Aim
Spinal cord injury (SCI) involves multiple pathological processes. Ferroptosis has been shown to play a critical role in the injury process. We wanted to explore whether zinc can inhibit ...ferroptosis, reduce inflammation, and then exert a neuroprotective effect.
Methods
The Alice method was used to establish a spinal cord injury model. The Basso Mouse Scale (BMS), Nissl staining, hematoxylin‐eosin staining, and immunofluorescence analysis were used to investigate the protective effect of zinc on neurons on spinal cord neurons and the recovery of motor function. The regulation of the nuclear factor E2/heme oxygenase‐1 (NRF2/HO‐1) pathway was assessed, the levels of essential ferroptosis proteins were measured, and the changes in mitochondria were confirmed by transmission electron microscopy and 5,5′,6,6′‐tetrachloro‐1,1′,3,3′‐tetraethyl‐imidacarbocyanine iodide (JC‐1) staining. In vitro experiments using VSC4.1 (spinal cord anterior horn motor neuroma cell line), 4‐hydroxynonenal (4HNE), reactive oxygen species (ROS), superoxide dismutase (SOD), malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione (GSH), lipid peroxides, and finally the levels of inflammatory factors were detected to assess the effect of zinc.
Results
Zinc reversed behavioral and structural changes after SCI. Zinc increased the expression of NRF2/HO‐1, thereby increasing the content of glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), SOD, and GHS and reducing the levels of lipid peroxides, MDA, and ROS. Zinc also rescued injured mitochondria and effectively reduced spinal cord injury and the levels of inflammatory factors, and the NRF2 inhibitor Brusatol reversed the effects of zinc.
Conclusion
Zinc promoted the degradation of oxidative stress products and lipid peroxides through the NRF2/HO‐1 and GPX4 signaling pathways to inhibit ferroptosis in neurons.
Mechanisms underlying the repair of spinal cord injury through inhibiting ferroptosis with zinc.
Disorder and non-Hermiticity dramatically impact the topological and localization properties of a quantum system, giving rise to intriguing quantum states of matter. The rich interplay of disorder, ...non-Hermiticity, and topology is epitomized by the recently proposed non-Hermitian topological Anderson insulator that hosts a plethora of exotic phenomena. Here we experimentally simulate the non-Hermitian topological Anderson insulator using disordered photonic quantum walks, and characterize its localization and topological properties. In particular, we focus on the competition between Anderson localization induced by random disorder, and the non-Hermitian skin effect under which all eigenstates are squeezed toward the boundary. The two distinct localization mechanisms prompt a non-monotonous change in profile of the Lyapunov exponent, which we experimentally reveal through dynamic observables. We then probe the disorder-induced topological phase transitions, and demonstrate their biorthogonal criticality. Our experiment further advances the frontier of synthetic topology in open systems.
Facial expressions, especially spontaneous micro-expressions, as an intuitive reflection of human emotions, have come through much concern along with rapid advances in computer vision recently. ...Micro-expressions are small in amplitude and short in duration and often appear together with macro-expressions, making micro-expression spotting in long videos a challenging task. In this article, we propose intersection over minimum labelling method combined with a Lite General Network and MagFace CNN (LGNMNet) model to predict the possibility of video frames belonging to a micro-expression interval, which balances easy and difficult samples to improve the learning effect of training process. Experimental results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in spotting micro-expressions in long videos of both the CAS(ME)
2
and SAMM-LV datasets (with F1-scores of 0.2474 and 0.2555, respectively). Additionally, a new pair-merge way of combining nearby detected apex frames to construct micro-expression intervals in post-processing stage has been devised and analysed, providing a feasible solution for the task of macro- and micro-spotting in long videos.
Admission control of hospitalization considering patient gender is an interesting issue in the study of hospital bed management. This paper addresses the decision on the admission of patients who ...should immediately be admitted into a same‐gender room or rejected. Note that a patient is admitted depending on different conditions, such as his/her health condition, gender, the availability of beds, the length of stay, and the reward of hospitalization. Focusing on the key factor, patient gender, this paper sets up an infinite‐horizon total discounted reward Markov decision process model with the purpose to maximize the total expected reward for the hospital, which leads to an optimal dynamic policy. Then, the structural properties of the optimal policy are analyzed. Additionally, a value iteration algorithm is proposed to find the optimal policy. Finally, some numerical experiments are used to discuss how the optimal dynamic policy depends on some key parameters of the system. Furthermore, the performance of the optimal policy is discussed though comparison with the three other policies by means of simulating different scenarios.
Background and Purpose
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common metabolic and endocrine disease affecting women of reproductive age. Due to its complex aetiology, there is no currently effective ...cure for PCOS. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity is significantly decreased in PCOS patients, and BAT activation has beneficial effects in animal models of PCOS. Here, we investigated the effect of ginsenoside compound K (CK) in an animal model of PCOS and its mechanism of BAT activation.
Experimental Approach
Primary brown adipocytes, Db/Db mice and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)‐induced PCOS rats were used. The core body temperature, oxygen consumption, energy metabolism related gene and protein expression were assessed to identify the effect of CK on overall energy metabolism. Oestrous cycle, serum sex hormone, ovarian steroidogenic enzyme gene expression and ovarian morphology were also evaluated following CK treatment.
Key Results
Our results indicated that CK treatment could significantly protect against body weight gain in Db/Db mice via BAT activation. Furthermore, we found that CK treatment could normalize hyperandrogenism, oestrous cyclicity, normalize steroidogenic enzyme expression and decrease the number of cystic follicles in PCOS rats. Interestingly, as a potential endocrine intermediate, C‐X‐C motif chemokine ligand‐14 protein (CXCL14) was significantly up‐regulated following CK administration. In addition, exogenous CXC14 supplementation was found to reverse DHEA‐induced PCOS in a phenotypically similar manner to CK treatment.
Conclusion and Implications
In summary, CK treatment significantly activates BAT, increases CXCL14 expression and ameliorates PCOS. These findings suggest that CK might be a potential drug candidate for PCOS treatment.
This letter presents an endfire fan-beam radiation antenna by utilizing a gradient refractive index metamaterial lens. The lens includes one core and two impedance matching layers, which are both ...based on the proposed metamaterial unit cells with a large refractive index variation range. An incident wave is excited from the antenna source and propagates to the lateral side of the lens. Two parallel plates set for the TE 1 mode condition are utilized such that E -plane radiating beam can be controlled. To validate our proposed design, a prototype working at 10 GHz is fabricated and measured. Measured results are in good agreement with the simulation. The height and thickness of the metamaterial lens are about 0.44 λ 0 and 0.36 λ 0 , where λ 0 is the wavelength of the center frequency in free space. The measured E - and H -planes 3 dB beamwidths are 25° and 82° at the center frequency, respectively. The measured peak gain of the antenna is about 11.1 dBi, which implies a 5.4 dB gain enhancement compared with initial radiation source. Furthermore, this lens offers a high aperture efficiency of 72.4%.
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is an Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated malignancy with a complex tumor ecosystem. How the interplay between tumor cells, EBV, and the microenvironment contributes to ...NPC progression and immune evasion remains unclear. Here we performed single-cell RNA sequencing on ~104,000 cells from 19 EBV
NPCs and 7 nonmalignant nasopharyngeal biopsies, simultaneously profiling the transcriptomes of malignant cells, EBV, stromal and immune cells. Overall, we identified global upregulation of interferon responses in the multicellular ecosystem of NPC. Notably, an epithelial-immune dual feature of malignant cells was discovered and associated with poor prognosis. Functional experiments revealed that tumor cells with this dual feature exhibited a higher capacity for tumorigenesis. Further characterization of the cellular components of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and their interactions with tumor cells revealed that the dual feature of tumor cells was positively correlated with the expression of co-inhibitory receptors on CD8
tumor-infiltrating T cells. In addition, tumor cells with the dual feature were found to repress IFN-γ production by T cells, demonstrating their capacity for immune suppression. Our results provide new insights into the multicellular ecosystem of NPC and offer important clinical implications.
A large amount of heavy metal-contained wastewater (HMW) was discharged during Chinese industry development, which has caused many environmental problems. This study reviewed discharge, management ...and treatment of HMW in China through collecting and analyzing data from China's official statistical yearbook, standards, technical specifications, government reports, case reports, and research paper. Results showed that industry wastewater discharged by an amount of about 221.6 × 108 t (in 2012), where emission of heavy metals including Pb, Hg, Cd, Cr(VI), T-Cr was around 388.4 t (in 2012). Heavy metal emission with wastewater in east China and central south China was observed to be graver than that in other areas. However, control of heavy metals in Pb and Cd in northwest China was more difficult compared with other areas. In terms of management, China's government has issued many wastewater discharge standards, strict management policies for controlling HMW discharge in recent years, resulting in reduced HMW discharge. In addition, main HMW treatment technology in China was chemical precipitation, and other technologies such as membrane separation, adsorption, ion exchange, electrochemical and biological methods were also occasionally applied. In the future, chemical industries will be concentrated in northwest China, therefore control of HMW discharge should be paid much more attention in those areas. In addition, more effective and environment-friendly heavy metal removal and regeneration technologies should be developed, such as biomaterials adsorbent.
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•A large number of heavy metals were discharged with wastewater (388.4 t in 2012).•Control of heavy metals was more difficult in northwest China than other areas.•Draconian measures reduced heavy metal-contained wastewater discharge in China.•Chemical precipitation undertook heavy metal removal from wastewater in China.
This study aimed to establish an effective prognostic nomogram with or without plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA (EBV DNA) for nondisseminated nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).
The nomogram was based on a ...retrospective study of 4630 patients who underwent radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center from 2007 to 2009. The predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of the nomogram were determined by a concordance index (C-index) and calibration curve and were compared with EBV DNA and the current staging system. The results were validated using bootstrap resampling and a prospective cohort study on 1819 patients consecutively enrolled from 2011 to 2012 at the same institution. All statistical tests were two-sided.
Independent factors derived from multivariable analysis of the primary cohort to predict recurrence were age, sex, body mass index (BMI), T stage, N stage, plasma EBV DNA, pretreatment high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and hemoglobin level (HGB), which were all assembled into the nomogram with (nomogram B) or without EBV DNA (nomogram A). The calibration curve for the probability of recurrence showed that the nomogram-based predictions were in good agreement with actual observations. The C-index of nomogram B for predicting recurrence was 0.728 (P < .001), which was statistically higher than the C-index values for nomogram A (0.690), EBV DNA (0.680), and the current staging system (0.609). The C-index of nomogram B (0.730) and nomogram A (0.681) remained higher for predicting recurrence among patients treated with intensity-modulated radiotherapy (P < .001). The results were confirmed in the validation cohort.
The proposed nomogram with or without plasma EBV DNA resulted in more accurate prognostic prediction for NPC patients.
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