Inflammation caused by the excessive secretion of inflammatory mediators in abnormally activated macrophages promotes many diseases along with oxidative stress. Loganin, a major iridoid glycoside ...isolated from Cornus officinalis, has recently been reported to exhibit anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, whereas the underlying mechanism has not yet been fully clarified. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of loganin on inflammation and oxidative stress in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated RAW264.7 macrophages. Our results indicated that loganin treatment markedly attenuated the LPS-mediated phagocytic activity and release of nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin E2, which was associated with decreased the expression of inducible NO synthase and cyclooxygenase-2. In addition, loganin suppressed the expression and their extracellular secretion of LPS-induced pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-1β. Furthermore, loganin abolished reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, and promoted the activation of nuclear factor-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) and the expression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in LPS-stimulated macrophages. However, zinc protoporphyrin, a selective HO-1 inhibitor, reversed the loganin-mediated suppression of pro-inflammatory cytokines in LPS-treated macrophages. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the upregulation of the Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway is concerned at least in the protective effect of loganin against LPS-mediated inflammatory and oxidative stress, and that loganin can be a potential functional agent to prevent inflammatory and oxidative damage.
Various convolutional neural network (CNN)-based approaches have been recently proposed to improve the performance of motor imagery based-brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). However, the classification ...accuracy of CNNs is compromised when target data are distorted. Specifically for motor imagery electroencephalogram (EEG), the measured signals, even from the same person, are not consistent and can be significantly distorted. To overcome these limitations, we propose to apply a capsule network (CapsNet) for learning various properties of EEG signals, thereby achieving better and more robust performance than previous CNN methods. The proposed CapsNet-based framework classifies the two-class motor imagery, namely right-hand and left-hand movements. The motor imagery EEG signals are first transformed into 2D images using the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) algorithm and then used for training and testing the capsule network. The performance of the proposed framework was evaluated on the BCI competition IV 2b dataset. The proposed framework outperformed state-of-the-art CNN-based methods and various conventional machine learning approaches. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach for classification of motor imagery EEG signals.
Conventional organic light‐emitting devices without an encapsulation layer are susceptible to degradation when exposed to air, so realization of air‐stable intrinsically‐stretchable display is a ...great challenge because the protection of the devices against penetration of moisture and oxygen is even more difficult under stretching. An air‐stable intrinsically‐stretchable display that is composed of an intrinsically‐stretchable electroluminescent device (SELD) integrated with a stretchable color‐conversion layer (SCCL) that contains perovskite nanocrystals (PeNCs) is proposed. PeNCs normally decay when exposed to air, but they become resistant to this decay when dispersed in a stretchable elastomer matrix; this change is a result of a compatibility between capping ligands and the elastomer matrix. Counterintuitively, the moisture can efficiently passivate surface defects of PeNCs, to yield significant increases in both photoluminescence intensity and lifetime. A display that can be stretched up to 180% is demonstrated; it is composed of an air‐stable SCCL that down‐converts the SELD’s blue emission and reemits it as green. The work elucidates the basis of moisture‐assisted surface passivation of PeNCs and provides a promising strategy to improve the quantum efficiency of PeNCs with the aid of moisture, which allows PeNCs to be applied for air‐stable stretchable displays.
An air‐stable stretchable display consisting of an intrinsically stretchable electroluminescent device and perovskite nanocrystal (PeNCs) stretchable color conversion layer is proposed. Surprisingly, the increase in photoluminescence intensity of PeNCs in the water is proved to be caused by the surface passivation of moisture, which overcomes the water instability of perovskite materials.
Abstract
Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) based on three-dimensional (3D) polycrystalline perovskites suffer from ion migration, which causes overshoot of luminance over time during ...operation and reduces its operational lifetime. Here, we demonstrate 3D/2D hybrid PeLEDs with extremely reduced luminance overshoot and 21 times longer operational lifetime than 3D PeLEDs. The luminance overshoot ratio of 3D/2D hybrid PeLED is only 7.4% which is greatly lower than that of 3D PeLED (150.4%). The 3D/2D hybrid perovskite is obtained by adding a small amount of neutral benzylamine to methylammonium lead bromide, which induces a proton transfer from methylammonium to benzylamine and enables crystallization of 2D perovskite without destroying the 3D phase. Benzylammonium in the perovskite lattice suppresses formation of deep-trap states and ion migration, thereby enhances both operating stability and luminous efficiency based on its retardation effect in reorientation.
Calf diarrhea is associated with enteric infections, and also provokes the overuse of antibiotics. Therefore, proper treatment of diarrhea represents a therapeutic challenge in livestock production ...and public health concerns. Here, we describe the ability of a fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), to ameliorate diarrhea and restore gut microbial composition in 57 growing calves. We conduct multi-omics analysis of 450 longitudinally collected fecal samples and find that FMT-induced alterations in the gut microbiota (an increase in the family Porphyromonadaceae) and metabolomic profile (a reduction in fecal amino acid concentration) strongly correlate with the remission of diarrhea. During the continuous follow-up study over 24 months, we find that FMT improves the growth performance of the cattle. This first FMT trial in ruminants suggest that FMT is capable of ameliorating diarrhea in pre-weaning calves with alterations in their gut microbiota, and that FMT may have a potential role in the improvement of growth performance.
Data on P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy after short-duration dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention are limited.
To determine whether P2Y12 inhibitor ...monotherapy after 3 months of DAPT is noninferior to 12 months of DAPT in patients undergoing PCI.
The SMART-CHOICE trial was an open-label, noninferiority, randomized study that was conducted in 33 hospitals in Korea and included 2993 patients undergoing PCI with drug-eluting stents. Enrollment began March 18, 2014, and follow-up was completed July 19, 2018.
Patients were randomly assigned to receive aspirin plus a P2Y12 inhibitor for 3 months and thereafter P2Y12 inhibitor alone (n = 1495) or DAPT for 12 months (n = 1498).
The primary end point was major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (a composite of all-cause death, myocardial infarction, or stroke) at 12 months after the index procedure. Secondary end points included the components of the primary end point and bleeding defined as Bleeding Academic Research Consortium type 2 to 5. The noninferiority margin was 1.8%.
Among 2993 patients who were randomized (mean age, 64 years; 795 women 26.6%), 2912 (97.3%) completed the trial. Adherence to the study protocol was 79.3% of the P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy group and 95.2% of the DAPT group. At 12 months, major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events occurred in 42 patients in the P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy group and in 36 patients in the DAPT group (2.9% vs 2.5%; difference, 0.4% 1-sided 95% CI, -∞% to 1.3%; P = .007 for noninferiority). There were no significant differences in all-cause death (21 1.4% vs 18 1.2%; hazard ratio HR, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.63-2.21; P = .61), myocardial infarction (11 0.8% vs 17 1.2%; HR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.31-1.40; P = .28), or stroke (11 0.8% vs 5 0.3%; HR, 2.23; 95% CI, 0.78-6.43; P = .14) between the 2 groups. The rate of bleeding was significantly lower in the P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy group than in the DAPT group (2.0% vs 3.4%; HR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.36-0.92; P = .02).
Among patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention, P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy after 3 months of DAPT compared with prolonged DAPT resulted in noninferior rates of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events. Because of limitations in the study population and adherence, further research is needed in other populations.
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02079194.
Peptide–nanoparticle conjugates (PNCs) have recently emerged as a versatile tool for biomedical applications. Synergism between the two promising classes of materials allows enhanced control over ...their biological behaviors, overcoming intrinsic limitations of the individual materials. Over the past decades, a myriad of PNCs has been developed for various applications, such as drug delivery, inhibition of pathogenic biomolecular interactions, molecular imaging, and liquid biopsy. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of existing technologies that have been recently developed in the broad field of PNCs, offering a guideline especially for investigators who are new to this field.
Despite the integral role of cephalometric analysis in orthodontics, there have been limitations regarding the reliability, accuracy, etc. of cephalometric landmarks tracing. Attempts on developing ...automatic plotting systems have continuously been made but they are insufficient for clinical applications due to low reliability of specific landmarks. In this study, we aimed to develop a novel framework for locating cephalometric landmarks with confidence regions using Bayesian Convolutional Neural Networks (BCNN).
We have trained our model with the dataset from the ISBI 2015 grand challenge in dental X-ray image analysis. The overall algorithm consisted of a region of interest (ROI) extraction of landmarks and landmarks estimation considering uncertainty. Prediction data produced from the Bayesian model has been dealt with post-processing methods with respect to pixel probabilities and uncertainties.
Our framework showed a mean landmark error (LE) of 1.53 ± 1.74 mm and achieved a successful detection rate (SDR) of 82.11, 92.28 and 95.95%, respectively, in the 2, 3, and 4 mm range. Especially, the most erroneous point in preceding studies, Gonion, reduced nearly halves of its error compared to the others. Additionally, our results demonstrated significantly higher performance in identifying anatomical abnormalities. By providing confidence regions (95%) that consider uncertainty, our framework can provide clinical convenience and contribute to making better decisions.
Our framework provides cephalometric landmarks and their confidence regions, which could be used as a computer-aided diagnosis tool and education.
A stretchable polyaniline nanofiber temperature sensor array with an active matrix consisting of single‐walled carbon nanotube thin‐film transistors is demonstrated. The integrated temperature sensor ...array gives mechanical stability under biaxial stretching of 30%, and the resultant spatial temperature mapping does not show any mechanical or electrical degradation.
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