Background:
Although many strategies have been developed to modify the biological and biomechanical environment of the meniscal suture repair to improve the chances of healing, the failure rates ...remain high. Thus, new methods to promote meniscal regeneration and repair are needed.
Hypothesis:
Administration of magnesium (via a repair using magnesium stitches) might enhance recruitment and adherence of endogenous stem cells to the site of the lesion, thereby promoting in situ meniscal regeneration and chondroprotective functions.
Study Design:
Controlled laboratory study.
Methods:
Synovial fluid–derived mesenchymal stem cells (SMSCs) were identified and isolated from the knees of rabbits with a meniscal injury of 4 weeks’ duration. An in vitro analysis of adherence and chemotaxis of SMSCs was performed. For the in vivo assay, rabbits (n = 120) with meniscal lesions were divided into 3 groups: repair with high-purity magnesium stitches (Mg group), repair with absorbable sutures (Control group), and no repair (Blank group). Healing of the regenerated tissue and degeneration of the articular cartilage were evaluated by gross and histological analysis at postoperative weeks 1, 3, 6, and 12. The mechanical properties of the repaired meniscus were also analyzed (tensile testing).
Results:
In vitro, magnesium promoted the adhesion and migration of SMSCs, which were identified and increased in the knee joints with meniscal lesions. Moreover, fibrochondrogenesis of SMSCs was stimulated by magnesium. Compared with the other groups, the Mg group had enhanced tissue regeneration, lower cartilage degeneration, and retained mechanical strength at 12 weeks after meniscal repair.
Conclusion/Clinical Relevance:
Magnesium could be used for in situ meniscal repair due to the potential capacity of magnesium to recruit endogenous stem cells and promote synthesis of fibrocartilaginous matrix.
FLUX: A pipeline for MEG analysis Ferrante, Oscar; Liu, Ling; Minarik, Tamas ...
NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.),
June 2022, 2022-06-00, 20220601, 2022-06-01, Letnik:
253
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
•We propose a pipeline for MEG research making analysis steps and parameters explicit.•The FLUX pipeline is developed to be used with MNE Python and FieldTrip and it includes the associated ...documented code.•The pipeline includes the state-of-the-art suggestions for noise cancellation as well as source modelling including pre-whitening and handling of rank-deficient data.•To facilitate pre-registration and precise reporting we provide concrete suggestions on parameters and text to document.•An example data set allows for the pipeline to be used in educational settings.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) allows for quantifying modulations of human neuronal activity on a millisecond time scale while also making it possible to estimate the location of the underlying neuronal sources. The technique relies heavily on signal processing and source modelling. To this end, there are several open-source toolboxes developed by the community. While these toolboxes are powerful as they provide a wealth of options for analyses, the many options also pose a challenge for reproducible research as well as for researchers new to the field. The FLUX pipeline aims to make the analyses steps and setting explicit for standard analysis done in cognitive neuroscience. It focuses on quantifying and source localization of oscillatory brain activity, but it can also be used for event-related fields and multivariate pattern analysis. The pipeline is derived from the Cogitate consortium addressing a set of concrete cognitive neuroscience questions. Specifically, the pipeline including documented code is defined for MNE Python (a Python toolbox) and FieldTrip (a Matlab toolbox), and a data set on visuospatial attention is used to illustrate the steps. The scripts are provided as notebooks implemented in Jupyter Notebook and MATLAB Live Editor providing explanations, justifications and graphical outputs for the essential steps. Furthermore, we also provide suggestions for text and parameter settings to be used in registrations and publications to improve replicability and facilitate pre-registrations. The FLUX can be used for education either in self-studies or guided workshops. We expect that the FLUX pipeline will strengthen the field of MEG by providing some standardization on the basic analysis steps and by aligning approaches across toolboxes. Furthermore, we also aim to support new researchers entering the field by providing education and training. The FLUX pipeline is not meant to be static; it will evolve with the development of the toolboxes and with new insights. Furthermore, with the anticipated increase in MEG systems based on the Optically Pumped Magnetometers, the pipeline will also evolve to embrace these developments.
Thin-walled workpieces, such as aero-engine blisks and casings, are usually made of hard-to-cut materials. The wall thickness is very small and it is easy to deflect during milling process under ...dynamic cutting forces, leading to inaccurate workpiece dimensions and poor surface integrity. To understand the workpiece deflection behavior in a machining process, a new real-time nonintrusive method for deflection monitoring is presented, and a detailed analysis of workpiece deflection for different machining stages of the whole machining process is discussed. The thin-film polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensor is attached to the non-machining surface of the workpiece to copy the deflection excited by the dynamic cutting force. The relationship between the input deflection and the output voltage of the monitoring system is calibrated by testing. Monitored workpiece deflection results show that the workpiece experiences obvious vibration during the cutter entering the workpiece stage, and vibration during the machining process can be easily tracked by monitoring the deflection of the workpiece. During the cutter exiting the workpiece stage, the workpiece experiences forced vibration firstly, and free vibration exists until the amplitude reduces to zero after the cutter exits the workpiece. Machining results confirmed the suitability of the deflection monitoring system for machining thin-walled workpieces with the application of PVDF sensors.
In order to deal with external world efficiently, the brain constantly generates predictions about incoming sensory inputs, a process known as "predictive coding." Our recent studies, by employing ...visual priming paradigms in combination with a time-resolved behavioral measurement, reveal that perceptual predictions about simple features (e.g., left or right orientation) return to low sensory areas not continuously but recurrently in a theta-band (3-4Hz) rhythm. However, it remains unknown whether high-level object processing is also mediated by the oscillatory mechanism and if yes at which rhythm the mechanism works. In the present study, we employed a morph-face priming paradigm and the time-resolved behavioral measurements to examine the fine temporal dynamics of face identity priming performance. First, we reveal classical priming effects and a rhythmic trend within the prime-to-probe SOA of 600ms (Experiment 1). Next, we densely sampled the face priming behavioral performances within this SOA range (Experiment 2). Our results demonstrate a significant ~5Hz oscillatory component in the face priming behavioral performances, suggesting that a rhythmic process also coordinates the object-level prediction (i.e., face identity here). In comparison to our previous studies, the results suggest that the rhythm for the high-level object is faster than that for simple features. We propose that the seemingly distinctive priming rhythms might be attributable to that the object-level and simple feature-level predictions return to different stages along the visual pathway (e.g., FFA area for face priming and V1 area for simple feature priming). In summary, the findings support a general theta-band (3-6Hz) temporal organization mechanism in predictive coding, and that such wax-and-waning pattern in predictive coding may aid the brain to be more readily updated for new inputs.
The hypoxic tumor microenvironment was reported to be involved in different tumorigenesis mechanisms of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), such as invasion, immune evasion, chemoresistance, and ...metastasis. However, a systematic analysis of the prognostic prediction models based on multiple hypoxia-related genes (HRGs) has not been established in TNBC before in the literature. We aimed to develop and verify a hypoxia gene signature for prognostic prediction in TNBC patients.
The RNA sequencing profiles and clinical data of TNBC patients were generated from the TCGA, GSE103091, and METABRIC databases. The TNBC-specific differential HRGs (dHRGs) were obtained from differential expression analysis of hypoxia cultured TNBC cell lines compared with normoxic cell lines from the GEO database. Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) method was then performed on the TNBC patients using the dHRGs to explore a novel molecular classification on the basis of the dHRG expression patterns. Prognosis-associated dHRGs were identified by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis to establish the prognostic risk score model.
Based on the expressions of 205 dHRGs, all the patients in the TCGA training cohort were categorized into two subgroups, and the patients in Cluster 1 demonstrated worse OS than those in Cluster 2, which was validated in two independent cohorts. Additionally, the effects of somatic copy number variation (SCNV), somatic single nucleotide variation (SSNV), and methylation level on the expressions of dHRGs were also analyzed. Then, we performed Cox regression analyses to construct an HRG-based risk score model (3-gene dHRG signature), which could reliably discriminate the overall survival (OS) of high-risk and low-risk patients in TCGA, GSE103091, METABRIC, and BMCHH (qRT-PCR) cohorts.
In this study, a robust predictive signature was developed for patients with TNBC, indicating that the 3-gene dHRG model might serve as a potential prognostic biomarker for TNBC.
Background: The present strategy of administering human milk fortifier (HMF) in southwest China (swC) is mainly based on European and American populations’ guidelines. Additionally, some southwest ...Chinese preterm infants have been observed to develop feeding intolerance (FI) after administration of HMF. In order to develop adapted southwest Chinese guidelines for the administration of HMF to preterm infants and improve fortification strategies, a retrospective cohort study was performed to explore the association of the use of HMF and FI. Objective: To explore the association between HMF and FI in preterm infants and provide recommendations for its use in swC. Methods: This cohort study included 298 preterm infants from West China Second University Hospital. Maternal and infant clinical data were collected from electronic patient records. The infant cohort was divided into two groups based on the use/nonuse of HMF. The association between HMF and FI was evaluated using multivariate analysis. Nonlinear relationships and threshold effects were evaluated using generalized additive models and two-piecewise linear regression models. Results: The multivariate analysis confirmed that there is no significant association between HMF use and FI, but significant risk factors for FI include early HMF initiation (p = 0.02), full-strength HMF initiation (p = 0.04), and fast HMF supplementation rates (p = 0.004). Through smooth curve fitting and threshold effect analysis, we found that two inflection points, an initial concentration of HMF > 24 mg/mL and a HMF supplementation rate > 12.5 mg/mL/d, significantly increased FI risk. Conclusions: Routine HMF fortification can be safely used in preterm infants with gestational age < 32 wk or birth weight < 1500 g in swC, and we advise initiating fortification when enteral milk intake reaches 100 mL/kg/day, with an HMF concentration of 1:50 and if tolerated, increase to 1:25 more than 38 h. The recommended HMF supplementation rate differs from current guidelines and provides evidence for developing southwest Chinese guidelines. A prospective trial is needed in order to validate this proposal.
This paper presents a novel algorithm for detection and recognition of traffic signs in mobile laser scanning (MLS) data for intelligent transportation-related applications. The traffic sign ...detection task is accomplished based on 3-D point clouds by using bag-of-visual-phrases representations; whereas the recognition task is achieved based on 2-D images by using a Gaussian-Bernoulli deep Boltzmann machine-based hierarchical classifier. To exploit high-order feature encodings of feature regions, a deep Boltzmann machine-based feature encoder is constructed. For detecting traffic signs in 3-D point clouds, the proposed algorithm achieves an average recall, precision, quality, and F-score of 0.956, 0.946, 0.907, and 0.951, respectively, on the four selected MLS datasets. For on-image traffic sign recognition, a recognition accuracy of 97.54% is achieved by using the proposed hierarchical classifier. Comparative studies with the existing traffic sign detection and recognition methods demonstrate that our algorithm obtains promising, reliable, and high performance in both detecting traffic signs in 3-D point clouds and recognizing traffic signs on 2-D images.
For survey and maintenance of traffic signs, this paper presents a novel traffic sign occlusion detection method using 3-D point clouds and trajectory data acquired by a mobile laser scanning system. ...To produce a maintenance guide, our method aims to obtain the degree of occlusion by analyzing the spatial relationship between traffic signs, surroundings, and drivers on the road. First, a detection method considering both reflectance and geometric features is developed to capture traffic signs. Next, to simulate the driver's view, a trajectory-based method is proposed to determine driver's observation location and the corresponding observed traffic sign. Finally, to determine whether a traffic sign is in occlusion, a hidden point removal algorithm is adopted and carried out. Furthermore, we develop two indices to evaluate the degree of occlusion. The proposed method is tested using two point cloud data sets collected by an RIEGL VMX-450 system along a 23.68-km-long urban road. The obtained results illustrate the feasibility of the proposed occlusion detection method.
The estimation of groundwater released from aquitards is important for the groundwater resource management. In this study, a governing equation of drawdown variation within the aquitard, which ...undergoes nonlinear consolidation, was obtained based on the consolidation theory of Gibson et al. (1967, https://doi.org/10.1680/geot.1967.17.3.261). Then, analytical solutions of drawdown variations within an aquitard were derived for a single aquifer underlying an aquitard, as well as for the case when there are aquifers above and below an aquitard. Drawdown solutions were obtained for both the cases when there was a sudden hydraulic head decline in the confined aquifer(s). The characteristics of the groundwater dynamics and water balance in the aquitard have been analyzed with the analytical solution. A laboratory experiment was conducted to verify the analytical solution, and a type‐curve fitting method was presented to calculate the aquitard's hydraulic parameters. Our study revealed that the cumulative water released from the aquitard predicted by Gibson's theory (1967) is less than that obtained through Terzaghi's theory (1943). Groundwater released from the aquitard increases with increasing compression index, aquitard thickness, and drawdown of the adjacent aquifer, and with decreasing initial void ratio and initial effective stress. The time for the drawdown to reach steady state increases with increasing compression index, initial void ratio, and aquitard thickness, and with decreasing initial effective stress and hydraulic conductivity.
Key Points
New analytical solutions are derived that consider aquitard drainage undergoing nonlinear consolidation
Factors affecting the cumulative water released over a unit area from the aquitard are obtained
A type‐curve fitting method is proposed to calculate the hydraulic parameters of the aquitard undergoing nonlinear consolidation
Fe-driven biological nitrogen removal (FeBNR) has become one of the main technologies in water pollution remediation due to its economy, safety and mild reaction conditions. This paper systematically ...summarizes abiotic and biotic reactions in the Fe and N cycles, including nitrate/nitrite-dependent anaerobic Fe(II) oxidation (NDAFO) and anaerobic ammonium oxidation coupled with Fe(III) reduction (Feammox). The biodiversity of iron-oxidizing microorganisms for nitrate/nitrite reduction and iron-reducing microorganisms for ammonium oxidation are reviewed. The effects of environmental factors, e.g., pH, redox potential, Fe species, extracellular electron shuttles and natural organic matter, on the FeBNR reaction rate are analyzed. Current application advances in natural and artificial wastewater treatment are introduced with some typical experimental and application cases. Autotrophic FeBNR can treat low-C/N wastewater and greatly benefit the sustainable development of environmentally friendly biotechnologies for advanced nitrogen control.
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