Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most common type of pancreatic cancer featured with high intra-tumoral heterogeneity and poor prognosis. To comprehensively delineate the PDAC ...intra-tumoral heterogeneity and the underlying mechanism for PDAC progression, we employed single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) to acquire the transcriptomic atlas of 57,530 individual pancreatic cells from primary PDAC tumors and control pancreases, and identified diverse malignant and stromal cell types, including two ductal subtypes with abnormal and malignant gene expression profiles respectively, in PDAC. We found that the heterogenous malignant subtype was composed of several subpopulations with differential proliferative and migratory potentials. Cell trajectory analysis revealed that components of multiple tumor-related pathways and transcription factors (TFs) were differentially expressed along PDAC progression. Furthermore, we found a subset of ductal cells with unique proliferative features were associated with an inactivation state in tumor-infiltrating T cells, providing novel markers for the prediction of antitumor immune response. Together, our findings provide a valuable resource for deciphering the intra-tumoral heterogeneity in PDAC and uncover a connection between tumor intrinsic transcriptional state and T cell activation, suggesting potential biomarkers for anticancer treatment such as targeted therapy and immunotherapy.
After decades of development, microrobots have exhibited great application potential in the biomedical field, such as minimally invasive surgery, drug delivery, and bio‐sensing. Compared with ...conventional medical robotic systems, microrobots may be capable of reaching more narrow and vulnerable regions in the human body with minimal damage. However, limited by the small scale of microrobots, microprocessors, power supplies, and sensors can hardly be integrated on‐board. Thus, new strategies for the actuation and feedback for microrobots need to be explored. Furthermore, the open‐loop control method accomplished by operators may lack accuracy, and long‐duration operation could bring a severe physical challenge in many applications. Consequently, the automatic control of microrobots with the aid of control theories is developed to improve the control efficiency and precision. To further promote the automation level of microrobots, machine learning algorithms are expected to provide a solution to let microrobots adapt to more dynamic environments and undertake more complex medical tasks. Herein, a systematic introduction of the manipulation of microrobots from open‐loop to closed‐loop control is given in this review. It is envisioned that microrobots will play an important role in future biomedical applications.
Microrobots have shown great potential in the biomedical field. To promote the application of microrobots in various scenarios, precise control with high autonomy level is necessary. In this review, state‐of‐the‐art research about control and autonomy of microrobots is given to provide a comprehensive introduction of microrobots for readers, and current challenges are summarized for the guidance of future research.
The direct gap optical gain of 100 uniaxial tensile strained and n
-doped Ge/GeSi quantum well (QW) is calculated. The theoretical models for strained band structures near the Γ- and L-point, optical ...gain and free carrier absorption are provided. Simulation results show that the optical gain can be dramatically enhanced with the help of uniaxial tensile strain and n-type doping. Furthermore, to consider the competition between gain and loss and get insight into the effects of strain and doping, the net peak gain and transparency carrier density at various strain value and doping concentration are evaluated. A net peak gain up to 2061 cm
for TE-polarized light is predicted at a strain value of 4%, a doping concentration of 1x10
cm
and an injected carrier density of 4x10
cm
.
Increasing studies have reported that intervertebral disc degeneration (IVDD) is the main contributor and independent risk factor for low back pain (LBP), it would be, therefore, enlightening that ...investigating the exact pathogenesis of IVDD and developing target-specific molecular drugs in the future. Ferroptosis is a new form of programmed cell death characterized by glutathione (GSH) depletion, and inactivation of the regulatory core of the antioxidant system (glutathione system) GPX4. The close relationship of oxidative stress and ferroptosis has been studied in various of diseases, but the crosstalk between of oxidative stress and ferroptosis has not been explored in IVDD. At the beginning of the current study, we proved that Sirt3 decreases and ferroptosis occurs after IVDD. Next, we found that knockout of Sirt3 (Sirt3−/−) promoted IVDD and poor pain-related behavioral scores via increasing oxidative stress-induced ferroptosis. The (immunoprecipitation coupled with mass spectrometry) IP/MS and co-IP demonstrated that USP11 was identified to stabilize Sirt3 via directly binding to Sirt3 and deubiquitinating Sirt3. Overexpression of USP11 significantly ameliorate oxidative stress-induced ferroptosis, thus relieving IVDD by increasing Sirt3. Moreover, knockout of USP11 in vivo (USP11−/−) resulted in exacerbated IVDD and poor pain-related behavioral scores, which could be reversed by overexpression of Sirt3 in intervertebral disc. In conclusion, the current study emphasized the importance of the interaction of USP11 and Sirt3 in the pathological process of IVDD via regulating oxidative stress-induced ferroptosis, and USP11-mediated oxidative stress-induced ferroptosis is identified as a promising target for treating IVDD.
Lung sound classification is an important diagnostic task in the medical field. By analyzing respiratory sounds, doctors can help diagnose various respiratory system diseases. Chronic respiratory ...diseases worldwide are usually associated with abnormal lung sounds, which are clinically related to conditions such as bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In recent years, the outbreak of COVID-19 has once again sparked research into lung sound classification. However, due to the environmental noise and heart sounds mixed in abnormal lung sounds, further improvements are still needed for accurate classification. In this paper, an improved Bi-ResNet network structure model is proposed to enhance the accuracy of lung sound classification and fully utilize feature extraction information. The model still processes the extracted lung sound features in parallel, but by introducing skip connections and increasing the use of direct connections, it allows information to be directly transmitted and fully integrates original and processed features within the network. This improved structure enables the model to learn features from the data at a deeper level, enhancing the expressiveness of the features. Additionally, the improved Bi-ResNet model combines convolutional neural networks (CNN) and residual networks (ResNet), and uses two types of features, the lung sound short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and wavelet transform (Wavelet), for model training and analysis. This comprehensive approach captures lung sound data information more comprehensively, differentiating between different types of lung sounds and providing better diagnostic assistance to doctors, thereby promoting early diagnosis and treatment of respiratory system diseases. Through experiments, the proposed model achieved a classification accuracy of 77.81% on the Int. Conf. on Biomedical Health Informatics (ICBHI) 2017 dataset, representing a 25.02% improvement over the Bi-ResNet model, with an F1 score of 71.05%.
Efficient computational recognition and segmentation of target organ from medical images are foundational in diagnosis and treatment, especially about pancreas cancer. In practice, the diversity in ...appearance of pancreas and organs in abdomen, makes detailed texture information of objects important in segmentation algorithm. According to our observations, however, the structures of previous networks, such as the Richer Feature Convolutional Network (RCF), are too coarse to segment the object (pancreas) accurately, especially the edge.
In this paper, we extend the RCF, proposed to the field of edge detection, for the challenging pancreas segmentation, and put forward a novel pancreas segmentation network. By employing multi-layer up-sampling structure replacing the simple up-sampling operation in all stages, the proposed network fully considers the multi-scale detailed contexture information of object (pancreas) to perform per-pixel segmentation. Additionally, using the CT scans, we supply and train our network, thus get an effective pipeline.
Working with our pipeline with multi-layer up-sampling model, we achieve better performance than RCF in the task of single object (pancreas) segmentation. Besides, combining with multi scale input, we achieve the 76.36% DSC (Dice Similarity Coefficient) value in testing data.
The results of our experiments show that our advanced model works better than previous networks in our dataset. On the other words, it has better ability in catching detailed contexture information. Therefore, our new single object segmentation model has practical meaning in computational automatic diagnosis.
Soil drench treatment using Paenibacillus polymyxa strain KN-03 was applied to citrus plants infected with Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas). The infection status was assessed using PCR and a ...real-time quantitative PCR detection system (qPCR). The application of KN-03 resulted in a notable reduction in CLas levels in citrus plants. Specifically, by the 257th day post treatment commencement, following 24 KN-03 applications, the negative rates of CLas in the vein, root tip, and shoot tip were 50%, 0%, and 50%, respectively. After 24 cycles, KN-03 application significantly enhanced plant growth and stimulated reactive oxygen production in citrus leaves compared to control plants. Transcriptome analysis identified specific upregulated pathways. Furthermore, flora analysis revealed an increased abundance of microorganisms possessing potential utilization value, including Burkholderia-Caballeronia-Paraburkholderia, uncultured_bacterium_o_Acidobacteriales, uncultured_bacterium_f_Gemmatimonadaceae, and Rhodanobacter, in the root zone. Moreover, the BugBase analysis indicated that KN-03 treatment increased the abundance of beneficial rhizosphere bacteria associated with biofilm formation, element mobilization, and stress tolerance. These findings support the utility of Paenibacillus polymyxa KN-03 as an effective plant-growth-promoting bacterium for CLas management, with additional benefits for plant growth and soil health, specifically offering detoxification resources for shoot tip grafting.
A highly coherent wave is favorable for applications in which phase retrieval is necessary, yet a high-coherence wave is prone to encounter Rayleigh fading phenomenon as it passes through a medium of ...random scatters. As an exemplary case, a phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Phi </tex-math></inline-formula>-OTDR) utilizes the coherent interference of backscattering light along a fiber to achieve ultra-sensitive acoustic sensing, but sensing locations with fading will not be functional. Apart from the sensing domain, fading is also ubiquitous in optical imaging and wireless telecommunication, and therefore, it is of great interest. In this paper, we theoretically describe and experimentally verify how the fading phenomenon in one-dimensional (1-D) optical scatters will be suppressed with an arbitrary number of independent probing channels. We initially theoretically explained why fading would cause severe noise in the demodulated phase of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Phi </tex-math></inline-formula>-OTDR; then, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">M </tex-math></inline-formula>-degree summation of incoherent scattered light-waves is studied for the purpose of eliminating fading. Finally, the enhancement and the fluctuation of retrieved phase signal-to-noise-ratio were analytically derived and experimentally verified. This paper provides a guideline for the fading elimination in 1-D optical scatters, and it also provides insight for optical imaging and wireless telecommunication.
•The apparent viscosity of SPI-based FFS was reduced by adding cysteine.•The disulfide bonds that link SPI subunits could be cleaved by cysteine.•The TS of SPI films were not affected by adding ...cysteine.•The solubility of SPI films was reduced by adding cysteine.•Crystals appeared on the film when the amount of cysteine exceeded 4 mmol/L.
The effect of cysteine concentration on the viscosity of soy protein isolate (SPI)-based film-forming solution (FFS) and physicochemical properties of SPI films was investigated. The apparent viscosity of FFS decreased after adding 1 mmol/L cysteine but did not change after adding 2–8 mmol/L cysteine. After treatment with 1 mmol/L cysteine, the film solubility decreased from 70.40% to 57.60%, but the other physical properties did not change. The water vapor permeability and contact angle of SPI films increased as cysteine concentration increased from 4 mmol/L to 8 mmol/L, whereas the film elongation at break decreased. Based on scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction results, cysteine crystallization could be aggregated on the surface of SPI films treated with 4 or 8 mmol/L cysteine. In conclusion, pretreatment with approximately 2 mmol/L cysteine could reduce the viscosity of SPI-based FFS, but did not change the physicochemical properties of SPI films.
The coupling effect of flexural loading and wetting–drying cycles on chloride transmission in silane composite emulsion-protected concrete is presented in this paper. Graphene ...oxide/isobutyltriethoxysilane (GS) and tetraethyl orthosilicate/isobutyltriethoxysilane (TS) composite emulsion was prepared to obstruct the penetration of chloride, and the influence of flexural loading and exposure time on the protective effect were mainly considered. The results show that the content and diffusion coefficient of chloride are affected significantly by flexural loading, exposure age, and protective emulsion. Loads with different stress ratios affect the internal transmission of chloride by changing the compactness of concrete. The prolongation of the exposure age leads to the accumulation of chloride, thereby increasing the internal chloride contents of concrete. The GS/TS composite emulsion reacts with the hydration products to form the hydrophobic layer, which can significantly prevent the penetration of chloride. In particular, the protective performance of GS under low stress ratios is better than that of TS, while under high stress levels, TS has better resistance to chloride erosion. Relatively speaking, the long-term protective effect of GS is better than that of TS.
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