Bacterial keratitis (BK) is a principal factor contributing to corneal ulcers and ocular complications, and has become a significant killer of global vision health. Traditional antibiotic therapy has ...unsatisfactory therapeutic effect due to short residence time and low utilization rate of drug, and the long-term abuse of antibiotics can easily incur the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria. Furthermore, antibiotics are not effective in addressing the excessive inflammatory response caused by infection. Here, we developed a terbium-doped zinc oxide constructed dual-light-responsive nitric oxide (NO)-releasing nanoparticle (ZT@P@B) and modified it on the surface of contact lenses (CL-ZT@P@B) to boost its bioavailability.
In vitro
and
in vivo
experimental results verified that ZT@P@B could simultaneously respond to green light (GL) and 808 nm near-infrared (NIR) without obvious damage to the eyes, releasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) and NO, which could effectively kill bacteria (including drug-resistant strains) and reduce inflammatory response. The platform provides a promising strategy for the prevention and treatment of BK.
Today, earphones have almost been owned by everyone. However, wearing earphones for a long time can cause two serious problems: (1) irreversible damage to hearing; (2) rapid proliferation of bacteria ...in the ear canal. Herein, an earphone modification strategy is developed for the first time, to reduce hearing loss and inhibit bacteria simultaneously. This earphone is equipped with a high purity yellow light (YL) light-emitting diode chip developed by our university. Then, the surface of the earphone is loaded with porous zinc oxide and silver nanoparticle composite material (ZnO-Ag) that can respond to the YL. Under the excitation of YL, the porous ZnO-Ag can release reactive oxygen species with strong antibacterial activity. More importantly, we discover that YL can reduce the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-3, the secretion of inflammatory factors, and apoptosis in the cochlea, thereby effectively reduce hearing loss.
Glass-reinforced aluminum laminate (GLARE) is a new class of fiber metal laminates (FMLs) which has the advantages such as high tensile strength, outstanding fatigue, impact resistance, and excellent ...corrosion properties. GLARE has been extensively applied in advanced aerospace and automobile industries. However, the deformation behavior of the glass fiber during forming must be studied to the benefits of the good-quality part we form. In this research, we focus on the effect of fiber layer orientation on the GLARE laminate formability in stamp forming process. Experimental and numerical analysis of stamping a hemisphere part in different fiber orientation is investigated. The results indicate that unidirectional and multi-directional fiber in the middle layer make a significant effect on the thinning and also surface forming quality of the three layer sheet. Furthermore, the stress-strain distribution of the aluminum alloy and the unique anisotropic property of the fiber layer exhibit that fiber layer orientation can also affect the forming depths as well as the fracture modes of the laminate. According to the obtained results, it is revealed that multi-directional fiber layers are a good alternative compared to the unidirectional fibers especially when a better formability is the purpose.
Fiber-metal laminates (FMLs) such as Kevlar reinforced aluminum laminate (ARALL), Carbon reinforced aluminum laminate (CARALL), and Glass reinforced aluminum laminate (GLARE) offer great potential ...for weight reduction applications in automobile and aerospace construction. In order to investigate the feasibility for utilizing such materials in the form of laminates, sheet hydroforming technology are studied under the condition of uniform blank holder force for three-layered aluminum and aluminum-composite laminates using orthogonal carbon and Kevlar as well as glass fiber in the middle. The experimental results validate the finite element results and they exhibited that the forming limit of glass fiber in the middle is the highest among the studied materials, while carbon fiber material performs the worst. Furthermore, the crack modes are different for the three kinds of fiber materials investigated in the research. This study provides fundamental guidance for the selection of multi-layer sheet materials in the future manufacturing field.
Heavy metals (HMs) are recalcitrant and persistent in the environment, posing long-term detrimental effects to ecosystems and public health. Adsorption is an available method to sequester HMs from ...environmental media. Expensive tetrathiomolybdate (MoS42-) salts have been widely used to modify materials, showing favorable performance in removing HMs. Instead of using such a costly reagent, applying the W and Mo separation process to load thiomolybdate (MoOxS4-x2-) on a strong basic resin D201 as the scavenger of Cr(VI), Cu(II), and Pb(II) was proposed in this study. Assisted by the orthogonal experiment, the optimal separation conditions, i.e., pH = 7, ns/nMo = 8, Mo0 = 2 g/L, and solid/liquid ratio of 30, with desirable removal rates for Cr(VI) and Cu(II) were achieved. Compared with the control group (MoS42--loaded D021, MSD201), the resin (WMD201) collected from the optimized W and Mo separation conditions showed a comparable capacity and similar mechanism for the adsorption of the three HMs. The adsorption kinetics and isotherm results of metals on WMD201 were well fitted by the pseudo-second order and Langmuir modes, respectively. Increasing the initial pH from 1 to 4 resulted in a significant rise for the uptake of Cr(VI) and Pb(II). Different from Cu(II) and Pb(II), which were sequestered mainly by forming complexes with MoOxS4-x2- and/or S2-, the removal of Cr(VI) was partially attributed to ion exchange and reduction. These results suggest that using W and Mo separation processes to functionalize materials as the efficient scavengers of HMs is feasible.
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•MoS42--modified resin was achieved through W and Mo separation process.•Removal performance of HMs by the resin was affected by W/Mo separation condition.•Cr(VI), Cu(II), and Pb(II) were efficiently removed by the MoS42--loaded resin.•Ion exchange, reduction, and complexation accounted for the scavenging of HMs.
Synthesis of ergodic, stationary visual patterns is widely applicable in texturing, shape modeling, and digital content creation. The wide applicability of this technique thus requires the pattern ...synthesis approaches to be scalable, diverse, and authentic. In this paper, we propose an exemplar-based visual pattern synthesis framework that aims to model the inner statistics of visual patterns and generate new, versatile patterns that meet the aforementioned requirements. To this end, we propose an implicit network based on generative adversarial network (GAN) and periodic encoding, thus calling our network the Implicit Periodic Field Network (IPFN). The design of IPFN ensures scalability: the implicit formulation directly maps the input coordinates to features, which enables synthesis of arbitrary size and is computationally efficient for 3D shape synthesis. Learning with a periodic encoding scheme encourages diversity: the network is constrained to model the inner statistics of the exemplar based on spatial latent codes in a periodic field. Coupled with continuously designed GAN training procedures, IPFN is shown to synthesize tileable patterns with smooth transitions and local variations. Last but not least, thanks to both the adversarial training technique and the encoded Fourier features, IPFN learns high-frequency functions that produce authentic, high-quality results. To validate our approach, we present novel experimental results on various applications in 2D texture synthesis and 3D shape synthesis.
High-fidelity face digitization solutions often combine multi-view stereo (MVS) techniques for 3D reconstruction and a non-rigid registration step to establish dense correspondence across identities ...and expressions. A common problem is the need for manual clean-up after the MVS step, as 3D scans are typically affected by noise and outliers and contain hairy surface regions that need to be cleaned up by artists. Furthermore, mesh registration tends to fail for extreme facial expressions. Most learning-based methods use an underlying 3D morphable model (3DMM) to ensure robustness, but this limits the output accuracy for extreme facial expressions. In addition, the global bottleneck of regression architectures cannot produce meshes that tightly fit the ground truth surfaces. We propose ToFu, Topological consistent Face from multi-view, a geometry inference framework that can produce topologically consistent meshes across facial identities and expressions using a volumetric representation instead of an explicit underlying 3DMM. Our novel progressive mesh generation network embeds the topological structure of the face in a feature volume, sampled from geometry-aware local features. A coarse-to-fine architecture facilitates dense and accurate facial mesh predictions in a consistent mesh topology. ToFu further captures displacement maps for pore-level geometric details and facilitates high-quality rendering in the form of albedo and specular reflectance maps. These high-quality assets are readily usable by production studios for avatar creation, animation and physically-based skin rendering. We demonstrate state-of-the-art geometric and correspondence accuracy, while only taking 0.385 seconds to compute a mesh with 10K vertices, which is three orders of magnitude faster than traditional techniques. The code and the model are available for research purposes at https://tianyeli.github.io/tofu.
Upregulated expression of P-selectin on activated endothelium and platelets significantly contributes to the initiation and progression of vaso-occlusive crises (VOC), a major cause of morbidity in ...sickle cell disease (SCD). Crizanlizumab (ADAKVEO®), a humanized monoclonal antibody against P-selectin, primarily inhibits the interaction between leukocytes and P-selectin, and has been shown to decrease the frequency of VOCs in clinical trials. However, the lack of reliable in vitro assays that objectively measure leukocyte adhesion to P-selectin remains a critical barrier to evaluating and improving the therapeutic treatment in SCD. Here, we present a standardized microfluidic BioChip whole blood adhesion assay to assess leukocyte adhesion to P-selectin under physiologic flow conditions. Our results demonstrated heterogeneous adhesion by leukocytes to immobilized P-selectin, and dose-dependent inhibition of this adhesion following pre-exposure to Crizanlizumab. Importantly, treatment with Crizanlizumab following adhesion to P-selectin promoted detachment of rolling, but not of firmly adherent leukocytes. Taken together, our results suggest that the microfluidic BioChip system is a promising in vitro assay with which to screen patients, monitor treatment response, and guide current and emerging anti-adhesive therapies in SCD.
Neutrophil recruitment to the inflamed endothelium is a multistep process and is of utmost importance in the development of the hallmark vaso-occlusive crisis in sickle cell disease (SCD). However, ...there lacks a standardized, clinically feasible approach for assessing neutrophil recruitment to the inflamed endothelium for individualized risk stratification and therapeutic response prediction in SCD. Here, we describe a microfluidic device functionalized with E-selectin, a critical endothelial receptor for the neutrophil recruitment process, as a strategy to assess neutrophil binding under physiologic flow in normoxia and clinically relevant hypoxia in SCD. We show that hypoxia significantly enhances neutrophil binding to E-selectin and promotes the formation of neutrophil-platelet aggregates. Moreover, we identified two distinct patient populations: a more severe clinical phenotype with elevated lactate dehydrogenase levels and absolute reticulocyte counts but lowered fetal hemoglobin levels associated with constitutively less neutrophil binding to E-selectin. Mechanistically, we demonstrate that the extent of neutrophil activation correlates with membrane L-selectin shedding, resulting in the loss of ligand interaction sites with E-selectin. We also show that inhibition of E-selectin significantly reduces leukocyte recruitment to activated endothelial cells. Our findings add mechanistic insight into neutrophil-endothelial interactions under hypoxia and provide a clinically feasible means for assessing neutrophil binding to E-selectin using clinical whole blood samples, which can help guide therapeutic decisions for SCD patients.
•An E-selectin functionalized microfluidic device partially mimicking the inflamed endothelium is presented.•In sickle cell disease (SCD), neutrophil binding to E-selectin is mediated by L-selectin and inversely correlates with hemolysis.•Neutrophil binding to E-selectin can be used to stratify clinical phenotypes and predict therapeutic response in SCD.
BACKGROUND The retropancreatic fusion fascia is recognized as the anatomical landmark during retropancreatic mobilization. However, its role in D2 total gastrectomy for proximal advanced gastric ...cancer (PAGC) remains unexplored. This study aimed to develop the retropancreatic fusion fascia-oriented ex vivo approach for splenic hilar lymphadenectomy (RP-SL) to avoid difficulty in using the total laparoscopic approach (TL-SL). MATERIAL AND METHODS The data for patients with PAGC who underwent D2 total gastrectomy were retrieved from our clinical database and electronic medical records (December 2016 to December 2018), with a 1:1 match ratio for balance of the 2 groups. RESULTS In sum, 84 matched patients were included in the study. There were 2360 retrieved lymph nodes (LNs), with an average of 28.10. Sixteen patients were confirmed with positive splenic hilar lymphadenectomy, and the mean harvested lymph nodes (LNs) were significantly increased in the RP-SL group compared to the TL-SL group (3.07 vs. 2.29, P<0.001), decreased operative time (193.21 min vs. 247.74 min, P<0.001), and less blood loss (96.90 mL vs. 185.24 mL, P=0.001) in the RP-SL group. Postoperative hospital stay (6.55 days vs. 7.26 days), rate of morbidity (9.50% vs. 11.91%), and overall costs (¥65255.64 vs. ¥64419.91) were comparable between the groups (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS The landmark at the conjunction between the superior mesenteric vessels and the inferior pancreatic margin made it feasible to identify the retropancreatic areolar. The RP-SL approach was safe and efficient for splenic hilar lymphadenectomy.
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