Although remarkable progress has been made in salient object detection (SOD) in natural scene images (NSI), the SOD of optical remote sensing images (RSI) still faces significant challenges due to ...various spatial resolutions, cluttered backgrounds, and complex imaging conditions, mainly for two reasons: (1) accurate location of salient objects; and (2) subtle boundaries of salient objects. This paper explores the inherent properties of multi-level features to develop a novel semantic-guided attention refinement network (SARNet) for SOD of NSI. Specifically, the proposed semantic guided decoder (SGD) roughly but accurately locates the multi-scale object by aggregating multiple high-level features, and then this global semantic information guides the integration of subsequent features in a step-by-step feedback manner to make full use of deep multi-level features. Simultaneously, the proposed parallel attention fusion (PAF) module combines cross-level features and semantic-guided information to refine the object’s boundary and highlight the entire object area gradually. Finally, the proposed network architecture is trained through an end-to-end fully supervised model. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations on two public RSI datasets and additional NSI datasets across five metrics show that our SARNet is superior to 14 state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods without any post-processing.
Background and Purpose
Aspirin eugenol ester (AEE) is a new drug compound synthesized by combining aspirin with eugenol. It was reported to possess anti‐thrombotic, anti‐atherosclerotic, and ...anti‐oxidative effects. However, its molecular mechanism against oxidative injury is unclear. This study investigated how AEE affected the oxidative injury of vascular endothelial cells in vivo and in vitro.
Experimental Approach
A hamster model of atherosclerosis induced by a high fat diet (HFD) and an in vitro model of oxidative stress, H2O2‐induced apoptosis of HUVECs, were used to investigate the anti‐oxidative effects of AEE.
Key Results
AEE significantly reduced the stimulatory effect of HFD on malondialdehyde, the inhibitory effect of HFD on SOD activity and GSH/GSSG ratio, and the overexpression of inducible NOS (iNOS) in the aorta. In vitro, incubation of HUVECs with H2O2 led their apoptosis, dysfunctions of the NO systems (including increased iNOS activity, decreased endothelial NOS activity, and increased production of NO), an imbalance in calcium homeostasis and energy metabolism with an increase in intracellular free calcium and decrease in ATP, and a down‐regulation of Nrf2. In contrast, in the HUVECs pretreated with 1 μM AEE for 24 hr, the above adverse effects induced by H2O2 were significantly ameliorated. Moreover, the decrease in NO production and activity of iNOS induced by AEE was significantly attenuated in Nrf2‐inhibited HUVECs.
Conclusion and Implication
AEE protects vascular endothelial cells from oxidative injury by regulating NOS and Nrf2 signalling pathways. This suggests that AEE is a novel potential agent for the prevention of atherosclerosis.
Inferring the unknown properties of a place relies on both its observed attributes and the characteristics of the places to which it is connected. Because place characteristics are unstructured and ...the metrics for place connections can be diverse, it is challenging to incorporate them in a spatial prediction task where the results could be affected by how the neighborhoods are delineated and where the true relevance among places is hard to identify. To bridge the gap, we introduce graph convolutional neural networks (GCNNs) to model places as a graph, where each place is formalized as a node, place characteristics are encoded as node features, and place connections are represented as the edges. GCNNs capture the knowledge of the relevant geographic context by optimizing the weights among graph neural network layers. A case study was designed in the Beijing metropolitan area to predict the unobserved place characteristics based on the observed properties and specific place connections. A series of comparative experiments was conducted to highlight the influence of different place connection measures on the prediction accuracy and to evaluate the predictability across different characteristic dimensions. This research enlightens the promising future of GCNNs in formalizing places for geographic knowledge representation and reasoning.
Herein, we developed an ultrasensitive electrochemical biosensor for Pseudomonas aeruginosa detection based on a rolling circle amplification-assisted multipedal DNA walking strategy. The cascade ...signal amplification method can improve the sensitivity, showing promising applications in food security, environmental monitoring, and disease diagnosis.
Carbamyl phosphate synthase 1 （CPS1） is one of the rate-limiting enzymes in the urea cycle, which is mainly expressed in liver cells and intestinal epithelial cells. Under normal physiological ...conditions,CPS1 plays an important role in the removal of ammonia, a metabolic waste in the body. Studies have shown that CPS1 gene is intimately related to liver cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and other malignant tumors, and can affect cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration and other cell biological behaviors through a variety of signal transduction pathways or affecting pyrimidine synthesis, thus affecting the occurrence and development of tumors or clinical prognosis of patients. Therefore, analyzing the relationship between CPS1 gene and malignant tumor is of great significance for early diagnosis, treatment and prognosis evaluation of tumor. This article reviews the relationship between CPS1 gene and tumor.
Fibrotic tissue remodelling in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) will probably emerge as the leading cause of end-stage liver disease in the coming decades, but the ability to diagnose liver ...fibrosis in NAFLD patients noninvasively is limited. The abnormal expression of tRNA-derived small RNA (tsRNA) in plasma provides a novel idea for noninvasive diagnosis of various diseases, however, the relationship between tsRNAs and NAFLD is still unknown. Here, we took advantage of small RNA-Seq technology to profile tsRNAs in NAFLD patients and found the ubiquitous presence of hepatic tsRNAs secreted into circulating blood. Verification in a cohort of 114 patients with NAFLD and 42 patients without NAFLD revealed that three tsRNAs (tRF-Val-CAC-005, tiRNA-His-GTG-001, and tRF-Ala-CGC-006) were significantly elevated in the plasma of NAFLD patients, and the expression level are associated with NAFLD activity score (calculated from 0 to 8) and fibrosis stage (scored from 0 to 4). In mouse models, we further found that increased plasma levels of these three tsRNAs were positively correlated with the degree of liver fibrosis. Our study potentially identifies a new class of NAFLD biomarkers and reveal the possible existence of tsRNAs in the blood that can be used to predict fibrogenesis risk in patients diagnosed with NAFLD.
Developing highly active single-atom sites catalysts for electrochemical reduction of CO
2
is an effective and environmental-friendly strategy to promote carbon-neutral energy cycle and ameliorate ...global climate issues. Herein, we develop an atomically dispersed N, S co-coordinated bismuth atom sites catalyst (Bi-SAs-NS/C) via a cation and anion simultaneous diffusion strategy for electrocatalytic CO
2
reduction. In this strategy, the bonded Bi cation and S anion are simultaneously diffused into the nitrogen-doped carbon layer in the form of Bi
2
S
3
. Then Bi is captured by the abundant N-rich vacancies and S is bonded with carbons support at high temperature, formed the N, S co-coordinated Bi sites. Benefiting from the simultaneous diffusion of Bi and S, different electronegative N and S can be effectively co-coordinated with Bi, forming the uniform Bi-N
3
S/C sites. The synthesized Bi-SAs-NS/C exhibits a high selectivity towards CO with over 88% Faradaic efficiency in a wide potential range, and achieves a maximum FE
CO
of 98.3% at −0.8 V vs. RHE with a current density of 10.24 mA·cm
−2
, which can keep constant with negligible degradation in 24 h continuous electrolysis. Experimental results and theoretical calculations reveal that the significantly improved catalytic performance of Bi-SAs-NS/C than Bi-SAs-N/C is ascribed to the replacement of one coordinated-N with low electronegative S in Bi-N
4
C center, which can greatly reduce the energy barrier of the intermediate formation in rate-limiting step and increase the reaction kinetics. This work provides an effective strategy for rationally designing highly active single-atom sites catalysts for efficient electrocatalysis with optimized electronic structure.
Impairments of dendritic trees and spines have been found in many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), in which the deficits of melatonin signal pathway were reported. ...Melatonin receptor 2 (MT2) is widely expressed in the hippocampus and mediates the biological functions of melatonin. It is known that melatonin application is protective to dendritic abnormalities in AD. However, whether MT2 is involved in the neuroprotection and the underlying mechanisms are not clear. Here, we first found that MT2 is dramatically reduced in the dendritic compartment upon the insult of oligomer Aβ. MT2 activation prevented the Aβ‐induced disruption of dendritic complexity and spine. Importantly, activation of MT2 decreased cAMP, which in turn inactivated transcriptional factor CCAAT/enhancer‐binding protein α(C/EBPα) to suppress miR‐125b expression and elevate the expression of its target, GluN2A. In addition, miR‐125b mimics fully blocked the protective effects of MT2 activation on dendritic trees and spines. Finally, injection of a lentivirus containing a miR‐125b sponge into the hippocampus of APP/PS1 mice effectively rescued the dendritic abnormalities and learning/memory impairments. Our data demonstrated that the cAMP‐C/EBPα/miR‐125b/GluN2A signaling pathway is important to the neuroprotective effects of MT2 activation in Aβ‐induced dendritic injuries and learning/memory disorders, providing a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of AD synaptopathy.
The relationship between MTHFR (5, 10-methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase) gene polymorphisms and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) has been wildly studied, but the results are still conflicting. ...Therefore, the purpose of this meta and pooled analysis was to identify the role of the MTHFR SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism, rs1801133) in SLE in a large sample of subjects and to assess the risk of SLE.
Data were collected from EMBASE, PubMed and China National Knowledge Infrastructure from inception to August, 2019. Summary odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was applied to assess the association. Subgroup and sensitivity analysis were performed to assess the potential sources of heterogeneity of the pooled estimation.
We identified seven eligible studies involving 882 cases and 991 controls. MTHFR rs1801133 T carrier was significantly associated with increased risk of SLE when comparing to C allele ORs were 1.766 (1.014-3.075) for T carrier vs CC, P = .04. Furthermore, the results of the subgroup analysis by genotyping methods suggested that T allele significantly contributed to the risk of SLE for both by polymerase chain reaction-TaqMan (PCR-TaqMan) 10.111 (2.634-38.813) for TT vs CC, 3.467 (1.324-9.078) for CT vs CC and 3.744 (1.143-12.264) for TT vs C carrier. Also the results of the subgroup analysis by ethnicity suggested that T allele significantly contributed to the risk of SLE for Asians 9.679 (4.444-21.082) for TT vs CC, 5.866 (3.021-11.389) for T carrier vs CC and 8.052 (3.861-16.795) for TT vs C carrier.
This cumulative meta-analysis showed that the MTHFR SNP (rs1801133) contributed to susceptibility of SLE. However, more multicentre well-designed case-control studies and larger sample sizes are exceedingly required to validate our findings in the future.
The Chinese visceral adiposity index (CVAI) is a recently developed indicator of visceral adiposity. We investigated the predictive value of the CVAI for the development of dysglycemia (pre-diabetes ...and type 2 diabetes) and compared its predictive power with that of the Visceral adiposity index (VAI) and various anthropometric indices. This community-based study included 2,383 participants. We assessed the predictive power of adiposity indices by performing univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis and calculating the area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve according to their quartiles. Logistic regression analysis showed that individuals in higher CVAI quartiles at baseline were more likely to develop dysglycemia than those in lower CVAI quartiles. The area under the ROC curve for CVAI was significantly higher than that of other adiposity indices. In addition, among the various adiposity indices tested, the CVAI had the greatest Youden index for identifying dysglycemia in both genders. Our data demonstrate that the CVAI is a better predictor of type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes than the VAI, BMI, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio and waist-to-height ratio in Chinese adults.
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