Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a subpopulation of cancer cells with functions similar to those of normal stem cells. Although few in number, they are capable of self-renewal, unlimited proliferation, ...and multi-directional differentiation potential. In addition, CSCs have the ability to escape immune surveillance. Thus, they play an important role in the occurrence and development of tumors, and they are closely related to tumor invasion, metastasis, drug resistance, and recurrence after treatment. Therefore, specific targeting of CSCs may improve the efficiency of cancer therapy. A series of corresponding promising therapeutic strategies based on CSC targeting, such as the targeting of CSC niche, CSC signaling pathways, and CSC mitochondria, are currently under development. Given the rapid progression in this field and nanotechnology, drug delivery systems (DDSs) for CSC targeting are increasingly being developed. In this review, we summarize the advances in CSC-targeted DDSs. Furthermore, we highlight the latest developmental trends through the main line of CSC occurrence and development process; some considerations about the rationale, advantages, and limitations of different DDSs for CSC-targeted therapies were discussed.
Emerging CSCs-targeted drug delivery systems for efficient cancer therapy following the main line of CSCs occurrence and development process from the whole to the part and from the outside to the inside. Display omitted
This mixed methods study comprised two phases. In phase 1, the author utilized a case study inquiry to explore the child-parent attachment in two US adoptive families with four children adopted from ...China between the age of 9.5 months and 2.5 years. It aimed to uncover the real-life experiences of the two families and attachment characteristics demonstrated by four adoptees in the two families. In phase 2, the author conducted a quantitative investigation using a sample of 92 adoptive parents to examine child-parent attachment and the salient characteristics identified from phase 1. Qualitative findings indicated that 'children displayed distinct attachment behaviours immediately upon adoption; and adoptive parents' sensitive caregiving facilitated the child-parent attachment development'. The combined results showed overall positive attachment outcomes in the four Chinese adoptees. The study enriched the understanding of attachment theory and offered insights on clinical practice in working with adoptive families.
With the fast development of smart grid, the power line mileage and power equipments get rapid growth. The contradiction between the large number of maintenance equipments and the small number of ...maintenance workers becomes increasingly prominent. Meanwhile, the traditional maintenance mode has the disadvantages of over or under maintenance, which will lead to the increasing failure risk of power transmission system. Faced with these issues, to enhance the intelligence and automation level of power line inspection, many researchers have devoted much effort to the research of automatic power line inspection and some state-of-the-art techniques about power line inspection are proposed to improve the inspection efficiency and quality, such as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), image processing, deep architecture, and so on. In this article, we analyzed and summarized the state-of-the-art techniques on power line inspection to provide a valuable reference for the researchers engaged in the smart grid. First, the common inspection tasks on power line inspection are reviewed. Second, the existing inspection platforms are examined in this article. Also, the advantages and disadvantages of different platforms are analyzed accordingly. Third, faced with different inspection tasks, different inspection sensors are integrated into the inspection platforms for data collection. Therefore, the common sensors on inspection platforms are discussed. Finally, to realize automatic power line inspection, different inspection methods are proposed or improved, and these advanced inspection methods are surveyed and discussed.
An experiment was conducted to compare values for digestible indispensable amino acid scores (DIAAS) for four animal proteins and four plant proteins with values calculated as recommended for protein ...digestibility-corrected amino acid scores (PDCAAS), but determined in pigs instead of in rats. Values for standardised total tract digestibility (STTD) of crude protein (CP) and standardised ileal digestibility (SID) of amino acids (AA) were calculated for whey protein isolate (WPI), whey protein concentrate (WPC), milk protein concentrate (MPC), skimmed milk powder (SMP), pea protein concentrate (PPC), soya protein isolate (SPI), soya flour and whole-grain wheat. The PDCAAS-like values were calculated using the STTD of CP to estimate AA digestibility and values for DIAAS were calculated from values for SID of AA. Results indicated that values for SID of most indispensable AA in WPI, WPC and MPC were greater (P<0·05) than for SMP, PPC, SPI, soya flour and wheat. With the exception of arginine and tryptophan, the SID of all indispensable AA in SPI was greater (P<0·05) than in soya flour, and with the exception of threonine, the SID of all indispensable AA in wheat was less (P<0·05) than in all other ingredients. If the same scoring pattern for children between 6 and 36 months was used to calculate PDCAAS-like values and DIAAS, PDCAAS-like values were greater (P<0·05) than DIAAS values for SMP, PPC, SPI, soya flour and wheat indicating that PDCAAS-like values estimated in pigs may overestimate the quality of these proteins.
A novel cadmium-based metal–organic framework (MOF) material with dual-emission signals has been constructed that can act as the first example of MOF-implicated ratiometric sensor for mercury(II) in ...pure water with a fast response, high selectivity, and sensitivity. The sensing mechanism is also discussed.
The present study is aims to investigate the prevalence and determinants of depression and anxiety among the general population in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in ...China.
A cross-sectional self-report survey methodology was used to gather the following data from Chinese citizens: sociodemographic information, physical and mental health disorder history, daily online time, social media exposure, feeling toward social media exposure, perception of the disease, infection cases in the local area, and previous experiences with stressful life incidents. Levels of anxiety and depression were self-reported employing the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale and the Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item scale, respectively.
Among the 6130 participants, the prevalence of anxiety and depression was 7.1 and 12%, respectively. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that psychological disturbances were associated with gender, people with religious background, being a medical professional, having physical or mental health disease, difficulty accessing medical aids, experience with traumatic incidents, the perceived possibility of sequelae after being cured of COVID-19, daily online time, the source of the information relevant to COVID-19, frequency of receiving information regarding COVID-19, and negative feelings triggered by social media.
There needs to be a consistent message from authorities to reduce the panic and confusion of the public, and to decrease public exposure to persistently negative information. It is necessary to help people transform their negative experiences into positive changes especially for individuals with physical illness, individuals with mental health disorders, and medical professionals.
Enterotoxigenic
Escherichia coli
(ETEC) infection induced post-weaning diarrhea is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in newly weaned pigs and one of the significant drivers for ...antimicrobial use in swine production. ETEC attachment to the small intestine initiates ETEC colonization and infection. The secretion of enterotoxins further disrupts intestinal barrier function and induces intestinal inflammation in weaned pigs. ETEC infection can also aggravate the intestinal microbiota dysbiosis due to weaning stress and increase the susceptibility of weaned pigs to other enteric infectious diseases, which may result in diarrhea or sudden death. Therefore, the amount of antimicrobial drugs for medical treatment purposes in major food-producing animal species is still significant. The alternative practices that may help reduce the reliance on such antimicrobial drugs and address animal health requirements are needed. Nutritional intervention in order to enhance intestinal health and the overall performance of weaned pigs is one of the most powerful practices in the antibiotic-free production system. This review summarizes the utilization of several categories of feed additives or supplements, such as direct-fed microbials, prebiotics, phytochemicals, lysozyme, and micro minerals in newly weaned pigs. The current understanding of these candidates on intestinal health and disease resistance of pigs under ETEC infection are particularly discussed, which may inspire more research on the development of alternative practices to support food-producing animals.
Welding production has a pivotal role in the modern manufacturing industry. However, welding defects are frequently generated during the complex welding production process which will bring a certain ...effect to the welding quality. Therefore, the issue of welding defect detection has received considerable critical attention. However, traditional methods, based on handcrafted features or shallow-learning techniques could only detect welding defects under specific detection conditions or priori knowledge. In this paper, to serve the evaluation of the harmfulness of welding defects to different objects, based on the strong feature expression ability of deep learning, an automatic welding defect location method is proposed based on the improved U-net network from digital X-ray images which includes data augmentation and welding defect location. To acquire better location performance, the data augmentation is realized to enlarge the data set of welding defects to serve the network training. On the basis, a defect location method based on the improved U-net network is proposed to realize automatic and high-precision welding defect location. Experiments show that the proposed method could acquire the detection precision up to 88.4% on the public data set (GDXray Set) which shows a remarkable location performance compared with other related detection methods.
•An effective data augmentation method is realized for the small defect samples.•An improved U-net network is proposed for automatic welding defect location.•Without any prior knowledge, the proposed method shows a better detection performance on public dataset.
Exosomes hold great potential in therapeutic development. However, native exosomes usually induce insufficient effects in vivo and simply act as drug delivery vehicles. Herein, we synthesize ...responsive exosome nano‐bioconjugates for cancer therapy. Azide‐modified exosomes derived from M1 macrophages are conjugated with dibenzocyclooctyne‐modified antibodies of CD47 and SIRPα (aCD47 and aSIRPα) through pH‐sensitive linkers. After systemic administration, the nano‐bioconjugates can actively target tumors through the specific recognition between aCD47 and CD47 on the tumor cell surface. In the acidic tumor microenvironment, the benzoic‐imine bonds of the nano‐bioconjugates are cleaved to release aSIRPα and aCD47 that can, respectively, block SIRPα on macrophages and CD47, leading to abolished “don't eat me” signaling and improved phagocytosis of macrophages. Meanwhile, the native M1 exosomes effectively reprogram the macrophages from pro‐tumoral M2 to anti‐tumoral M1.
Ok, take a bite: Responsive exosome nano‐bioconjugates were constructed by engineering M1 exosomes with aCD47 and aSIRPα linked with a pH‐sensitive bond. After systemic administration, the synergism of specific targeting by aCD47, blocking of “don't eat me” signaling by aCD47 and aSIRPα, and M2 reprogramming by M1 exosomes resulted in a potent anticancer effect.
•LAMP assays were developed for detection of African swine fever (ASF).•The LAMP assays were comparable to the well-established real-time PCR assay.•The LAMP assays are suitable for detection of ...current ASFV strains in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and China.
African swine fever (ASF) is a fatal disease caused by a virus in domestic pigs. In this study, a real-time loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay and visual LAMP assay were developed for the detection of African swine fever virus (ASFV). LAMP primers targeting the p10 gene of ASFV were designed, the LAMP reaction system was optimized with plasmid pUC57 containing the p10 gene sequence, and the specificities of the real-time LAMP and the visual assays were tested with the DNA or cDNA of pseudorabies virus (PRV), porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2), classical swine fever virus (CSFV), porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), porcine parvovirus (PPV) and ASFV, as well as the plasmid pUC57 containing the p10 gene sequence. The detection limits were determined using a serial dilution of plasmid pUC57 containing the p10 gene sequence. Our results showed that the LAMP assays could accurately and specifically detect ASFV with a detection limit of 30 copies per μl−1 of pUC57 containing p10 gene sequence. In addition, the LAMP assays were further evaluated using various genotypes of ASFV strains. Furthermore, the LAMP assays are comparable with the well-established real-time PCR assay. This study provides promising solutions for facilitating preliminary and cost-effective surveillance for prevention and control of ASFV.
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