index-based Pythagorean fuzzy VIKOR methods.•Consideration of uncertain information represented by Pythagorean fuzzy sets.•Construction of generalized PF distances and ...displaced/fixed remoteness indices.•Creation of remoteness-based group utility indices and individual regret indices.•Ultimate ranking using displaced/fixed remoteness-based compromise indices.•Comparative analyses with newly developed methods via five practical applications.
The aim of this paper is to develop novel VIKOR-based methods for multiple criteria decision analysis involving Pythagorean fuzzy information. The concept of Pythagorean fuzzy sets possesses definite advantages in handling vagueness and complex uncertainty over well-known nonstandard fuzzy sets, such as intuitionistic fuzzy sets and interval-valued fuzzy sets. Taking the powerfulness of Pythagorean fuzzy sets into account when tackling imprecise and ambiguous information in multiple criteria decision-making problems, this paper proposes remoteness index-based Pythagorean fuzzy VIKOR methods, which are significantly different from the existing VIKOR techniques. The uniqueness of the proposed VIKOR methodology is the consideration of uncertain information represented by Pythagorean fuzzy values and the construction of certain valuable concepts of a generalized distance measure and displaced and fixed remoteness indices. A flexible and multipurpose definition of a distance measure for Pythagorean fuzzy information is presented based on the Minkowski distance model. The generalized Pythagorean fuzzy distance measure presented in this paper is then applied to establish useful concepts of remoteness indices, consisting of displaced positive- and negative-ideal remoteness indices as well as fixed positive- and negative-ideal remoteness indices. Unlike the canonical VIKOR ranking procedure, this paper provides a new way to rank candidate alternatives and determine the compromise solution depending on distinct preference structures for adapting to the particularities within the Pythagorean fuzzy environment. Several useful multiple criteria ranking indices, consisting of remoteness-based group utility, individual regret, and compromise indices, are developed to facilitate compromise ranking among alternatives. Four algorithmic procedures of the presented remoteness index-based Pythagorean fuzzy VIKOR methods are also provided in detail. Furthermore, some real-world applications and comparative analyses concerning a criteria satisfaction problem, two service quality and Internet stock performance evaluation problems, and two Internet stock and R&D project investment problems are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed methods in practice.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
The diagnosis and monitoring of Sjögren syndrome (SS) is often difficult, requiring a multidisciplinary approach with invasive procedures. Our aim is to elucidate the tear protein alterations of dry ...eye disease (DED) with primary SS (pSS) and secondary SS (sSS) with the long-term instillation of eyedrops. We collected clinical demographics and tear fluid (TF) samples from DED patients with no autoimmune diseases (non-SS-DED), pSS-DED, and sSS-DED patients, followed by TF screening with tandem mass tagging-labeling gel-free proteomics assay. Bioinformatic analysis via Ingenuity Pathway Analysis was used to identify functional pathways and interacting networks. Validation of candidate proteins with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay on the tear samples was done. The top functional pathways of the two comparisons (sSS-DED vs. pSS-DED and sSS-DED vs. non-SS-DED) were both associated with inflammation and stress-related signaling. After constructing an interaction network model with the selected candidate proteins, five proteins were identified. A Disintegrin and Metalloproteinase domain-containing protein 10 (ADAM10) was found to be an important candidate biomarker in all groups, followed by epidermal growth factor (EGF) in TF. This study revealed novel DED markers, ADAM10 and EGF, in differentiating between primary and secondary SS patients from tears by in-depth proteomic analysis.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
•Novel Chebyshev distance measures between Pythagorean membership grades.•An extended elimination and choice translating reality method via Chebyshev metric.•Chebyshev metric-based preference ...functions and concordance/discordance indices.•Theoretical and comparative analysis with current Pythagorean fuzzy distances.•Application to bridge-superstructure construction and validation of effectiveness.
This paper aims to propose novel Chebyshev distance measures for Pythagorean membership grades and establish their based elimination and choice translating reality method (ELECTRE) for addressing multiple criteria decision-making problems under uncertainty of Pythagorean fuzziness. Pythagorean fuzzy (PF) sets have a significant effect on fuzzy modeling for intelligent informatics and decision support because the degrees of membership, non-membership, and indeterminacy, strength of commitment, and direction of commitment featured by PF information are extended for a wider coverage of information span. The theory of PF sets is a powerful tool in dealing with imprecise and ambiguous evaluations for realistic problems and modeling intelligent decision making for complex systems. This paper focuses on both theory and applications of the Chebyshev metric for PF contexts, and special attention is devoted to the theoretical development of Chebyshev distances in connection with Pythagorean membership grades based on various types of representations. To surmount the difficulties confronted by the existing measures, such as low comprehensivity, incomparability in scaling, ignorance of square degrees in metric specification, double weighting, and inappropriate normalization, this paper makes a comprehensive comparison to validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed Chebyshev distance measures. To support decision making within complicated PF environments, this paper develops an extended ELECTRE approach based on the Chebyshev distance measure to conduct multiple criteria decision analysis involving PF information for determining partial and complete rankings of candidate alternatives. In particular, this paper constructs novel Chebyshev metric-based preference functions depending on the individual characteristics of the criteria. The developed PF ELECTRE approach leads to using all the information that characterizes a PF set via the concepts of the scalar function and various Chebyshev metric-based comparison indices, such as (net) concordance indices, (net) discordance indices, and the overall precedence index. Practical applications with a comparative analysis in the field of bridge-superstructure construction are conducted to examine the usefulness and advantages of the proposed methodology in the real world.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Studies on the association between adiponectin and leptin and anxiety and depression among postmenopausal women are limited. Therefore, the present study specifically evaluates the mutual ...relationships between adiponectin and leptin and anxiety and depression in postmenopausal women.
In this cross-sectional study, a total of 190 women aged 40-65 years were enrolled. Depression symptoms were assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and anxiety symptoms were evaluated using the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A). Fasting specimens were collected to measure sex hormone, glucose, insulin, and adipokine levels. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed to evaluate the associations between depression and anxiety and adipocyte-derived hormones.
The study was performed in a hospital medical center.
Among 190 enrolled postmenopausal women, Spearman's rank correlation analysis revealed significant correlations between CES-D and HAM-A (r = 0.715, P < 0.0001), between CES-D and adiponectin (p = 0.009) and leptin (p = 0.015), and between HAM-A and adiponectin (p = 0.01) and leptin (p = 0.001). The subjects with CES-D ≥ 16 and with HAM-A ≥ 18 had higher adiponectin levels than those with CES-D < 16 and HAM-A < 18, respectively. After adjusting for age, body mass index, exercise, alanine amino transferase and parameters of lipid profiles, Log adiponectin levels were found to be significantly associated with both CES-D and HAM-A, and Log leptin levels were only significantly associated with HAM-A.
The data show that adiponectin and leptin levels are significantly associated with depression and anxiety symptoms. These results suggest that higher adiponectin and lower leptin levels may serve as potential markers related to anxiety and mood in postmenopausal women. More future research that is designed to deal with the important confounders (e.g., population heterogeneity) is needed to investigate comprehensively on these associations.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
To provide comprehensive estimates of the global, regional, and national burden of infertility from 1990 to 2017, using findings from a 2017 study on the global burden of disease (GBD), we assessed ...the burden of infertility in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2017. DisMod-MR 2.1 is a Bayesian meta-regression method that estimates non-fatal outcomes using sparse and heterogeneous epidemiological data. Globally, the age-standardized prevalence rate of infertility increased by 0.370% per year for females and 0.291% per year for males from 1990 to 2017. Additionally, age-standardized disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) of infertility increased by 0.396% per year for females and 0.293% per year for males during the observational period. An increasing trend to these burden estimates was observed throughout the all socio-demographic index (SDI) countries. Interestingly, we found that high SDI countries had the lowest level of prevalence and DALYs in both genders. However, the largest increasing trend was observed in high-SDI countries for females. By contrast, low-SDI countries had the largest increasing trend in males. Negative associations were observed between these burden estimates and the SDI level. The global disease burden of infertility has been increasing throughout the period from 1990 to 2017.
This paper proposes a hierarchical clustering multi-task learning (HC-MTL) method for joint human action grouping and recognition. Specifically, we formulate the objective function into the ...group-wise least square loss regularized by low rank and sparsity with respect to two latent variables, model parameters and grouping information, for joint optimization. To handle this non-convex optimization, we decompose it into two sub-tasks, multi-task learning and task relatedness discovery. First, we convert this non-convex objective function into the convex formulation by fixing the latent grouping information. This new objective function focuses on multitask learning by strengthening the shared-action relationship and action-specific feature learning. Second, we leverage the learned model parameters for the task relatedness measure and clustering. In this way, HC-MTL can attain both optimal action models and group discovery by alternating iteratively. The proposed method is validated on three kinds of challenging datasets, including six realistic action datasets (Hollywood2, YouTube, UCF Sports, UCF50, HMDB51 & UCF101), two constrained datasets (KTH & TJU), and two multi-view datasets (MV-TJU & IXMAS). The extensive experimental results show that: 1) HC-MTL can produce competing performances to the state of the arts for action recognition and grouping; 2) HC-MTL can overcome the difficulty in heuristic action grouping simply based on human knowledge; 3) HC-MTL can avoid the possible inconsistency between the subjective action grouping depending on human knowledge and objective action grouping based on the feature subspace distributions of multiple actions. Comparison with the popular clustered multi-task learning further reveals that the discovered latent relatedness by HC-MTL aids inducing the group-wise multi-task learning and boosts the performance. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work that breaks the assumption that all actions are either independent for individual learning or correlated for joint modeling and proposes HC-MTL for automated, joint action grouping and modeling.
Mineral mapping from satellite images provides valuable insights into subsurface mineral alteration for geothermal exploration. In previous studies, eight fundamental algorithms were used for mineral ...mapping utilizing USGS spectra, a collection of reflectance spectra containing samples of minerals, rocks, and soils created by the USGS. We used an ASD FieldSpec 4 Hi-RES NG portable spectrometer to collect spectra for analyzing ASTER images of the Coso Geothermal Field. Then, we established the ground-truth information and the spectral library by analyzing 97 samples. Samples collected from the field were analyzed using the CSIRO TSG (The Spectral Geologist of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization). Based on the mineralogy study, multiple high-purity spectra of geothermal alteration minerals were selected from collected data, including alunite, chalcedony, hematite, kaolinite, and opal. Eight mineral spectral target detection algorithms were applied to the preprocessed satellite data with a proposed local spectral library. We measured the highest overall accuracy of 87% for alunite, 95% for opal, 83% for chalcedony, 60% for hematite, and 96% for kaolinite out of these eight algorithms. Three, four, five, and eight algorithms were fused to extract mineral alteration with the obtained target detection results. The results prove that the fusion of algorithms gives better results than using individual ones. In conclusion, this paper discusses the significance of evaluating different mapping algorithms. It proposes a robust fusion approach to extract mineral maps as an indicator for geothermal exploration.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Intense light attenuation in water/wastewater results in photocatalysts exhibiting a low quantum efficiency. This study develops a novel piezoelectrocatalysis system, which involves quartz microrods ...(MRs) abundantly decorated with active‐edge‐site MoS2 nanosheets to form a quartz microrods@few‐layered MoS2 hierarchical heterostructure (QMSH). Through theoretical calculations, it is found that the quartz MRs serve as a parallel‐plate capacitor, which is self‐powered to provide an internal electric field to the few‐layered MoS2 nanosheets surrounding the quartz MR surfaces, and the piezoelectric potential (piezopotential) effectively facilitates redox reactions with the free carriers in MoS2. The self‐powered quartz MRs in the QMSH present an internal bias to the MoS2 nanosheets, thus yielding a piezoelectrocatalysis system. An efficient piezoelectrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction and decomposition of wastewater without light irradiation can be achieved simultaneously. The second‐order rate constant of the QMSH is ≈0.631 L mg−1 min−1, which is 650‐fold that of quartz MRs, indicating that the piezoelectric heterostructural catalysts display exceptionally high efficiency on piezoelectrocatalytic redox reactions rather than in the piezocatalytic process. The H2‐production rate of QMSH catalysts approaches ≈6456 µmo1 g−1 h−1 and peaks at ≈16.8 mmol g−1 in 8 h. The piezoelectrocatalytic process may be a promising method for treating industrial wastewater and producing clean energy.
A novel piezoelectrocatalysis system is developed, which involves quartz microrods abundantly decorated with active‐edge‐site MoS2 nanosheets to form a quartz microrods@few‐layered MoS2 hierarchical heterostructure (QMSH). The quartz microrods in the QMSH present an internal bias to the MoS2 nanosheets, thus yielding a piezoelectrocatalysis system. An efficient piezoelectrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction and decomposition of wastewater can be achieved simultaneously without light irradiation.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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