PURPOSE OF REVIEWThe mechanisms leading to the development of premature atherosclerosis and vascular injury in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) remain to be fully elucidated. This is a ...comprehensive review of recent research developments related to the understanding of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in lupus.
RECENT FINDINGSSLE patients with lupus nephritis display significantly increased risk of myocardial infarction and CVD mortality than SLE patients without lupus nephritis. SLE disease-related parameters could be taken into consideration when calculating CVD risks. The type I interferon pathway is detrimental to the vasculature and may contribute to the development of insulin resistance. The level of low-density granulocytes, a distinct subset of proinflammatory neutrophils present in SLE, was independently associated with coronary plaque burden and endothelial dysfunction. Invariant natural killer T cells may promote an atheroprotective effect in SLE patients with asymptomatic atherosclerotic plaques. Oxidized lupus high-density lipoprotein promotes proinflammatory responses in macrophages.
SUMMARYRecent discoveries have further strengthened the critical role of SLE-related immune dysregulation and metabolic disturbances in promoting accelerated CVD. Understanding how these pathogenic factors promote vascular injury may provide better molecular candidates for therapeutic targeting, and ultimately to improve CVD outcomes.
•The largest publicly dataset of breast cancer pathological images is released.•Dataset diversity alleviates relatively low accuracy of benign images classification.•Richer multilevel features make ...the image-wise feature fusion more sufficient.•The short-term and long-term correlations between patches are both preserved.•Our hybrid network outperformed other methods in pathological image classification.
Even with the rapid advances in medical sciences, histopathological diagnosis is still considered the gold standard in diagnosing cancer. However, the complexity of histopathological images and the dramatic increase in workload make this task time consuming, and the results may be subject to pathologist subjectivity. Therefore, the development of automatic and precise histopathological image analysis methods is essential for the field. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid convolutional and recurrent deep neural network for breast cancer histopathological image classification. Based on the richer multilevel feature representation of the histopathological image patches, our method integrates the advantages of convolutional and recurrent neural networks, and the short-term and long-term spatial correlations between patches are preserved. The experimental results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art method with an obtained average accuracy of 91.3% for the 4-class classification task. We also release a dataset with 3771 breast cancer histopathological images to the scientific community that is now publicly available at http://ear.ict.ac.cn/?page_id=1616. Our dataset is not only the largest publicly released dataset for breast cancer histopathological image classification, but it covers as many different subclasses spanning different age groups as possible, thus providing enough data diversity to alleviate the problem of relatively low classification accuracy of benign images.
► The nanoparticles can reduce the supercooling degree of TiO2–BaCl2–H2O nanofluid PCMs. ► The TiO2–BaCl2–H2O nanofluids PCMs can be applied to industries low temperature energy storage. ► ...TiO2–BaCl2–H2O can be a candidate for low temperature PCM.
In this article, a new sort of nanofluid phase change materials (PCMs) is developed by suspending a small amount of TiO2 nanoparticles in saturated BaCl2 aqueous solution. Its thermal conductivities, supercooling degree, latent heat, specific heat, and rheological behaviors of the nanofluids PCMs were investigated. The experimental results show that with volume fraction is 1.130%, the thermal conductivities of nanofluids PCMs is enhanced by 12.76% at −5°C, the supercooling degree is reduced by 84.92%. The latent heat and specific heat are slightly decreased with suspending nanoparticles. The viscosity increased with the increasing volume fraction, which will have no effect on the cool storage system. The higher thermal performances of nanofluids PCMs indicate that they are suitable for the industries low temperature energy storage.
Superhydrophobic fabrics suggest tremendous potential in some emerging fields such as electronic skin, bioelectronic sensors and special clothing due to their excellent liquid repellency and ...self-cleaning properties. However, currently reported superhydrophobic materials are usually prepared using biologically toxic fluorinated compounds, which severely restricts their practical applications. Herein, we propose a two-step thiol-ene click reaction strategy to fabricate fluorine-free superhydrophobic cotton fibers (Fabric-SH-PB-SiO2). The 1,2-polybutadiene (1,2-PB) with flexible rubber molecular chains and low surface energy was coated by cotton fiber through thiol-ene click reaction. Subsequently, based on this reaction, the coated cotton fiber was used to establish chemical bonds with hydrophobic silica. The Fabric-SH-PB-SiO2 possesses a rich multi-level micro-nano structure that can form stable air layer on the surface of the fabric, which showed a high hydrophobic angle of 156° and exhibited some distinct advantages such as anti-fouling and self-cleaning characteristics, high buoyancy, and reduced drag. More remarkably, the Fabric-SH-PB-SiO2 could float on the water surface after carrying 34 times its weight. Compared with unmodified fabrics, the Fabric-SH-PB-SiO2 demonstrated a high drag reduction rate of up to 102 %, among the highest values for the reported hydrophobic materials. The strategy developed here provides insights towards fabricating high-buoyancy fluorine-free superhydrophobic cotton fibers.
Natural pigments, including carotenoids, flavonoids and anthocyanidins, determine the attractive color of fruits. These natural pigments are essential secondary metabolites, which play multiple roles ...in the whole life cycle of plants and are characterized by powerful antioxidant activity. After decades of research and development, multiple benefits of these natural pigments to human health have been explored and recognized and have shown bright application prospects in food, medicine, cosmetics and other industries. In this paper, the research progress of natural fruit pigments in recent years was reviewed, including the structural characteristics and classification, distribution in fruits and analysis methods, biosynthetic process, antioxidant capacity and mechanism, bioaccessibility and bioavailability, and health benefits. Overall, this paper summarizes the recent advances in antioxidant activity and other biological functions of natural fruit pigments, which aims to provide guidance for future research.
Abstract
Objectives
Neutrophilia is a hallmark of adult-onset Still’s disease (AOSD). This study aimed to investigate the role of a distinct subset of granulocytes, the low-density granulocytes ...(LDGs) in the pathogenesis of AOSD.
Methods
A total of 56 patients with AOSD were included in the study. LDGs were quantified by flow cytometry. Correlations between LDGs with disease activity and laboratory parameters were determined by Spearman’s nonparametric test. The cellular sources of the pro-inflammatory cytokines in AOSD were determined by intracellular staining.
Results
Active AOSD patients displayed significantly higher levels of LDGs compared with inactive AOSD patients and healthy controls (HCs) (P<0.001). Circulating LDGs were significantly correlated with CRP, ESR and the modified Pouchot score in patients with AOSD (P<0.01). The levels of LDGs were significantly decreased after the active AOSD patients achieved disease remission (P=0.0391). CD14+ monocytes constituted over 90% IL-1β+ peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and over 80% TNF-α+ PBMCs in both active AOSD patients and HCs, respectively. In active AOSD, CD14+ monocytes accounted for 24.6% to 75.0% of IL-6+ PBMCs, while LDGs comprised 22.8% to 72.2% of IL-6+ PBMCs. In contrast, over 90% IL-6+ PBMCs were CD14+ monocytes in HCs. A significant correlation was identified between the levels of LDGs and serum IL-6 levels in AOSD (P<0.0001).
Conclusion
Active AOSD is associated with elevated levels of a pro-inflammatory subset of neutrophils, the LDGs that produce IL-6. Our data highlight an unappreciated role of LDGs in the aberrant innate immune responses in AOSD.
Individuals with physical limb disabilities are often restricted to perform activities of daily life (ADLs). While efficacy of bilateral training has been demonstrated in improving physical ...coordination of human limbs, few robots have been developed in simulating people's ADLs integrated with task-specific force field control. This study sought to develop a bilateral robot for better task rendering of general ADLs (gADLs), where gADL-consistent workspace is achieved by setting linear motors in series, and haptic rendering of multiple bimanual tasks (coupled, uncoupled and semi-coupled) is enabled by regulating force fields between robotic handles. Experiments were conducted with human users, and our results present a viable method of a single robotic system in simulating multiple physically bimanual tasks. In future, the proposed robotic system is expected to be serving as a coordination training device, and its clinical efficacy will be also investigated.
Systemic rheumatic diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by profound immune dysregulation. Recent discoveries have led to a significant resurgence of interest in neutrophils ...as shapers of immune dysregulation and as triggers of organ damage in rheumatic diseases. Neutrophils contribute to the initiation, promotion, and perpetuation of immune dysregulation through a variety of mechanisms including synthesis of proinflammatory cytokines, direct tissue damage through degranulation and synthesis of reactive oxygen species, and the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). The identification of a subset of proinflammatory neutrophils, the low-density granulocytes (LDGs), which promote Th1 responses and cause endothelial dysfunction, has further strengthened the pathogenic role of neutrophils in various rheumatic diseases. The presence of autoantibodies targeting molecules commonly expressed in neutrophils suggests that neutrophils, particularly NETs, may be a source of autoantigens. An imbalance between NET formation and degradation, which leads to increased NET levels in the circulation and tissues, could enhance the exposure of the immune system to modified autoantigens, promote vascular disease, and increase tissue damage. This review will present an overview of recent advances in our understanding of how neutrophil dysregulation modulates the innate and adaptive immune responses in systemic rheumatic diseases and their putative contributions to pathogenicity. Understanding the potential pathogenic role of neutrophil dysregulation may provide better molecular candidates for therapeutic targeting, and ultimately promote improvements in the clinical outcomes in rheumatic diseases.
In this work, by employing halogen elements (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine) as dopant we demonstrate a unique strategy to enhance the output performance of ZnO-based flexible piezoelectric ...nanogenerators. For a halogen-doped ZnO nanowire film, dopants and doping concentration dependent lattice strain along the ZnO c-axis are established and confirmed by the EDS, XRD, and HRTEM analysis. Although lattice strain induced charge separation was theoretically proposed, it has not been experimentally investigated for wurtzite structured ZnO nanomaterials. Tuning the lattice strain from compressive to tensile state along the ZnO c-axis can be achieved by a substitution of halogen dopant from fluorine to other halogen elements due to the ionic size difference between dopants and oxygen. With its focus on a group of nonmetal element induced lattice strain in ZnO-based nanomaterials, this work paves the way for enhancing the performance of wurtzite-type piezoelectric semiconductor nanomaterials via lattice strain strategy which can be employed to construct piezoelectric nanodevices with higher efficiency in a cost-effective manner.
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