Both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria can release vesicle-like structures referred to as bacterial extracellular vesicles (BEVs), which contain various bioactive compounds. BEVs play ...important roles in the microbial community interactions and host-microbe interactions. Markedly, BEVs can be delivered to host cells, thus modulating the development and function of the innate immune system. To clarify the compositions and biological functions of BEVs, we need to collect these vesicles with high purity and bioactivity. Here we propose an isolation strategy based on a broad-spectrum antimicrobial epsilon-poly-L-lysine (ϵ-PL) to precipitate BEVs at a relatively low centrifugal speed (10,000 × g). Compared to the standard ultracentrifugation strategy, our method can enrich BEVs from large volumes of media inexpensively and rapidly. The precipitated BEVs can be recovered by adjusting the pH and ionic strength of the media, followed by an ultrafiltration step to remove ϵ-PL and achieve buffer exchange. The morphology, size, and protein composition of the ϵ-PL-precipitated BEVs are comparable to those purified by ultracentrifugation. Moreover, ϵ-PL-precipitated BEVs retained the biological activity as observed by confocal microscopy studies. And THP-1 cells stimulated with these BEVs undergo marked reprogramming of their transcriptome. KEGG analysis of the differentially expressed genes showed that the signal pathways of cellular inflammatory response were significantly activated. Taken together, we provide a new method to rapidly enrich BEVs with high purity and bioactivity, which has the potential to be applied to BEVs-related immune response studies.
Citrus is an important cash crop in the world, and huanglongbing (HLB) is a destructive disease in the citrus industry. To efficiently detect the degree of HLB stress on large-scale orchard citrus ...trees, an UAV (Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle) hyperspectral remote sensing tool is used for HLB rapid detection. A Cubert S185 (Airborne Hyperspectral camera) was mounted on the UAV of DJI Matrice 600 Pro to capture the hyperspectral remote sensing images; and a ASD Handheld2 (spectrometer) was used to verify the effectiveness of the remote sensing data. Correlation-proven UAV hyperspectral remote sensing data were used, and canopy spectral samples based on single pixels were extracted for processing and analysis. The feature bands extracted by the genetic algorithm (GA) of the improved selection operator were 468 nm, 504 nm, 512 nm, 516 nm, 528 nm, 536 nm, 632 nm, 680 nm, 688 nm, and 852 nm for the HLB detection. The proposed HLB detection methods (based on the multi-feature fusion of vegetation index) and canopy spectral feature parameters constructed (based on the feature band in stacked autoencoder (SAE) neural network) have a classification accuracy of 99.33% and a loss of 0.0783 for the training set, and a classification accuracy of 99.72% and a loss of 0.0585 for the validation set. This performance is higher than that based on the full-band AutoEncoder neural network. The field-testing results show that the model could effectively detect the HLB plants and output the distribution of the disease in the canopy, thus judging the plant disease level in a large area efficiently.
The literatures have demonstrated that Teach-back method is an effective communication tool to understand health education, especially in the elderly patients. However, there is limited research of ...Teach-back method in preoperative education for outpatient surgical patients. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of the Teach-back method on preoperative anxiety and surgical cooperation in elderly patients undergoing outpatient ophthalmology surgery.
One hundred sixteen elderly patients who underwent outpatient ophthalmology surgery were selected as the research objects. They were divided into the observation group (58 cases) and the control group (58 cases). The Teach-back preoperative education was adopted in the observation group and the standard preoperative education method was adopted in the control group. The degree of anxiety, surgical cooperation, and awareness of health knowledge were compared between the 2 groups, and the variations of blood pressure and heart rate, as well as the highest values of intraoperative blood pressure and heart rate before and after method, were recorded and compared.
The preoperative systolic blood pressure in the observation group was significantly lower than that in the control group. The intraoperative (the highest value) heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure in the observation group were lower than those in the control group, and the differences were statistically significant (P < .05). After intervention, the anxiety score and information demand score of the observation group were lower than those of the control group, and the differences were statistically significant (P < .05). The degree of surgery cooperation and awareness of perioperative health knowledge in the observation group were all higher than those in the control group; the differences were statistically significant (P < .05).
The Teach-back method could relieve the preoperative anxiety of the patients, improve the quality of patients surgery cooperation, and facilitate the awareness of health knowledge. Moreover, it could effectively improve the intraoperative stress response of the elderly patients and reduce the large fluctuations of blood pressure and heart rate.
Advanced deep-learning-based video inpainting can fill a specified video region with visually plausible contents, usually leaving imperceptible traces. As inpainting can be used for malicious video ...manipulations, it has led to potential privacy and security issues. Therefore, it is necessary to detect and locate the video regions subjected to deep inpainting. This paper addresses this problem by exploiting the spatial and temporal traces left by inpainting. Firstly, the inpainting traces are enhanced by intra-frame and inter-frame residuals. In particular, we guide the extraction of inter-frame residual with optical-flow based frame alignment, which can better reveal the inpainting traces. Then, a dual-stream network, acting as the encoder, is designed to learn discriminative features from frame residuals. Finally, bidirectional convolutional LSTMs are embedded in the decoder network to produce pixel-wise predictions of inpainted regions for each frame. The proposed method is evaluated with tampered videos created by two state-of-the-art deep video inpainting algorithms. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively localize the inpainted regions, outperforming existing methods.
The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution of higher-order aberrations (HOAs) of the anterior cornea of eyes with cataract in a senior Chinese population and their correlations with ...age.
Four hundred ten Chinese patients (male/female: 196/214; age: 67.9 ± 10.0 years) with cataract were categorized into 5 groups according to their age. The HOAs in the central 6-mm zone of the cornea were measured with an iTrace wavefront analyzer. The correlations between age and total HOA, coma aberration, trefoil aberration, and spherical aberration were assessed using Spearman analysis. The differences in total HOA, coma aberration, trefoil aberration, spherical aberration among various age groups were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis H test.
The corneal HOA exhibited a nonnormal distribution. A weak correlation was found between age and total HOA, coma aberration (Z3), trefoil aberration (Z3) (P < 0.001 for all). No correlation was found between age and spherical aberration (Z4). Differences in the root mean square of the total HOA, Z3, and Z3 were found among various age groups (P < 0.05). No difference was found in the root mean square of Z4, spherical diopter, corneal curvature, corneal astigmatism, corneal effective refractive power, corneal asphericity Q value and corneal central power across the groups.
The distribution of anterior corneal HOAs of eyes with cataract in a senior Chinese population is of the nonnormal type. The total HOA, Z3, and Z3 are correlated to age, unlike Z4 of the anterior cornea.
This study aimed to investigate the distribution of total high-order aberrations (HOAs) Z3±1, Z40, and Z3±3 of anterior cornea and their correlations to astigmatism. In addition, the relationship ...between different axes of astigmatism and Z3−1 or Z31 was analyzed. The HOAs in the central 6-mm zone of the cornea were measured with an iTrace wavefront analyzer in 556 cataractous eyes at the Tianjin Eye Hospital in China. Simulated keratoscope readings (Sim k) were also measured with the analyzer. The corneal total HOAs Z3±1, Z40 and Z3±3 exhibited a non-normal distribution. Significant correlations were found between the topographic-simulated keratometric power (ΔSim k) with the axis at 180°±5° and absolute value of Z3−1 (P=0.008), the ΔSim k with the axis at 90°±5° and absolute value of Z31 (P<0.001), and the ΔSim k and total HOAs (P<0.001), Z3±1 (P<0.001), and Z3±3 (P<0.001). No significant correlation was found between ΔSim k and Z40 (P=0.404). In conclusion, corneal astigmatism with the axis near the horizontal position was mainly associated with the value of Z3−1. Corneal astigmatism with the axis near the vertical position was mainly related to the value of Z31. HOAs except Z40 are correlated with astigmatism.
•The ICEEWT-IGWO-GRU approach improves the performance of streamflow prediction.•Deep learning method performs best to predict monthly streamflow.•IGWO modifies the target function to enhance ...robustness of the model.
Accurate and reliable mid- to long-term streamflow prediction is essential for water resources management. However, streamflow series exhibits strong non-stationary and non-linear; thus the traditional single model may fail to capture the characteristic of hydrological series and hard to maintain the robustness of the model. To overcome this problem, the application of empirical wavelet transform combined with improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (ICEEWT) is firstly to eliminate the redundant noise and decompose original series into several components as inputs. Secondly, gated recurrent unit (GRU) is employed to deep learn the relationship between historical streamflow series and those of the future. Finally, balancing underfitting and overfitting the improved grey wolf optimizer (IGWO) is adopted with the hybrid model to identify the approximate parameter combination. The case study is conducted by monthly streamflow data at Shangjingyou station and Fenhe reservoir station in the upper reaches of Fenhe River. In comparison with parallel experiments using extreme learning machine (ELM) and least squares support vector machine (LSSVM), the validation results demonstrate that the GRU model can exhibit satisfactory performance in monthly streamflow forecasting. Moreover, the standard GRU model is further improved by IGWO, which consistently remains the performance of in-sample and out-sample. The proposed model ICEEWT-IGWO-GRU is superior to the single GRU model average reducing MAE and RMSE by 50% and 52% for two stations, which indicates its superiority with a more robust prediction.
Currently carbon nanofibers are attracting myriad interest for supercapacitors due to their high specific capacitance and low cost. However, their poor electrical conductivity and microporous ...structure restrict their wide applications. Here, flexible micro-/mesoporous carbon nanofibers embedded with ordered carbon (MCNF) were prepared by coaxial electrospinning and subsequent corrosion. Field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction spectroscopy and nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherm were used to characterize their morphology, structure and specific surface area. Electrochemical tests of cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy show that the specific capacitance of MCNF can reach 272 F g−1 at 1 A g−1, much higher than that of carbon nanofibers (216 F g−1) which is obtained by single axial electrospinning. The flexible symmetrical supercapacitor based on MCNF electrodes exhibits an excellent electrochemical performance, with a capacitance retention of 96.7% after 3000 charge-discharge cycles and a high energy density of 11.1 Wh kg−1 when the power density is 0.25 kW kg−1. More interestingly, its specific capacitance almost does not change even when it is bent to 135°. The results show that MCNF is a promising electrode material for flexible supercapacitors.
To delve into the underlying mechanism of Salidroside (Sal) on the improvement of cognitive function in Parkinson’s Disease (PD).
The experimental mice were divided into Control group, Model group ...injected with 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP), and Model+Sal (low concentration, high concentration) group. Mouse hippocampal tissues were extracted for RNA sequencing to obtain the core pathway and core gene. Mouse plasma was prepared and analyzed by LC-MS to obtain differential metabolites. In vitro experiments were verified by immunofluorescence and lentiviral transduction.
ELISA signaled that Sal facilitated the reduction of neuronal damage and inflammatory reaction in mice. MPTP_Sal_Low and MPTP_Sal_High groups had high levels of glial cell derived neurotrophie factor (GDNF) expression. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in control group, MPTP group and MPTP_Sal_High group were identified by transcriptomic, which were classified to the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway, and the core gene Braf was obtained. Metabolomics manifested that the differential metabolites involved DL-tyrosine, adenosine, phosphoenolpyruvate, and L-tryptophan. In vitro experiments verified that Sal treatment inhibited the up-regulation of p-p38, p-c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), and p-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) expression, and growth of neuronal protrusions. The OE-Braf group showed a significant up-regulation of the GDNF expression, a decrease in the expression of p-p38, p-JNK, and p-ERK, and a significant growth of neuronal protrusions.
Sal may exert its effects in PD through the Braf-mediated MAPK signaling pathway, which can increase GDNF expression and promote neuronal protrusion growth for the protection of neurological function and the improvement of cognitive function.
Display omitted
•Salidroside was favorable to ameliorate neuronal damage, improve cognitive function.•Salidroside was beneficial to reduce inflammatory reaction.•Salidroside increased the expression of GDNF and BDNF in hippocampus.•Salidroside promote the growth of neuronal protrusion.•Salidroside may improve PD by inhibiting the Braf-mediated MAPK signaling pathway.
An approximate method is presented for determining the non-stationary response of multi-degree-of-freedom non-linear systems subjected to combined periodic and stochastic excitation. Specifically, ...first, decomposing the system response as a combination of a periodic and of a zero-mean stochastic component, transfers the equation of motion into two sets of equivalent coupled differential sub-equations, governing the deterministic and the stochastic component, respectively. Next, the derived stochastic sub-equations under non-stationary stochastic excitation are cast into equivalent linear equations by resorting to the non-stationary statistical linearization method. Further, the related Lyapunov differential equations governing the second moment of the linear stochastic response, and the deterministic sub-equations governing the periodic response, are solved simultaneously using standard numerical algorithms. Pertinent Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates the applicability and accuracy of the proposed semi-analytical method.
•Decomposing the total response gives coupled stochastic/deterministic sub-systems.•Applying statistical linearization to stochastic sub-system yields Lyapunov equation.•Considering simultaneously the derived two sub-systems yields the total response.
PDF
