Macrophages play an important role in a wide variety of physiologic and pathologic processes. Plasticity and functional polarization are hallmarks of macrophages. Macrophages commonly exist in two ...distinct subsets: classically activated macrophages (M1) and alternatively activated macrophages (M2). M2b, a subtype of M2 macrophages, has attracted increasing attention over the past decade due to its strong immune‐regulated and anti‐inflammatory effects. A wide variety of stimuli and multiple factors modulate M2b macrophage polarization in vitro and in vivo. M2b macrophages possess both protective and pathogenic roles in various diseases. Understanding the mechanisms of M2b macrophage activation and the modulation of their polarization might provide a great perspective for the design of novel therapeutic strategies. The purpose of this review is to discuss current knowledge of M2b macrophage polarization, the roles of M2b macrophages in a variety of diseases and the stimuli to modulate M2b macrophage polarization.
Review outlines the current knowledge of the stimuli of M2b macrophage polarization and the roles of these cells in diseases.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a clinical imaging modality effective for anatomical and functional imaging of diseased soft tissues, including solid tumors. MRI contrast agents (CA) have been ...routinely used for detecting tumor at an early stage. Gadolinium‐based CA are the most commonly used CA in clinical MRI. There have been significant efforts to design and develop novel Gd(III) CA with high relaxivity, low toxicity, and specific tumor binding. The relaxivity of the Gd(III) CA can be increased by proper chemical modification. The toxicity of Gd(III) CA can be reduced by increasing the agents' thermodynamic and kinetic stability, as well as optimizing their pharmacokinetic properties. The increasing knowledge in the field of cancer genomics and biology provides an opportunity for designing tumor‐specific CA. Various new Gd(III) chelates have been designed and evaluated in animal models for more effective cancer MRI. This review outlines the design and development, physicochemical properties, and in vivo properties of several classes of Gd(III)‐based MR CA tumor imaging. WIREs Nanomed Nanobiotechnol 2013, 5:1–18. doi: 10.1002/wnan.1198
This article is categorized under:
Diagnostic Tools > Biosensing
Diagnostic Tools > In Vivo Nanodiagnostics and Imaging
Relay-assisted free-space optical (FSO) communication systems are exploited as a means to mitigate the limiting effects of the turbulence induced atmospheric scintillation. However, conventional ...ground relays are stationary, and their optimal placement is not always feasible. Due to their mobility and flexibility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide new opportunities for FSO relaying systems. In this paper, a hovering UAV-based serial FSO decode-and-forward relaying system is investigated. In the channel modelling for such a system, four types of impairments (i.e., atmospheric loss, atmospheric turbulence, pointing error, and link interruption due to angle-of-arrival fluctuation) are considered. Based on the proposed channel model, a tractable expression for the probability density function of the total channel gain is obtained. Closed-form expressions of the link outage probability and end-to-end outage probability are derived. Asymptotic outage performance bounds for each link and the overall system are also presented to reveal insights into the impacts of different impairments. To improve system performance, we optimize the beam width, field-of-view and UAVs' locations. Numerical results show that the derived theoretical expressions are accurate to evaluate the outage performance of the system. Moreover, the proposed optimization schemes are efficient and can improve performance significantly.
A forgotten century marks the years between the Ming dynasty's
(1368-1644) turbulent founding and its sixteenth-century age of
exploration and economic transformation. In this period of social
...stability, retired scholar-official Lu Rong chronicled his
observations of Chinese society in Miscellaneous Records from
the Bean Garden (Shuyuan zaji). Openly expressing his
admirations and frustrations, Lu provides a window into the
quotidian that sets Bean Garden apart from other works of
the biji genre of "informal notes."
Mark Halperin organizes a translated selection of Lu's accounts
from Miscellaneous Records from the Bean Garden to create
a panorama of Ming life. A man of unusual curiosity, Lu describes
multiple social classes, ethnicities, and locales in his accounts
of political intrigues, farming techniques, religious practices,
etiquette, crime, and family life. Centuries after their
composition, Lu's words continue to provide a richly textured
portrait of China on the cusp of the early modern era.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of clarification treatments on volatile composition and aromatic attributes of wine samples. 'Italian Riesling' icewines from the Hexi Corridor ...Region of China were clarified by fining agents (bentonite (BT) and soybean protein (SP)), membrane filtration (MF), and centrifugation (CF) methods. The clarity, physicochemical indexes, volatile components, and aromatic attributes of treated wines were investigated. Both the fining agents and mechanical clarification treatments increased the transmittance and decreased the color intensity of icewine samples. Bentonite fining significantly influenced the total sugar content, total acidity and volatile acidity. Total acidity decreased 2-3.5% and volatile acidity 2-12%. MF showed the greatest influence on total phenol content, decreasing the initial content by 12%, while other treatments by less than 8%. Volatile analysis indicated that both the categories and contents of volatile compounds of wine samples decreased. MF treatment showed the most significant influence, while SP fining showed much lower impact. Odor activity values indicated the compound with the highest odor activity in Italian Riesling icewines was β-damascenone. For this compound, BT and SP did not show significant differences, however, in MF and CF it decreased by 20% and 63%, respectively. Furthermore, with high impact on aroma were: ethyl hexanoate which reduced by 20-80% especially in MF; rose oxide which extremely reduced in MF and undetected in BT, SP, and CF; isoamyl acetate which reduced by 3-33% and linalool decreased by 10-20% and undetected for BT. Principle component analysis indicated that icewine clarified by different methods could be distinguished and positively correlated with odor-active compounds. Floral and fruity were the dominant aroma series in icewine samples followed by fatty, earthy, spicy, vegetative and pungent flavor. The total odor active value of these series significantly (
< 0.5) decreased in different clarification treatments. Sensory evaluation showed similar results, but the SP and CF wine samples achieved better sensory quality. This study provides information that could help to optimize the clarification of ice wines.
A digital micromirror device (DMD) is a product of micromechanics. The DMD employs numerous micromirrors as the actuating components to switch small portions of light on and off. During the past few ...decades, such devices have been widely applied in digital light processing technology. The expanding range of applications makes the DMD increasingly important in various research aspects. Recent advances demonstrate that the DMD is potentially better than the traditional liquid crystal spatial light modulator in speed, spectrum sensitivity, and polarization modulation. These characteristics have been verified in a series of recently reported experiments. This review summarizes the related theory, experimental techniques, and applications for wavefront shaping with DMDs in both statically shaping various spatial modes and dynamically compensating for wavefront distortion caused by the scattering medium.
A digital micromirror device (DMD) employs numerous micromirrors as the actuating components to switch small portions of light. The expanding range of applications makes the DMD increasingly important in various research aspects. A series of recent reports have verified that such a device has better perfomance than the liquid crystal counterparts. The review summarizes the related theory, experimental techniques, and applications for both static and dynamic wavefront shaping systems.
Abstract
This article proposes a novel equilibrium finite element method (EFEM) for equilibrated solution of frictional contact problem. The development of such EFEM is mainly two‐fold. On the one ...hand, the traction‐based equilibrium element is employed to construct the discrete equilibrated stress field. This equilibrium element, using edge tractions as basic variables, is found straightforward to deal with the friction and contact constraints on the contact surface. On the other hand, the Coulomb frictional contact problem is recast into a linear complementarity problem (LCP), with which the algebraic complementarity formulation can be obtained with the help of the constructed equilibrated stress field. A remarkable property of the proposed EFEM is that the equilibrated solution, in conjunction with the compatible solution of the traditional FEM, can provide reliable error estimation for frictional contact within the framework of dual analysis. Numerical examples are finally conducted to see the performance and the ability to reliable error estimation of the proposed EFEM.
Channel capacity bounds are derived for a point-to-point indoor visible light communications (VLC) system with signal-dependent Gaussian noise. Considering both illumination and communication, the ...non-negative input of VLC is constrained by peak and average optical intensity constraints. Two scenarios are taken into account: one scenario has both average and peak optical intensity constraints, and the other scenario has only average optical intensity constraint. For both two scenarios, we derive closed-from expressions of capacity lower and upper bounds. Specifically, the capacity lower bound is derived by using the variational method and the property that the output entropy is invariably larger than the input entropy. The capacity upper bound is obtained by utilizing the dual expression of capacity and the principle of "capacity-achieving source distributions that escape to infinity". Moreover, the asymptotic analysis shows that the asymptotic performance gap between the capacity lower and upper bounds approaches zero. Finally, all derived capacity bounds are confirmed using numerical results.
Molecular imaging of cancer biomarkers is critical for non-invasive accurate cancer detection and risk-stratification in precision healthcare. A peptide-targeted tri-gadolinium nitride ...metallofullerene, ZD2-Gd
N@C80, is synthesised for sensitive molecular magnetic resonance imaging of extradomain-B fibronectin in aggressive tumours. ZD2-Gd
N@C80 has superior r
and r
relaxivities of 223.8 and 344.7 mM
s
(1.5 T), respectively. It generates prominent contrast enhancement in aggressive MDA-MB-231 triple negative breast cancer in mice at a low dose (1.7 µmol kg
, 1 T), but not in oestrogen receptor-positive MCF-7 tumours. Strong tumour contrast enhancement is consistently observed in other triple negative breast cancer models, but not in low-risk slow-growing tumours. The dose of the contrast agent for effective molecular MRI is only slightly lower than that of ZD2-Cy5.5 (0.5 µmol kg
) in fluorescence imaging. These results demonstrate that high-sensitivity molecular magnetic resonance imaging with ZD2-Gd
N@C80 may provide accurate detection and risk-stratification of high-risk tumours for precision healthcare of breast cancer.Molecular MRI is a powerful clinical tool for non-invasive detection of cancer biomarkers. Here, the authors develop a targeted peptide gadofullerene contrast agent that can sensitively distinguish between breast cancers of different aggressiveness.
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