Cardiovascular diseases have become the leading cause of human death. Aging is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Cardiac aging is associated with maladaptation of cellular ...metabolism, dysfunction (or senescence) of cardiomyocytes, a decrease in angiogenesis, and an increase in tissue scarring (fibrosis). These events eventually lead to cardiac remodeling and failure. Senescent cardiomyocytes show the hallmarks of DNA damage, endoplasmic reticulum stress, mitochondria dysfunction, contractile dysfunction, hypertrophic growth, and senescence-associated secreting phenotype (SASP). Metabolism within cardiomyocytes is essential not only to fuel the pump function of the heart but also to maintain the functional homeostasis and participate in the senescence of cardiomyocytes. The senescence of cardiomyocyte is also regulated by the non-myocytes (endothelial cells, fibroblasts, and immune cells) in the local microenvironment. On the other hand, the senescent cardiomyocytes alter their phenotypes and subsequently affect the non-myocytes in the local microenvironment and contribute to cardiac aging and pathological remodeling. In this review, we first summarized the hallmarks of the senescence of cardiomyocytes. Then, we discussed the metabolic switch within senescent cardiomyocytes and provided a discussion of the cellular communications between dysfunctional cardiomyocytes and non-myocytes in the local microenvironment. We also addressed the functions of metabolic regulators within non-myocytes in modulating myocardial microenvironment. Finally, we pointed out some interesting and important questions that are needed to be addressed by further studies.
To determine whether histogram analysis based on unenhanced CT can play a role in the differential diagnosis of thymoma and lymphoma from thymic hyperplasia and cyst (mean CT attenuation > 10 HU).
...This retrospective study included consecutive asymptomatic participants who have prevascular mediastinal lesions incidentally detected by unenhanced CT between December 2013 and August 2020, and with definitive diagnosis by pathology or additional radiologic work-ups. A total of thirteen histogram parameters on enhanced CT were calculated for each lesion, then were compared between tumor (thymoma + lymphoma) and non-tumor (hyperplasia + cyst). Receiver operating characteristic analysis was conducted to investigate the performance of histogram parameter for identifying tumor.
The study population included 192 patients (106 men and 86 women) with a mean age of 50.5 years at the time of CT examination. Of them, 94 patients have tumor (87 thymomas and 7 lymphoma) and 98 have non-tumor (48 thymic hyperplasia and 50 cysts). Nine of the thirteen histogram parameters revealed significant difference between the two groups, including median, minimum, range, 10th percentile, 90th percentile, kurtosis, skewness, uniformity and entropy. No significant difference was observed in the mean CT attenuation between groups. Higher median was found to be independent predictors for distinguishing tumor from non-tumor, and can achieve an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.785 (95% confidence interval 95% IC, 0.720-0.841).
Histogram analysis based on unenhanced CT may be able to provide some help in the differential diagnosis of incidental lesions in prevascular mediastinal.
This study was sponsored by Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 21ZR1459700).
The prevalent work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) around lower back and neck amongst construction workers are precursors of operational injury in the construction industry. As a ...significant risk factor of WMSDs, time spent in insecure operational postures should be proactively prevented. This study developed a real-time motion warning personal protective equipment (PPE) that enables workers' self-awareness and self-management of ergonomically hazardous operational pattern for the prevention of WMSDs based on wearable Inertial Measurement Units (WIMUs). Data processing and real-time warning algorithms are proposed for automatically risk postures assessment and warning through a connected smartphone application as soon as dangerous operational patterns are detected. The system was tested and validated with robust clinical motion data output and effective alarm ringing in both laboratory and field experiments on a construction site in Hong Kong. The proposed PPE provides an alternative to help construction workers prevent WMSDs without disturbance and distraction in operations.
•A WIMU-based real-time motion warning equipment for WMSDs prevention•The design of the wearable equipment that enables self-prevention of WMSDs•An algorithm for translating sensor quaternion into clinical motion data•A maximum holding time thresholds algorithm for hazardous holding time detection•Experiment and validation of the proposed equipment
Introduction
Clearance of damaged cells and debris is beneficial for the functional recovery after ischemic brain injury. However, the specific phagocytic receptor that mediates microglial ...phagocytosis after ischemic stroke is unknown.
Aim
To investigate whether P2Y6 receptor‐mediated microglial phagocytosis is beneficial for the debris clearance and functional recovery after ischemic stroke.
Results
The expression of the P2Y6 receptor in microglia increased within 3 days after transient middle cerebral artery occlusion. Inhibition of microglial phagocytosis by the selective inhibitor MRS2578 enlarged the brain atrophy and edema volume after ischemic stroke, subsequently aggravated neurological function as measured by modified neurological severity scores and Grid walking test. MRS2578 treatment had no effect on the expression of IL‐1α, IL‐1β, IL‐6, IL‐10, TNF‐α, TGF‐β, and MPO after ischemic stroke. Finally, we found that the expression of myosin light chain kinase decreased after microglial phagocytosis inhibition in the ischemic mouse brain, which suggested that myosin light chain kinase was involved in P2Y6 receptor‐mediated phagocytosis.
Conclusion
Our results indicate that P2Y6 receptor‐mediated microglial phagocytosis plays a beneficial role during the acute stage of ischemic stroke, which can be a therapeutic target for ischemic stroke.
Background and Aims
Studies often rely upon self‐report and biological testing methods for measuring illicit drug use, although evidence for their agreement is limited to specific populations and ...self‐report instruments. We aimed to examine comprehensively the evidence for agreement between self‐reported and biologically measured illicit drug use among all major illicit drug classes, biological indicators, populations and settings.
Methods
We systematically searched peer‐reviewed databases (Medline, Embase and PsycINFO) and grey literature. Included studies reported 2 × 2 table counts or agreement estimates comparing self‐reported and biologically measured use published up to March 2022. With biological results considered to be the reference standard and use of random‐effect regression models, we evaluated pooled estimates for overall agreement (primary outcome), sensitivity, specificity, false omission rates (proportion reporting no use that test positive) and false discovery rates (proportion reporting use that test negative) by drug class, potential consequences attached to self‐report (i.e. work, legal or treatment impacts) and time‐frame of use. Heterogeneity was assessed by inspecting forest plots.
Results
From 7924 studies, we extracted data from 207 eligible studies. Overall agreement ranged from good to excellent (> 0.79). False omission rates were generally low, while false discovery rates varied by setting. Specificity was generally high but sensitivity varied by drug, sample type and setting. Self‐report in clinical trials and situations of no consequences was generally reliable. For urine, recent (i.e. past 1–4 days) self‐report produced lower sensitivity and false discovery rates than past month. Agreement was higher in studies that informed participants biological testing would occur (diagnostic odds ratio = 2.91, 95% confidence interval = 1.25–6.78). The main source of bias was biological assessments (51% studies).
Conclusions
While there are limitations associated with self‐report and biological testing to measure illicit drug use, overall agreement between the two methods is high, suggesting both provide good measures of illicit drug use. Recommended methods of biological testing are more likely to provide reliable measures of recent use if there are problems with self‐disclosure.
This study contributes to construct the mathematical model of hybrid dynamic economic emission dispatch (HDEED) considering renewable energy generation and propose a novel solving approach based on ...enhanced moth-flame optimization algorithm. Renewable energy power generation technology has an important impact on reducing pollutant emissions and promoting sustainable development. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the HDEED problem in consideration of renewable energy generation and improve the economic and environmental benefits of the power system. First, a moth-flame optimization algorithm based on position disturbance updating strategy (MFO_PDU) was proposed aiming at the non-convex, non-linear and high-dimensional characteristics of HDEED problem. Second, the mathematical model of HDEED on the basis of Wind-Solar-Thermal integrated energy was constructed, while taking into account the valve point effect, equality constraints and inequality constraints. Finally, three cases including test systems of different scales were formulated and employed to verify the proposed approach, and the compromise solution was determined through membership function. The results revealed that the fuel cost obtained by the MFO_PDU algorithm was 11.31%, 4.01% and 5.27% smaller than those of HHO, TSA and MFO algorithms for small-scale test system. Accordingly, the research outcomes contribute in reducing the fuel cost and pollutant emissions of power generation system, and further improving the utilization and penetration rate of renewable energy.
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•A hybrid dynamic economic emission dispatch model is formulated.•A novel MFO_PDU-based optimization strategy is proposed to solve HDEED problem.•The MFO_PDU-based approach can solve the HDEED problem efficiently.•The environmental and economic benefits of the power system are improved.
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•67 studies on microplastic pollution undertook in China were reviewed.•Sampling, extraction, identification and quantification procedures were compared.•A standardised methodology ...for microplastic research is suggested.
China is the world’s largest plastic producer and has been a focus of research on microplastic pollution. An increasing number of studies have documented plastics in the sediment, water and biota of China over the past decades. This systematic review compares different methodologies adopted by microplastic studies in China, including sampling equipment and methods; laboratory procedures in microplastic extraction and identification; and the characterisation and quantification of particles. In general, sediment samples were primarily collected with a grab sampler, while water samples were mostly taken from the surface using trawl nets. Different techniques, including density separation, chemical digestion, sieving and filtration, were applied to extract microplastics from the sample matrix. Visual sorting was an obligatory step that identifies microplastics by their morphological characteristics, such as size, shape and colour. Most studies in China reported the prevalence of irregular-shaped particles with sizes smaller than 1 mm. The chemical properties of microplastics were also assessed using infrared and Raman spectroscopy. Quantitative units commonly used for sediment, water and biota samples were “items per kg”, “items per m3” and “items per individual”, respectively. The inconsistencies in methods have marked the urgent warrant of a standardised methodology. It is believed that the findings of the present review can serve as an important waypoint contributing towards a more efficient and long-acting methodology for microplastic research, that can enable meaningful inter-study comparisons.
Object detection in remote-sensing images (RSIs) relies on a large amount of labeled data for training. However, the increasing number of new categories and class imbalance make exhaustive annotation ...impractical. Few-shot object detection (FSOD) addresses this issue by leveraging meta-learning on seen base classes and fine-tuning on novel classes with limited labeled samples. Nonetheless, the substantial scale and orientation variations of objects in RSIs pose significant challenges to existing FSOD methods. To overcome these challenges, we propose integrating a feature pyramid network (FPN) and utilizing prototype features to enhance query features, thereby improving existing FSOD methods. We refer to this modified FSOD approach as a Strong Baseline, which has demonstrated significant performance improvements compared to the original baselines. Furthermore, we tackle the issue of spatial misalignment caused by orientation variations between the query and support images by introducing a transformation-invariant network (TINet). TINet ensures geometric invariance and explicitly aligns the features of the query and support branches, resulting in additional performance gains while maintaining the same inference speed as the Strong Baseline. Extensive experiments on three widely used remote-sensing object detection datasets, that is, NWPU VHR-10.v2, DIOR, and HRRSD demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.
We demonstrate a three‐component 1,2‐alkylsulfonylation of alkenes using sodium sulfinates and pyridinium salts through visible light photoredox catalysis, wherein heteroarenium salts are harnessed ...as radical acceptors via dearomatization. This reaction allows the simultaneous incorporation of sulfonyl and 1,4‐dihydropyridine groups across the C=C bonds to access various sulfonyl‐containing 1,4‐dihydropyridine derivatives with a broad substrate scope and represents a mechanistically distinct approach to achieve alkene difunctionalization through reductive single‐electron transfer.
Glial scars present a major obstacle for neuronal regeneration after stroke. Thus, approaches to promote their degradation and inhibit their formation are beneficial for stroke recovery. The ...interaction of microglia and astrocytes is known to be involved in glial scar formation after stroke; however, how microglia affect glial scar formation remains unclear.
Mice were treated daily with M2 microglial small extracellular vesicles through tail intravenous injections from day 1 to day 7 after middle cerebral artery occlusion. Glial scar, infarct volume, neurological score were detected after ischemia. microRNA and related protein were examined in peri-infarct areas of the brain following ischemia.
M2 microglial small extracellular vesicles reduced glial scar formation and promoted recovery after stroke and were enriched in miR-124. Furthermore, M2 microglial small extracellular vesicle treatment decreased the expression of the astrocyte proliferation gene signal transducer and activator of transcription 3, one of the targets of miR-124, and glial fibrillary acidic protein and inhibited astrocyte proliferation both
and
. It also decreased Notch 1 expression and increased Sox2 expression in astrocytes, which suggested that astrocytes had transformed into neuronal progenitor cells. Finally, miR-124 knockdown in M2 microglial small extracellular vesicles blocked their effects on glial scars and stroke recovery.
Our results showed, for the first time, that microglia regulate glial scar formation
small extracellular vesicles, indicating that M2 microglial small extracellular vesicles could represent a new therapeutic approach for stroke.
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