To compare the merits and drawbacks of three approaches for establishing a rabbit model of nonobstructive coronary microcirculatory disease, namely, open thoracic subtotal ligation of coronary ...arteries, ultrasound-guided cardiac microsphere injection, and sodium laurate injection. New Zealand rabbits were allocated to four groups: a normal group (Blank group), an Open-chest group (Open-chest), a microsphere group (Echo-M), and a sodium laurate group (Echo-SL), each comprising 10 rabbits. The rabbits were sacrificed 24 h after the procedures, and their echocardiography, stress myocardial contrast echocardiography, pathology, and surgical times were compared. The results demonstrated varying degrees of reduced cardiac function in all three experimental groups, the Open-chest group exhibiting the most significant decline. The myocardial filling in the affected areas was visually analyzed by myocardial contrast echocardiography, revealing sparse filling at rest but more after stress. Quantitative analysis of perfusion parameters (β, A, MBF) in the affected myocardium showed reduced values, the Open-chest group having the most severe reductions. No differences were observed in stress myocardial acoustic imaging parameters between the Echo-M and Echo-SL groups. Among the pathological presentations, the Open-chest model predominantly exhibited localized ischemia, while the Echo-M model was characterized by mechanical physical embolism, and the Echo-SL model displayed in situ thrombosis as the primary pathological feature. Inflammatory responses and collagen deposition were observed in all groups, with the severity ranking of Open-chest > Echo-SL > Echo-M. The ultrasound-guided intracardiac injection method used in this experiment outperformed open-chest surgery in terms of procedural efficiency, invasiveness, and maneuverability. This study not only optimizes established cardiac injection techniques but also offers valuable evidence to support clinical investigations through a comparison of various modeling methods.
•A thorough and in-depth assessment of various models, emphasizing their distinctive features and suitability.•This study proposes an ultrasound-guided cardiac injection method that introduces a new concept of animal model.•The comparison of the established methods lays the foundation for mechanism exploration and diagnostic research of CMVD.
A scheme is presented to achieve quantum nonreciprocity by manipulating the statistical properties of the photons in a composite device consisting of a double-cavity optomechanical system with a ...spinning resonator and nonreciprocal coupling. It can be found that the photon blockade can emerge when the spinning device is driven from one side but not from the other side with the same driving amplitude. Under the weak driving limit, to achieve the perfect nonreciprocal photon blockade, two sets of optimal nonreciprocal coupling strengths are analytically obtained under different optical detunings based on the destructive quantum interference between different paths, which are in good agreement with the results obtained from numerical simulations. Moreover, the photon blockade exhibits thoroughly different behaviors as the nonreciprocal coupling is altered, and the perfect nonreciprocal photon blockade can be achieved even with weak nonlinear and linear couplings, which breaks the orthodox perception.
Sepsis is a lethal syndrome with a high incidence and a weighty economy burden. The pathophysiology of sepsis includes inflammation, immune dysfunction, and dysfunction of coagulation, while ...sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy (
), defined as a global but reversible dysfunction of both sides of the heart induced by sepsis, plays a significant role in all of the aspects above in the pathogenesis of sepsis. The complex pathogenesis of
involves a combination of dysregulation of inflammatory mediators, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, disorder of calcium regulation, autonomic nervous system dysregulation, and endothelial dysfunction. The treatments for
include the signal pathway intervention, Chinese traditional medicine, and other specific therapy. Here, we reviewed the latest literatures on the mechanisms and treatments of
and hope to provide further insights to researchers and create a new road for the therapy of sepsis.
Panxian ham, a traditional Chinese dry-cured ham, is protected by national geographical indication. Similar to other fermented foods, the microbial population of dry-cured ham is pivotal to taste and ...flavor formation. This study aimed to establish the relationship between microorganisms and metabolites during the spontaneous fermentation of Panxian ham. Multivariate analysis based on metabolomics data revealed that continuous metabolic changes occurred during the entire fermentation process, with the most significant changes occurring in the initial stage of ripening. Thirty-one significantly different metabolites (SDMs) were identified as discriminant factor, and pathway analysis suggested that these metabolites were involved in 30 pathways, including alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism; glycine, serine, and threonine metabolism; and arginine and proline metabolism. Microbial community analysis using the Illumina MiSeq platform indicated that the bacterial community was more complex than the fungal community, and their succession regulation differed during processing. At the genus level, 11 bacteria and five fungi were identified as core microbes, of which
was the dominant bacteria and
and
were the dominant fungi. Further, statistical redundancy analysis (RDA) indicated that
,
, and
promoted the production of amino and fatty acids;
and
were associated with sugar metabolism, and
,
, and
were closely related with organic acids. These findings provide fundamental knowledge regarding the metabolically active microorganisms in Panxian ham, helping industrial processors to develop effective strategies for standardizing quality parameters.
•A pore-scale model combining the LBM and EBM for ice melting is established.•The effects of design parameters of GDL on the melting process are investigated.•The GDL melting positions have a ...significant effect on the melting process.•The increase of Rayleigh number has a promoting effect on the melting process.•The increase of Stefan number can promote the melting process significantly.
A 2D lattice Boltzmann model combining the enthalpy-based method (EBM) is established to investigate the ice melting process in the gas diffusion layer (GDL). The effects of GDL melting position, porosity, Rayleigh number and Stefan number on the melting rate, ending time of melting, temperature distribution and solid-liquid interface distribution are investigated. It is found that the GDL melting positions have a significant effect on the melting process, the melting rate in the In-plane position increases fastest. When the porosity is large, the effect of the carbon fiber layer number on the melting process is more significant than that of the carbon fiber length. In the In-plane position, the increase of natural convection intensity has a promoting effect on the ice melting process. The increasing of Stefan number can promote the melting process significantly when the Stefan number is not high. And reducing the GDL porosity can effectively promote the melting process.
Client-side data deduplication enables cloud storage services to reduce storage space and bandwidth consumption, resulting in reduced operating cost and a high level of user satisfaction. However, ...duplicate checks (i.e., the corresponding message exchange) generate a side channel, exposing the file existence status to attackers. In particular, the binary response from a duplicate check reveals file existence information. This can be exploited to launch further attacks, such as learning sensitive file content and establishing a covert channel. As current solutions provide only weaker privacy or rely on unreasonable assumptions, we propose random response (RARE) to achieve stronger privacy. The underlying principle is that the uploading user simultaneously sends a duplication request for two chunks. The cloud receiving the request returns a carefully designed randomized duplication response to preserve the deduplication gain and minimize privacy leakage. By proposing multiple chunk uploading and chunk rearrangement strategies, we optimize the design of RARE to significantly reduce the communication burden without compromising privacy. We also study the impact of different implementations of multiple chunk uploading on the deduplication gain, further reducing communication cost. The analytical results confirm that formal privacy is ensured, whereas experiment results demonstrate that RARE preserves both privacy and the deduplication benefit.
Among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), some have features of both asthma and COPD-a condition categorized as asthma-COPD overlap (ACO). Our aim was to determine whether ...asthma- or COPD-related microRNAs (miRNAs) play a role in the pathogenesis of ACO.
A total of 22 healthy subjects and 27 patients with ACO were enrolled. We selected 6 miRNAs that were found to correlate with COPD and asthma. The expression of miRNAs and target genes was analyzed using quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Cell apoptosis and intracellular reactive oxygen species production were evaluated using flow cytometry. In vitro human monocytic THP-1 cells and primary normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells under stimuli with cigarette smoke extract (CSE) or ovalbumin (OVA) allergen or both were used to verify the clinical findings.
We identified the upregulation of miR-125b-5p in patients with ACO and in THP-1 cells stimulated with CSE plus OVA allergen. We selected 16 genes related to the miR-125b-5p pathway and found that IL6R and TRIAP1 were both downregulated in patients with ACO and in THP-1 cells stimulated with CSE plus OVA. The percentage of late apoptotic cells increased in the THP-1 cell culture model when stimulated with CSE plus OVA, and the effect was reversed by transfection with miR-125b-5p small interfering RNA (siRNA). The percentage of reactive oxygen species-producing cells increased in the NHBE cell culture model when stimulated with CSE plus OVA, and the effect was reversed by transfection with miR-125b-5p siRNA. In NHBE cells, siRNA transfection reversed the upregulation of STAT3 under CSE+OVA stimulation.
Our study revealed that upregulation of miR-125b-5p in patients with ACO mediated late apoptosis in THP-1 cells and oxidative stress in NHBE cells via targeting IL6R and TRIAP1. STAT3 expression was also regulated by miR-125b-5p.
Liver metastasis has been found to affect outcome in prostate cancer and colorectal cancer, but its role in lung cancer is unclear. The current study aimed to evaluate the impact of de novo liver ...metastasis (DLM) on stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) outcomes and to examine whether tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) reverse poor prognosis in patients with DLM and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutant NSCLC. Among 1392 newly diagnosed NSCLC patients, 490 patients with stage IV disease treated between November 2010 and March 2014 at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital were included. Patients were divided into two groups according to DLM status. There were 75 patients in the DLM group and 415 patients in the non-DLM group. The DLM group included more patients with bone metastasis, fewer patients with a lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) > 3.1, and fewer patients with pleural metastasis. In the DLM group, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status 3-4 and LMR ≦3.1 were associated with poor outcome. In patients without DLM, overall survival (OS) was longer in patients with EGFR-mutant NSCLC than in those without (20.2 vs. 7.3 months, p < 0.001). Among DLM patients, OS was similar between the EGFR-mutant and wild-type EGFR tumor subgroups (11.9 vs. 7.7 months, p = 0.155). We found that DLM was a significant poor prognostic factor in the EGFR-mutant patients treated with EGFR-TKIs, whereas DLM did not affect the prognosis of EGFR-wild-type patients.
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