Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by the accumulation of lipids, smooth muscle cell proliferation, cell apoptosis, necrosis, fibrosis, and local inflammation. Immune and ...inflammatory responses have significant effects on every phase of atherosclerosis, and increasing evidence shows that immunity plays a more important role in atherosclerosis by tightly regulating its progression. Therefore, understanding the relationship between immune responses and the atherosclerotic microenvironment is extremely important. This article reviews existing knowledge regarding the pathogenesis of immune responses in the atherosclerotic microenvironment, and the immune mechanisms involved in atherosclerosis formation and activation.
Various methods have been exploited to replicate nacre features into artificial structural materials with impressive structural and mechanical similarity. However, it is still very challenging to ...produce nacre-mimetics in three-dimensional bulk form, especially for further scale-up. Herein, we demonstrate that large-sized, three-dimensional bulk artificial nacre with comprehensive mimicry of the hierarchical structures and the toughening mechanisms of natural nacre can be facilely fabricated via a bottom-up assembly process based on laminating pre-fabricated two-dimensional nacre-mimetic films. By optimizing the hierarchical architecture from molecular level to macroscopic level, the mechanical performance of the artificial nacre is superior to that of natural nacre and many engineering materials. This bottom-up strategy has no size restriction or fundamental barrier for further scale-up, and can be easily extended to other material systems, opening an avenue for mass production of high-performance bulk nacre-mimetic structural materials in an efficient and cost-effective way for practical applications.Artificial materials that replicate the mechanical properties of nacre represent important structural materials, but are difficult to produce in bulk. Here, the authors exploit the bottom-up assembly of 2D nacre-mimetic films to fabricate 3D bulk artificial nacre with an optimized architecture and excellent mechanical properties.
With advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, numerous novel transcripts in a large number of organisms have been identified. With the goal of fast, accurate assessment of the coding ...ability of RNA transcripts, we upgraded the coding potential calculator CPC1 to CPC2. CPC2 runs ∼1000 times faster than CPC1 and exhibits superior accuracy compared with CPC1, especially for long non-coding transcripts. Moreover, the model of CPC2 is species-neutral, making it feasible for ever-growing non-model organism transcriptomes. A mobile-friendly web server, as well as a downloadable standalone package, is freely available at http://cpc2.cbi.pku.edu.cn.
We report an asymptomatic child who was positive for a coronavirus by reverse transcription PCR in a stool specimen 17 days after the last virus exposure. The child was virus positive in stool ...specimens for at least an additional 9 days. Respiratory tract specimens were negative by reverse transcription PCR.
We present a fuzzy extractor whose security can be reduced to the hardness of Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) and can efficiently correct a constant fraction of errors in a biometric source with a ..."noise-avoiding trapdoor." Using this computational fuzzy extractor, we present a stateless construction of a cryptographically-secure Physical Unclonable Function. Our construct requires no non-volatile (permanent) storage, secure or otherwise, and its computational security can be reduced to the hardness of an LPN variant under the random oracle model. The construction is "stateless," because there is no information stored between subsequent queries, which mitigates attacks against the PUF via tampering. Moreover, our stateless construction corresponds to a PUF whose outputs are free of noise because of internal error-correcting capability, which enables a host of applications beyond authentication. We describe the construction, provide a proof of computational security, analysis of the security parameter for system parameter choices, and present experimental evidence that the construction is practical and reliable under a wide environmental range.
Cellulose aerogels are plagued by intermolecular hydrogen bond‐induced structural plasticity, otherwise rely on chemicals modification to extend service life. Here, we demonstrate a ...petrochemical‐free strategy to fabricate superelastic cellulose aerogels by designing hierarchical structures at multi scales. Oriented channels consolidate the whole architecture. Porous walls of dehydrated cellulose derived from thermal etching not only exhibit decreased rigidity and stickiness, but also guide the microscopic deformation and mitigate localized large strain, preventing structural collapse. The aerogels show exceptional stability, including temperature‐invariant elasticity, fatigue resistance (∼5 % plastic deformation after 105 cycles), high angular recovery speed (1475.4° s−1), outperforming most cellulose‐based aerogels. This benign strategy retains the biosafety of biomass and provides an alternative filter material for health‐related applications, such as face masks and air purification.
A new type of cellulose aerogels with anisotropic and hierarchical porous architecture are developed via a petrochemical‐free method. The aerogels display temperature‐invariant elasticity (∼5 % plastic deformation after 105 compressive cycles at 50 % strain), large‐strain recoverability (folding and twisting), angular recovery speed high up to 1475.4° s−1, and exceptional fatigue resistance.
Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) represent a large segment of the human transcriptome and have been shown to play important roles in cellular physiology and disease pathogenesis. Increasing evidence on the ...functional roles of ncRNAs in cancer progression emphasizes the potential of ncRNAs for cancer treatment. Here, we summarize the roles of ncRNAs in disease relapse and resistance to current standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy; the current research progress on ncRNAs for clinical and/or potential translational applications, including the identification of ncRNAs as therapeutic targets; therapeutic approaches for ncRNA targeting; and ncRNA delivery strategies in potential clinical translation. Several ongoing clinical trials of novel RNA-based therapeutics were also emphasized. Finally, we discussed the perspectives and obstacles to different target combinations, delivery strategies, and system designs for ncRNA application. The next approved nucleic acid drug to treat cancer patients may realistically be on the horizon.
This article first provides a new Viewport-based OmniDirectional Video Quality Assessment (VOD-VQA) database, which includes eighteen salient viewport videos extracted from the original ...OmniDirectional Videos (ODVs), and corresponding 774 impaired samples generated by compressing the raw viewports using a variety of combinations of its Spatial (frame size <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">s </tex-math></inline-formula>), Temporal (frame rate <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">t </tex-math></inline-formula>), and Amplitude (quantization stepsize <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">q </tex-math></inline-formula>) Resolutions (STAR). Total 160 subjects have assessed the processed viewport videos rendered on the head mounted display (HMD) when they stabilize their fixations. We then have formulated an analytical model to connect the perceptual quality of a compressed viewport video with its STAR variables, noted as the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Q^{{\mathsf {VP}}}_{\tt {STAR}} </tex-math></inline-formula> index. All four model parameters can be predicted using linearly weighted content features, making the proposed metric generalized to various contents. This model correlates well with the mean opinion scores (MOSs) collected for processed viewport videos, having both the Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient (SRCC) at 0.95 according to an independent validation test, yielding the state-of-the-art performance in comparison to those popular objective metrics (e.g., Weighted to Spherically uniform (WS)-Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), WMS-SSIM, Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF), Feature SIMilarity Index (FSIM), and Visual Saliency based IQA Index (VSI)). Furthermore, this viewport-based quality index <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Q^{{\mathsf {VP}}}_{\tt {STAR}} </tex-math></inline-formula> is extended to infer the overall ODV quality, a.k.a., <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Q^{{\mathsf {ODV}}}_{\tt {STAR}} </tex-math></inline-formula>, by linearly weighing the saliency-aggregated qualities of salient viewports and the quality of quick-scanning (or non-salient) area. Experiments have shown that inferred <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Q^{{\mathsf {ODV}}}_{\tt {STAR}} </tex-math></inline-formula> can accurately predict the MOS with competitive performance to the state-of-the-art algorithm using another four independent and third-party ODV assessment datasets. All related materials are made publicly accessible at https://vision.nju.edu.cn/20/86/c29466a467078/page.htm for reproducible research.
Social media is an important element in disaster and health crisis related communication. This research reviews 10,132 online comments related to COVID-19 through automated and manual content ...analysis. The key themes are identified and discussed including dynamically changed tourists' risk perception, the effects of tourism enterprises' service quality in crisis, the quarantine issues in public health, the authenticity of media coverage, and racial discrimination. This research contributes to suggestions and insights for future research in the field of epidemic-induced tourism crisis.
Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are a large segment of the transcriptome that do not have apparent protein-coding roles, but they have been verified to play important roles in diverse biological processes, ...including disease pathogenesis. With the development of innovative technologies, an increasing number of novel ncRNAs have been uncovered; information about their prominent tissue-specific expression patterns, various interaction networks, and subcellular locations will undoubtedly enhance our understanding of their potential functions. Here, we summarized the principles and innovative methods for identifications of novel ncRNAs that have potential functional roles in cancer biology. Moreover, this review also provides alternative ncRNA databases based on high-throughput sequencing or experimental validation, and it briefly describes the current strategy for the clinical translation of cancer-associated ncRNAs to be used in diagnosis.
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