In this paper, spoof surface plasmon polariton (SPP) is integrated in the closed substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) structure and a novel hybrid SIW-SPP guided-wave transmission line (TL) is ...proposed. In this design, the surface wave mode of SPP can be excited and transmitted inside the closed structure of SIW. The dispersion property of the proposed SIW-SPP hybrid structure indicates that it has both slow wave feature of SPP and fast-wave feature of SIW. With the low-pass feature of SSP and the high-pass feature of SIW, the proposed hybrid SIW-SPP TL becomes a bandpass filter (BPF) naturally. The concept of integrating SPP and SIW opens a new way to develop novel wideband BPFs. A broadband filter is fabricated to verify the theory and the measured passband is from 16.1 to 25.4 GHz with a relative bandwidth of 43.8%. The filter bandwidth can be easily controlled by tuning parameters, thus the proposed structure is attractive and useful for the design of various BPFs.
Suicide is a major public health concern worldwide. This study aimed to predict the suicidal behavior of Chinese university students by studying psychological measures such as hopelessness, ...orientation to happiness, meaning in life, depression, anxiety, stress, and coping styles. In November 2016, a stratified-clustered-random sampling approach was utilized to select subjects from two large public medical-related universities in Shandong province, China. This sample consisted of 2,074 undergraduate students (706 males, 1,368 females; mean age = 19.79±1.39 years). The students' major risk factors for suicide were depression, anxiety, stress, and hopelessness, and the students' minor risk factors included orientation to happiness and coping styles (including self-distraction, self-blame and substance use). Notably, the presence of meaning in life had a positive effect on preventing suicide and acted as a protective factor, which suggests that it is important to identify risk factors as well as protective factors relevant to the target population group in order to increase the effectiveness of counseling and suicide prevention programs.
Summary
Aims
Baicalin (BAI), a flavonoid compound isolated from the root of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, has been established to have potent anti‐inflammation and neuroprotective properties; ...however, its effects during Alzheimer's disease (AD) treatment have not been well studied. This study aimed to investigate the effects of BAI pretreatment on cognitive impairment and neuronal protection against microglia‐induced neuroinflammation and to explore the mechanisms underlying its anti‐inflammation effects.
Methods
To determine whether BAI plays a positive role in ameliorating the memory and cognition deficits in APP (amyloid beta precursor protein)/PS1 (presenilin‐1) mice, behavioral experiments were conducted. We assessed the effects of BAI on microglial activation, the production of proinflammatory cytokines, and neuroinflammation‐mediated neuron apoptosis in vivo and in vitro using Western blot, RT‐PCR, ELISA, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence. Finally, to elucidate the anti‐inflammation mechanisms underlying the effects of BAI, the protein expression of NLRP3 inflammasomes and the expression of proteins involved in the TLR4/NF‐κB signaling pathway were measured using Western blot and immunofluorescence.
Results
The results indicated that BAI treatment attenuated spatial memory dysfunction in APP/PS1 mice, as assessed by the passive avoidance test and the Morris water maze test. Additionally, BAI administration effectively decreased the number of activated microglia and proinflammatory cytokines, as well as neuroinflammation‐mediated neuron apoptosis, in APP/PS1 mice and LPS (lipopolysaccharides)/Aβ‐stimulated BV2 microglial cells. Lastly, the molecular mechanistic study revealed that BAI inhibited microglia‐induced neuroinflammation via suppression of the activation of NLRP3 inflammasomes and the TLR4/NF‐κB signaling pathway.
Conclusion
Overall, the results of the present study indicated that BAI is a promising neuroprotective compound for use in the prevention and treatment of microglia‐mediated neuroinflammation during AD progression.
The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays a prominent role in cancer metastasis. Isoliquiritigenin (ISL), one of the flavonoids in licorice, has been shown to exhibit anticancer activities ...in many cancer types through various mechanisms. However, it is unknown whether ISL impacts the EMT process. Here, we show that ISL is able to suppress mesenchymal features of ovarian cancer SKOV3 and OVCAR5 cells, evidenced by an apparent morphological change from a mesenchymal to an epithelial phenotype and reduced levels of mesenchymal markers accompanied by the gain of E-cadherin expression. The suppression of EMT is also supported by the observed decrease in cell migration and in vitro invasion upon ISL treatment. Moreover, we show that ISL effectively blocks the intraperitoneal xenograft development of the SKOV3 cell line and prolonged the survival of tumor-bearing mice. These data suggest that ISL inhibits intraperitoneal ovary tumor development through the suppression of EMT, indicating that ISL may be an effective therapeutic agent against ovarian cancer.
In this communication, we propose a high scanning rate leaky-wave antenna (LWA) based on a slow-wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) structure. The slow-wave effect is introduced by etching ...periodical slots on the top surface of SIW. The LWA radiation is subsequently realized by introducing sinusoidal modulation to the slots profile. Such a structure significantly improves the scanning rate of LWA due to the small group velocity at the slow-wave region. Simulation and measured results indicate that the proposed LWA scans a wide angle in a narrow bandwidth near the cutoff frequency of surface plasmon polariton. Within the frequency band 13.5-13.9 GHz (3% relative bandwidth), the measured scanning angle is from 2° to 37° with the measured gain all above 9.2 dBi.
Conjugated polymers with high thermoelectric performance enable the fabrication of low‐cost, large‐area, low‐toxicity, and highly flexible thermoelectric devices. However, compared to their p‐type ...counterparts, n‐type polymer thermoelectric materials show much lower performance, which is largely due to inefficient doping and a much lower conductivity. Herein, it is reported that the development of a donor–acceptor (D–A) polymer with enhanced n‐doping efficiency through donor engineering of the polymer backbone. Both a high n‐type electrical conductivity of 1.30 S cm−1 and an excellent power factor (PF) of 4.65 µW mK−2 are obtained, which are the highest reported values among D–A polymers. The results of multiple characterization techniques indicate that electron‐withdrawing modification of the donor units enhances the electron affinity of the polymer and changes the polymer packing orientation, leading to substantially improved miscibility and n‐doping efficiency. Unlike previous studies in which improving the polymer‐dopant miscibility typically resulted in lower mobilities, the strategy maintains the mobility of the polymer. All these factors lead to prominent enhancement of three orders magnitude in both the electrical conductivity and the PF compared to those of the non‐engineered polymer. The results demonstrate that proper donor engineering can enhance the n‐doping efficiency, electrical conductivity, and thermoelectric performance of D–A copolymers.
1000‐fold enhancements in n‐type electrical conductivity and power factor of a donor–acceptor copolymer are obtained by donor engineering. Donor engineering enhances electron affinity and n‐doping efficiency, prevents phase separation, lowers hopping barrier and keeps mobility unaffected. A record electrical conductivity of 1.30 S cm−1 and a power factor of 4.65 μW mK−2 are achieved in this work.
Boron–nitrogen units were incorporated into thiophene‐fused polycyclic aromatic compounds. Organic field‐effect transistors based on these azaborine compounds were fabricated, demonstrating a novel ...engineering concept of organic semiconductors and providing opportunities of a broad class of BN‐containing compounds for application in future organic electronic devices (see picture; μFET=hole mobility).
•The AdaBoost algorithm is adopted to predict the compressive strength of concrete.•1030 sets of data is collected to train the model and reaches an accuracy of 98%.•Different algorithms are compared ...to show the superior of the proposed model.•Key factors and in the AdaBoost and influence of input variables are investigated.
In this paper, an intelligent approach based on the machine learning technique is proposed for predicting the compressive strength of concrete. This approach employs the adaptive boosting algorithm to construct a strong learner by integrating several weak learners, which can find the mapping between the input data and output data. The weak learner whose predicting error is small will have a larger weight in the entire system, thus the overall accuracy of the strong learner will be enhanced. A total of 1030 sets of concrete compressive strength tests is collected to train and test the learners, in which the concrete mixture components (e.g., coarse/fine aggregates, cement, water, additive, etc.) and the curing time are set as the input data while the compressive strength value is set as the output data. The proposed approach is validated through a 10-fold cross validation method, and reaches an average accuracy of over 95% in sense of determination coefficient. In addition, a new dataset of 103 samples for concrete compressive strength is also adopted to demonstrate the generalization power of the proposed mode. The proposed approach is also compared to some other individual machine learning techniques that are already applied in this field, e.g., artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM), and shows superior advantages over these methods. Finally, the influence of some key factors in the adaptive boosting approach is also investigated, e.g., the amount of training data, the choice of weak learner, and the influence of the sensitivity and number of the input parameters. It is shown that using 80% of the total data for training can obtain acceptable prediction results and decision tree is the best choice for the weak learner in the boosting framework. Also, the importances of different input variables are obtained based on the sensitivity analysis results.
Shenqi Fuzheng injection (SQFZ) combined with chemotherapy can sensitize tumour cells. However, the mechanisms underlying SQFZ's effects remain unknown. In human breast cancer cell lines and M2 ...macrophages, we showed that SQFZ was a significantly potent agent of sensitization.
The human breast cancer cell line, MDA-MB-231/DDP, and the human acute leukaemia mononuclear cell line, THP-1, were used. MDA-MB-231/DDP breast cancer xenografts were established to monitor tumour growth. Resistance-associated proteins were examined by western blotting. Levels of cytokines and chemokines were detected by ELISA. Cell viability was measured using the MTT assay. Apoptosis was detected by flow cytometric analysis.
SQFZ significantly enhanced the capability of cisplatin to reduce tumour mass. SQFZ and cisplatin decreased the expression of CD206 by 1.89-fold and increased that of CD86 by 1.76-fold as compared to cisplatin alone. The levels of PGE2, IL-6, and CCL1 decreased significantly, and the activation of p-PI3K and the expressions of P-gp and ABCG2 were also inhibited by SQFZ in combination with cisplatin treatment in vivo. The survival following cisplatin administration of 60 μM and 120 μM reduced significantly in the presence of SQFZ in MDA-MB-231/DDP and M2 co-cultured cells. IGF-1, a PI3K activator, combined with SQFZ weakened the effects of SQFZ-induced apoptosis from 28.7% to 10.5%. The effects of IGF-1 on increasing the expressions of P-gp, ABCG2, and Bcl-2, and decreasing that of Bax were reversed by SQFZ.
Our findings provide evidence that SQFZ is a potential therapeutic drug for cancer therapy.
In this paper, we propose a novel slow-wave half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) combined with spoof surface plasmon polariton (SPP) structure. In this design, subwavelength corrugated ...grooves are etched on the up metal layer of HMSIW to support an SPP mode. The dispersion and transmission characteristics of the proposed hybrid HMSIW-SPP structure are analyzed and compared with the classic HMSIW. To experimentally validate this design, a prototype is fabricated and measured. A slow-wave effect is clearly observed in the proposed hybrid transmission line, and its wavelength is reduced by over 50% without sacrificing its transmission performance. This structure features a simple architecture and excellent slow-wave effect.
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