The blood–brain barrier constitutes a dynamic and interactive boundary separating the central nervous system and the peripheral circulation.It tightly modulates the ion transport and nutrient influx,while restricting...The blood–brain barrier constitutes a dynamic and interactive boundary separating the central nervous system and the peripheral circulation.It tightly modulates the ion transport and nutrient influx,while restricting the entry of harmful factors,and selectively limiting the migration of immune cells,thereby maintaining brain homeostasis.Despite the well-established association between blood–brain barrier disruption and most neurodegenerative/neuroinflammatory diseases,much remains unknown about the factors influencing its physiology and the mechanisms underlying its breakdown.Moreover,the role of blood–brain barrier breakdown in the translational failure underlying therapies for brain disorders is just starting to be understood.This review aims to revisit this concept of“blood–brain barrier breakdown,”delving into the most controversial aspects,prevalent challenges,and knowledge gaps concerning the lack of blood–brain barrier integrity.By moving beyond the oversimplistic dichotomy of an“open”/“bad”or a“closed”/“good”barrier,our objective is to provide a more comprehensive insight into blood–brain barrier dynamics,to identify novel targets and/or therapeutic approaches aimed at mitigating blood–brain barrier dysfunction.Furthermore,in this review,we advocate for considering the diverse time-and location-dependent alterations in the blood–brain barrier,which go beyond tight-junction disruption or brain endothelial cell breakdown,illustrated through the dynamics of ischemic stroke as a case study.Through this exploration,we seek to underscore the complexity of blood–brain barrier dysfunction and its implications for the pathogenesis and therapy of brain diseases.展开更多
Techniques in deep learning have significantly boosted the accuracy and productivity of computer vision segmentation tasks.This article offers an intriguing architecture for semantic,instance,and panoptic segmentation...Techniques in deep learning have significantly boosted the accuracy and productivity of computer vision segmentation tasks.This article offers an intriguing architecture for semantic,instance,and panoptic segmentation using EfficientNet-B7 and Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Networks(Bi-FPN).When implemented in place of the EfficientNet-B5 backbone,EfficientNet-B7 strengthens the model’s feature extraction capabilities and is far more appropriate for real-world applications.By ensuring superior multi-scale feature fusion,Bi-FPN integration enhances the segmentation of complex objects across various urban environments.The design suggested is examined on rigorous datasets,encompassing Cityscapes,Common Objects in Context,KITTI Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technological Institute,and Indian Driving Dataset,which replicate numerous real-world driving conditions.During extensive training,validation,and testing,the model showcases major gains in segmentation accuracy and surpasses state-of-the-art performance in semantic,instance,and panoptic segmentation tasks.Outperforming present methods,the recommended approach generates noteworthy gains in Panoptic Quality:+0.4%on Cityscapes,+0.2%on COCO,+1.7%on KITTI,and+0.4%on IDD.These changes show just how efficient it is in various driving circumstances and datasets.This study emphasizes the potential of EfficientNet-B7 and Bi-FPN to provide dependable,high-precision segmentation in computer vision applications,primarily autonomous driving.The research results suggest that this framework efficiently tackles the constraints of practical situations while delivering a robust solution for high-performance tasks involving segmentation.展开更多
The impact of spinal cord injury(SCI)on the immune system is increasingly recognized in a field traditionally focused on motor impairments.SCI can seriously affect the immune system by progressively disrupting the reg...The impact of spinal cord injury(SCI)on the immune system is increasingly recognized in a field traditionally focused on motor impairments.SCI can seriously affect the immune system by progressively disrupting the regulatory mechanisms that control immune responses.This dysregulation varies widely among patients and can evolve over time,ranging from systemic inflammatory responses to immunosuppression,greatly contributing to the morbidity and mortality of individuals with SCI(Bao et al.,2011;Brennan et al.,2024).展开更多
This work presents the development of hierarchical niobium pentoxide(Nb_(2)O_(5))-based composite nanofiber membranes for integrated adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue(MB)pollutants from aqueo...This work presents the development of hierarchical niobium pentoxide(Nb_(2)O_(5))-based composite nanofiber membranes for integrated adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue(MB)pollutants from aqueous solutions.The Nb_(2)O_(5) nanorods were vertically grown using a hydrothermal process on a base electrospun nanofibrous membrane made of polyacrylonitrile/polyvinylidene fluoride/ammonium niobate(V)oxalate hydrate(Nb_(2)O_(5)@PAN/PVDF/ANO).They were characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscopy(FE-SEM),X-ray diffraction(XRD)analysis,and Fourier transform infrared(FTIR)spectroscopy.These composite nanofibers possessed a narrow optical bandgap energy of 3.31 eV and demonstrated an MB degradation efficiency of 96%after 480 min contact time.The pseudo-first-order kinetic study was also conducted,in which Nb_(2)O_(5)@PAN/PVDF/ANO nanofibers have kinetic constant values of 1.29×10^(-2) min^(-1) and 0.30×10^(-2) min^(-1) for adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of MB aqueous solutions,respectively.These values are 17.7 and 7.8 times greater than those of PAN/PVDF/ANO nanofibers without Nb_(2)O_(5) nanostructures.Besides their outstanding photocatalytic performance,the developed membrane materials exhibit advantageous characteristics in recycling,which subsequently widen their practical use in environmental remediation applications.展开更多
Digital signal processing of electroencephalography(EEG)data is now widely utilized in various applications,including motor imagery classification,seizure detection and prediction,emotion classification,mental task cl...Digital signal processing of electroencephalography(EEG)data is now widely utilized in various applications,including motor imagery classification,seizure detection and prediction,emotion classification,mental task classification,drug impact identification and sleep state classification.With the increasing number of recorded EEG channels,it has become clear that effective channel selection algorithms are required for various applications.Guided Whale Optimization Method(Guided WOA),a suggested feature selection algorithm based on Stochastic Fractal Search(SFS)technique,evaluates the chosen subset of channels.This may be used to select the optimum EEG channels for use in Brain-Computer Interfaces(BCIs),the method for identifying essential and irrelevant characteristics in a dataset,and the complexity to be eliminated.This enables(SFS-Guided WOA)algorithm to choose the most appropriate EEG channels while assisting machine learning classification in its tasks and training the classifier with the dataset.The(SFSGuided WOA)algorithm is superior in performance metrics,and statistical tests such as ANOVA and Wilcoxon rank-sum are used to demonstrate this.展开更多
Most defective and unwanted cells die by apoptosis, cells without damaging the surrounding tissue. Once a an exquisitely controlled genetic programme for removing such cell has committed to apoptosis, the process is r...Most defective and unwanted cells die by apoptosis, cells without damaging the surrounding tissue. Once a an exquisitely controlled genetic programme for removing such cell has committed to apoptosis, the process is remarkably efficient, and is completed within a few minutes of initiation. This point of no retum for an apoptotic cell is commonly held to be the point at which the outer mitochondrial membrane is permeabilised, a process regulated by the Bcl-2 family of proteins. How these proteins regulate this decision point is central to diseases such as cancer where apoptotic control is lost. In this review, we will discuss apoptotic signalling and how a cell makes the irreversible decision to die. We will focus on one set of survival signals, those derived by cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix （ECM）, and use these to highlight the complexities of apoptotic signalling. In particular, we will illustrate how multiple signalling pathways converge to determine critical cell fate decisions.展开更多
Objective:To explore the anti-cancer activity of maslinic acid against colorectal cancer(CRC)cell lines and its possible mechanism.Methods:The inhibitory effect of maslinic acid was screened against five CRC cell line...Objective:To explore the anti-cancer activity of maslinic acid against colorectal cancer(CRC)cell lines and its possible mechanism.Methods:The inhibitory effect of maslinic acid was screened against five CRC cell lines(HT-29,HCT 116,SW480,SW48,and LS 174 T)via 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay.Apoptosis and cell cycle analyses were carried out using annexinⅤ-FITC/propidium iodide staining and propidium iodide staining,respectively and subjected to fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis.Protein expression studies of inhibitor ofκB kinase-β(IKK-β),checkpoint kinase 1(Chk1)and cyclin D1 were conducted using the JESS system.Results:Maslinic acid exhibited growth inhibitory effect in a doseand time-dependent manner in HT-29 and HCT 116 cell lines.A more prominent apoptosis induced by maslinic acid was observed in HCT 116 cell line.However,in HT-29 cell line,maslinic acid induced cell cycle arrest by inhibiting the G1-S transition,which was accompanied by the downregulation of cyclin D1.The expression of unphosphorylated IKK-βprotein was increased in both(HT-29 and HCT 116)cell lines after maslinic acid treatment.Conclusions:Maslinic acid inhibits the growth of HT-29 and HCT 116 cells in a different manner,induces cell cycle arrest in HT-29 cells and causes apoptosis in HCT 116 cells partially via NF-κB pathway inhibition.展开更多
Image captioning aims to generate a corresponding description of an image.In recent years,neural encoder-decodermodels have been the dominant approaches,in which the Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)and Long Short Ter...Image captioning aims to generate a corresponding description of an image.In recent years,neural encoder-decodermodels have been the dominant approaches,in which the Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)and Long Short TermMemory(LSTM)are used to translate an image into a natural language description.Among these approaches,the visual attention mechanisms are widely used to enable deeper image understanding through fine-grained analysis and even multiple steps of reasoning.However,most conventional visual attention mechanisms are based on high-level image features,ignoring the effects of other image features,and giving insufficient consideration to the relative positions between image features.In this work,we propose a Position-Aware Transformer model with image-feature attention and position-aware attention mechanisms for the above problems.The image-feature attention firstly extracts multi-level features by using Feature Pyramid Network(FPN),then utilizes the scaled-dot-product to fuse these features,which enables our model to detect objects of different scales in the image more effectivelywithout increasing parameters.In the position-aware attentionmechanism,the relative positions between image features are obtained at first,afterwards the relative positions are incorporated into the original image features to generate captions more accurately.Experiments are carried out on the MSCOCO dataset and our approach achieves competitive BLEU-4,METEOR,ROUGE-L,CIDEr scores compared with some state-of-the-art approaches,demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.展开更多
Objective:To study the chemical constituents of stembark of Garcinia malaccenm（G.malaccenm） together with apoptotic.antimicrobial and antioxidant activities.Methods:Purification and structure elucidation were carrie...Objective:To study the chemical constituents of stembark of Garcinia malaccenm（G.malaccenm） together with apoptotic.antimicrobial and antioxidant activities.Methods:Purification and structure elucidation were carried out by chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques, respectively.MTT and trypan blue exclusion methods were performed to study the cytotoxic activity.Antibacterial activity was conducted by dise diffusion and microdilulion methods, whereas antioxidant activities were done by ferric thiocyanate method and DPPH radical scavenging.Results:The phylochemical study led lo the isolation ofα,β-mangostin and cycloarl-24-en-3β-ol.α-Mangostin exhibited cytotoxic activity against HSC-3 cells with an IC<sub>50</sub> of 0.33μM.β- andα-mangostin showed activity against K562 cells with IC<sub>50</sub> of 0.40μM and 0.48μM,respectively,α-Mangostin was active against Gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus（S.aureus） and Bacilus anthracis（B.anthmcis） with inhibition zone and MIC value of（19 mm;0.02S mg/mL） and（20 mm;0.013 mg/mL）,respectively.In antioxidant assay,α-mangostin exhibited activity as an inhibitor of lipid peroxidation.Conclusions:G.malaccenm presenceα- andβ-mangostin and cycloart-24-en-3β-ol.β-Mangostin was found very active against H.SC-3 cells and KS62.The results suggest that mangoslins derivatives have the potential to inhibit the growth of cancer cells by inducing apoptosis.In addition,α-andβ-mangostin was found inhibit the growth of Cram-positive pathogenic bacteria and also showed the activity as an inhibitor of lipid peroxidation.展开更多
Indonesia is the most producer of crude palm oil (CPO) worldwide with production more that 25 million tons in 2013. Through increasing production of CPO the wastes generated are growing up as well. The empty fruit bun...Indonesia is the most producer of crude palm oil (CPO) worldwide with production more that 25 million tons in 2013. Through increasing production of CPO the wastes generated are growing up as well. The empty fruit bunch of oil palm (EFB) is one of the solid waste (biomass) which is generated at the palm oil mill. Its amount is equivalent to the CPO production, but only about 50% of its weight are good fibers for further usage as industrial raw material. The EFB fiber consists an interesting honey comb/lightweight structure. By mixing the EFB natural fiber with bio binding agent based on potato the environmental friendly materials (biocomposites) can be produced which are 100% biodegadrable. The biocomposites with 2 mm thickness have strengthness about 7 GPa according to the 3 points bending test standard of DIN 53 457. After coating process the environmental friendly lightweight materials with density less than 0.4 g/cm3 will be ready to be implemented for different technical applications.展开更多
AIM: To evaluate mucosal healing in patients with small bowel plus colonic Crohn's disease(CD) with a single non-invasive examination, by using PillCam COLON 2.(PCC2).METHODS: Patients with non-stricturing nonpene...AIM: To evaluate mucosal healing in patients with small bowel plus colonic Crohn's disease(CD) with a single non-invasive examination, by using PillCam COLON 2.(PCC2).METHODS: Patients with non-stricturing nonpenetrating small bowel plus colonic CD in sustained corticosteroid-free remission were included. At diagnosis,patients had undergone ileocolonoscopy to identify active CD lesions, such as ulcers and erosions, and small bowel capsule endoscopy to assess the Lewis Score(LS). After ≥ 1 year of follow-up, patients underwent entire gastrointestinal tract evaluation with PCC2. The primary endpoint was assessment of CD mucosal healing, defined as no active colonic CD lesions and LS < 135.RESULTS: Twelve patients were included(7 male;mean age: 32 years), and mean follow-up was 38 mo.The majority of patients(83.3%) received immunosuppressive therapy. Three patients(25%) achieved mucosal healing in both the small bowel and the colon,while disease activity was limited to either the small bowel or the colon in 5 patients(42%). It was possible to observe the entire gastrointestinal tract in 10 of the12 patients(83%) who underwent PCC2.CONCLUSION: Only three patients in sustainedcorticosteroid-free clinical remission achieved mucosal healing in both the small bowel and the colon, highlighting the limitations of clinical assessment when stratifying disease activity, and the need for pan-enteric endoscopy to guide therapeutic modification.展开更多
In this paper,we proposed an innovation diffusion model with three compartments to investigate the diffusion of an innovation(product)in a particular region.The model exhibits two equilibria,namely,the adopter-free an...In this paper,we proposed an innovation diffusion model with three compartments to investigate the diffusion of an innovation(product)in a particular region.The model exhibits two equilibria,namely,the adopter-free and an interior equilibrium.The existence and local stability of the adopter-free and interior equilibria are explored in terms of the effective Basic Influence Number(BIN)R_(A).It is investigated that the adopter free steady-state is stable if R_(A)<1.By consideringτ(the adoption experience of the adopters)as the bifurcation parameter,we have been able to obtain the critical value ofτresponsible for the periodic solutions due to Hopf bifurcation.The direction and stability analysis of bifurcating periodic solutions has been performed by using the arguments of normal form theory and the center manifold theorem.Exhaustive numerical simulations in the support of analytical results have been presented.展开更多
This article describes an undergoing research at PT Freeport, Indonesia, in which the main goal is to use the microseismic information recorded as a result of mining to analyze cave propagation and stress performance ...This article describes an undergoing research at PT Freeport, Indonesia, in which the main goal is to use the microseismic information recorded as a result of mining to analyze cave propagation and stress performance on the actual production and fixed infrastructure. At the moment, several numerical experiments have been conducted to correlate the mining activity with the microseismic events using the data collected during year 2005 and 2006. As a result of the preliminary analysis a micro- and a macrocracking envelop were proposed on the basis of computation of stress behavior at the location of the events. Stresses have been computed using standard elastic continuous boundary element models. The correlation between the average source radius and the stress performance has provided a method to propose a macrocracking criterion. Several techniques have been tested to nucleate the microseismic activity around different geological features. This last attempt was aimed to look at potential overstresses induced over the undercut and extraction level drifts. A method was devised to integrate the microseismicity into a 3-dimensional ride distribution model. This model has shown to be very effective to quantify the overstress induced as a result of computing volumetric microseismicity density. The volumetric microseismic model showed to induce overstress up to 10 MPa over a period of two months. The future work will concentrate on the calibration of the integrated model with actual damage observations made at the current mining infrastructure.展开更多
AIM: To investigate the influence of Trichuris muris (T. muris) infection in a mouse model of genetic susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease, Mdr1a-/-.
<span style="font-family:Verdana;">This study aims to evaluate the optical losses of photovoltaic modules due to Saharan dust deposition in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. For this purpose, an air-dust-gl...<span style="font-family:Verdana;">This study aims to evaluate the optical losses of photovoltaic modules due to Saharan dust deposition in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. For this purpose, an air-dust-glass system is modeled to simulate optical losses in transmittance </span><span style="font-family:Verdana;">and reflectance. To do this, we have collected dust samples from Photo-Voltaic</span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> (PV) surface in Dakar area (14<span style="white-space:nowrap;">°</span>42'N latitude, 17<span style="white-space:nowrap;">°</span>28'W longitude), Senegal. X-ray fluorescence reveals that silicon (Si), iron (Fe), calcium (Ca) and potassium (K) mainly </span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">compose</span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:;" "=""><span style="font-family:Verdana;">d these dust samples. Then, dust refractive indices obtained from an ellipsometer were used as an input to be used in the model. Simulations show that for radiation (at normal incidence) arriving on a dust layer of 30 μm-thick (corresponding to a dust deposit of 1.63 g/m</span><sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">2</span></sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">), 79% of the visible spectrum is transmitted</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">;</span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:;" "=""><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> 19% is reflected and 2% is absorbed. Overall, the transmittance decreases by more than 50% as of dust layer of 70 μm-thick corresponding to a dust deposit of 3.3 g/m</span><sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">2</span></sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">.</span></span></span></span></span>展开更多
Objective:To evaluate the efficacy of the Chinese herbal compound GAPT for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease(AD)and to provide current evidence for potential treatment mechanisms.Methods:A comprehensive search of ...Objective:To evaluate the efficacy of the Chinese herbal compound GAPT for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease(AD)and to provide current evidence for potential treatment mechanisms.Methods:A comprehensive search of PubMed,Embase,Web of Science,SinoMed,China Network Knowledge Infrastructure,Wanfang Data,and Chinese Scientific Journals Database was performed to identify GAPT mouse/rat studies published from inception to July 2019.The outcomes extracted were Morris water maze results and molecular biological quantifications.Results:A total of 19 studies were included in this analysis.The analysis indicated that GAPT was able to significantly improve learning and memory abilities compared with model mice/rats,as assessed by Morris water maze,and showed similar efficacy as donepezil.Subgroup analyses showed that low,medium,and high doses resulted in no obvious dose-dependent effects.Additionally,the GAPT group had significantly reduced expression levels of amyloid-beta peptide,presenilin 1,phosphorylated tau,acetylcholinesterase,and glycogen synthase kinase-3b,but increased expression levels of Shank1,and protein phosphatase-2A,and improved synapses structures compared with the model group,and subgroup analyses showed the medium dose of GAPT was superior to the low and high doses.Conclusions:Based on the pooled analysis,GAPT improved the learning and memory abilities and regulated the expression levels of related proteins during the progression of AD in mouse/rat studies.Notably,the medium dose of GAPT exhibited better performance than the other two doses,providing experimental evidence for further applications of GAPT during clinical practice.展开更多
Human NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1(NQO1)is a flavoenzyme expressed at high levels in multiple solid tumors,making it an attractive target for anticancer drugs.Bioactivatable drugs targeting NQO1,such asβ-lapacho...Human NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1(NQO1)is a flavoenzyme expressed at high levels in multiple solid tumors,making it an attractive target for anticancer drugs.Bioactivatable drugs targeting NQO1,such asβ-lapachone(β-lap),are currently in clinical trials for the treatment of cancer.β-Lap selectively kills NQO1-positive(NQO1^(+))cancer cells by inducing reactive oxygen species(ROS)via catalytic activation of NQO1.In this study,we demonstrated that cryptotanshinone(CTS),a naturally occurring compound,induces NQO1-dependent necrosis without affecting NQO1 activity.CTS selectively kills NQO1^(+)cancer cells by inducing NQO1-dependent necrosis.Interestingly,CTS directly binds to NQO1 but does not activate its catalytic activity.In addition,CTS enables activation of JNK1/2 and PARP,accumulation of iron and Ca^(2+),and depletion of ATP and NAD^(+).Furthermore,CTS selectively suppressed tumor growth in the NQO1^(+)xenograft models,which was reversed by NQO1 inhibitor and NQO1 shRNA.In conclusion,CTS induces NQO1-dependent necrosis via the JNK1/2/iron/PARP/NAD^(+)/Ca^(2+)signaling pathway.This study demonstrates the non-enzymatic function of NQO1 in inducing cell death and provides new avenues for the design and development of NQO1-targeted anticancer drugs.展开更多
Simvastatin, a BCS class II drug, is associated with poor aqueous solubility, first-pass metabolism and short half-life. In the present work, nanoparticles were prepared and evaluated. Optimization of formulation and ...Simvastatin, a BCS class II drug, is associated with poor aqueous solubility, first-pass metabolism and short half-life. In the present work, nanoparticles were prepared and evaluated. Optimization of formulation and process parameters was done through the use of independent and dependent variables. Preliminary studies were done to determine suitable range of the concentration of Eudragit polymer (10%–30%) and the ratio of drug to polymer (1:1 to 1:5) for the formation of nanoparticles by emulsification and a solvent evaporation technique. Results revealed that the mean size of nanoparticles was affected by stirring speed from 5000 RPM, 8000 RPM, and 12000 RPM. The results of increase in association efficiency and percent yield with increase in amount of drug from 100 mg, 150 mg, and 200 mg in selected range were observed. In-vitro release studies showed that two formulations possess highest initial burst and slow sustained drug release. There was 2.93-fold decrease in total cholesterol and 3.27-fold increases in triglyceride level during in-vivo study.展开更多
基金supported by the grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness(SAF2017-85602-R)the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation(PID2020-119638RB-I00 to EGR)FPU-program(FPU17/02616 to JCG)。
文摘The blood–brain barrier constitutes a dynamic and interactive boundary separating the central nervous system and the peripheral circulation.It tightly modulates the ion transport and nutrient influx,while restricting the entry of harmful factors,and selectively limiting the migration of immune cells,thereby maintaining brain homeostasis.Despite the well-established association between blood–brain barrier disruption and most neurodegenerative/neuroinflammatory diseases,much remains unknown about the factors influencing its physiology and the mechanisms underlying its breakdown.Moreover,the role of blood–brain barrier breakdown in the translational failure underlying therapies for brain disorders is just starting to be understood.This review aims to revisit this concept of“blood–brain barrier breakdown,”delving into the most controversial aspects,prevalent challenges,and knowledge gaps concerning the lack of blood–brain barrier integrity.By moving beyond the oversimplistic dichotomy of an“open”/“bad”or a“closed”/“good”barrier,our objective is to provide a more comprehensive insight into blood–brain barrier dynamics,to identify novel targets and/or therapeutic approaches aimed at mitigating blood–brain barrier dysfunction.Furthermore,in this review,we advocate for considering the diverse time-and location-dependent alterations in the blood–brain barrier,which go beyond tight-junction disruption or brain endothelial cell breakdown,illustrated through the dynamics of ischemic stroke as a case study.Through this exploration,we seek to underscore the complexity of blood–brain barrier dysfunction and its implications for the pathogenesis and therapy of brain diseases.
文摘Techniques in deep learning have significantly boosted the accuracy and productivity of computer vision segmentation tasks.This article offers an intriguing architecture for semantic,instance,and panoptic segmentation using EfficientNet-B7 and Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Networks(Bi-FPN).When implemented in place of the EfficientNet-B5 backbone,EfficientNet-B7 strengthens the model’s feature extraction capabilities and is far more appropriate for real-world applications.By ensuring superior multi-scale feature fusion,Bi-FPN integration enhances the segmentation of complex objects across various urban environments.The design suggested is examined on rigorous datasets,encompassing Cityscapes,Common Objects in Context,KITTI Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technological Institute,and Indian Driving Dataset,which replicate numerous real-world driving conditions.During extensive training,validation,and testing,the model showcases major gains in segmentation accuracy and surpasses state-of-the-art performance in semantic,instance,and panoptic segmentation tasks.Outperforming present methods,the recommended approach generates noteworthy gains in Panoptic Quality:+0.4%on Cityscapes,+0.2%on COCO,+1.7%on KITTI,and+0.4%on IDD.These changes show just how efficient it is in various driving circumstances and datasets.This study emphasizes the potential of EfficientNet-B7 and Bi-FPN to provide dependable,high-precision segmentation in computer vision applications,primarily autonomous driving.The research results suggest that this framework efficiently tackles the constraints of practical situations while delivering a robust solution for high-performance tasks involving segmentation.
基金funded by the Santa Casa Neuroscience Awards—Prize Melo e Castro for Spinal Cord Injury Research(MC-18-2021)(to AJS and NAS)by the Wings for Life Spinal Cord Research Foundation(WFL-PT-14/23)(to NAS)+2 种基金funded by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology(FCT)—projects UIDB/50026/2020,UIDP/50026/2020,and EXPL/MED-PAT/0931/2021-http://doi.org/10.54499/EXPL/MED PAT/0931/2021supported by the Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme(NORTE 2020)under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement through the European Regional Development Fund(ERDF)(to SM)the support given by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology to SM(CEECIND/01902/2017-Doi:10.54499/CEECIND/01902/2017/CP1458/CT0024),and NAS(CEECIND/04794/2007)。
文摘The impact of spinal cord injury(SCI)on the immune system is increasingly recognized in a field traditionally focused on motor impairments.SCI can seriously affect the immune system by progressively disrupting the regulatory mechanisms that control immune responses.This dysregulation varies widely among patients and can evolve over time,ranging from systemic inflammatory responses to immunosuppression,greatly contributing to the morbidity and mortality of individuals with SCI(Bao et al.,2011;Brennan et al.,2024).
基金funded by the Minister of Education,Culture,Research,and Technology of Indonesia through a research scheme of“Penelitian Fundamental–Reguler(PFR)2023”under a contract number of 1115c/IT9.2.1/PT.01.03/2023.
文摘This work presents the development of hierarchical niobium pentoxide(Nb_(2)O_(5))-based composite nanofiber membranes for integrated adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue(MB)pollutants from aqueous solutions.The Nb_(2)O_(5) nanorods were vertically grown using a hydrothermal process on a base electrospun nanofibrous membrane made of polyacrylonitrile/polyvinylidene fluoride/ammonium niobate(V)oxalate hydrate(Nb_(2)O_(5)@PAN/PVDF/ANO).They were characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscopy(FE-SEM),X-ray diffraction(XRD)analysis,and Fourier transform infrared(FTIR)spectroscopy.These composite nanofibers possessed a narrow optical bandgap energy of 3.31 eV and demonstrated an MB degradation efficiency of 96%after 480 min contact time.The pseudo-first-order kinetic study was also conducted,in which Nb_(2)O_(5)@PAN/PVDF/ANO nanofibers have kinetic constant values of 1.29×10^(-2) min^(-1) and 0.30×10^(-2) min^(-1) for adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of MB aqueous solutions,respectively.These values are 17.7 and 7.8 times greater than those of PAN/PVDF/ANO nanofibers without Nb_(2)O_(5) nanostructures.Besides their outstanding photocatalytic performance,the developed membrane materials exhibit advantageous characteristics in recycling,which subsequently widen their practical use in environmental remediation applications.
基金Funding for this study is received from Taif University Researchers Supporting Project No.(Project No.TURSP-2020/150)Taif University,Taif,Saudi Arabia。
文摘Digital signal processing of electroencephalography(EEG)data is now widely utilized in various applications,including motor imagery classification,seizure detection and prediction,emotion classification,mental task classification,drug impact identification and sleep state classification.With the increasing number of recorded EEG channels,it has become clear that effective channel selection algorithms are required for various applications.Guided Whale Optimization Method(Guided WOA),a suggested feature selection algorithm based on Stochastic Fractal Search(SFS)technique,evaluates the chosen subset of channels.This may be used to select the optimum EEG channels for use in Brain-Computer Interfaces(BCIs),the method for identifying essential and irrelevant characteristics in a dataset,and the complexity to be eliminated.This enables(SFS-Guided WOA)algorithm to choose the most appropriate EEG channels while assisting machine learning classification in its tasks and training the classifier with the dataset.The(SFSGuided WOA)algorithm is superior in performance metrics,and statistical tests such as ANOVA and Wilcoxon rank-sum are used to demonstrate this.
文摘Most defective and unwanted cells die by apoptosis, cells without damaging the surrounding tissue. Once a an exquisitely controlled genetic programme for removing such cell has committed to apoptosis, the process is remarkably efficient, and is completed within a few minutes of initiation. This point of no retum for an apoptotic cell is commonly held to be the point at which the outer mitochondrial membrane is permeabilised, a process regulated by the Bcl-2 family of proteins. How these proteins regulate this decision point is central to diseases such as cancer where apoptotic control is lost. In this review, we will discuss apoptotic signalling and how a cell makes the irreversible decision to die. We will focus on one set of survival signals, those derived by cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix （ECM）, and use these to highlight the complexities of apoptotic signalling. In particular, we will illustrate how multiple signalling pathways converge to determine critical cell fate decisions.
基金supported by Fundamental Research Grant Scheme Grant(FRGS/1/2018/SKK08/UTAR/01/2)from Ministry of Higher Education(MOHE),Malaysia
文摘Objective:To explore the anti-cancer activity of maslinic acid against colorectal cancer(CRC)cell lines and its possible mechanism.Methods:The inhibitory effect of maslinic acid was screened against five CRC cell lines(HT-29,HCT 116,SW480,SW48,and LS 174 T)via 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay.Apoptosis and cell cycle analyses were carried out using annexinⅤ-FITC/propidium iodide staining and propidium iodide staining,respectively and subjected to fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis.Protein expression studies of inhibitor ofκB kinase-β(IKK-β),checkpoint kinase 1(Chk1)and cyclin D1 were conducted using the JESS system.Results:Maslinic acid exhibited growth inhibitory effect in a doseand time-dependent manner in HT-29 and HCT 116 cell lines.A more prominent apoptosis induced by maslinic acid was observed in HCT 116 cell line.However,in HT-29 cell line,maslinic acid induced cell cycle arrest by inhibiting the G1-S transition,which was accompanied by the downregulation of cyclin D1.The expression of unphosphorylated IKK-βprotein was increased in both(HT-29 and HCT 116)cell lines after maslinic acid treatment.Conclusions:Maslinic acid inhibits the growth of HT-29 and HCT 116 cells in a different manner,induces cell cycle arrest in HT-29 cells and causes apoptosis in HCT 116 cells partially via NF-κB pathway inhibition.
基金This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.61977018the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University,Riyadh,Saudi Arabia for funding this work through research Group No.RG-1438-070in part by the Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hunan Province of China under Grant 16B006.
文摘Image captioning aims to generate a corresponding description of an image.In recent years,neural encoder-decodermodels have been the dominant approaches,in which the Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)and Long Short TermMemory(LSTM)are used to translate an image into a natural language description.Among these approaches,the visual attention mechanisms are widely used to enable deeper image understanding through fine-grained analysis and even multiple steps of reasoning.However,most conventional visual attention mechanisms are based on high-level image features,ignoring the effects of other image features,and giving insufficient consideration to the relative positions between image features.In this work,we propose a Position-Aware Transformer model with image-feature attention and position-aware attention mechanisms for the above problems.The image-feature attention firstly extracts multi-level features by using Feature Pyramid Network(FPN),then utilizes the scaled-dot-product to fuse these features,which enables our model to detect objects of different scales in the image more effectivelywithout increasing parameters.In the position-aware attentionmechanism,the relative positions between image features are obtained at first,afterwards the relative positions are incorporated into the original image features to generate captions more accurately.Experiments are carried out on the MSCOCO dataset and our approach achieves competitive BLEU-4,METEOR,ROUGE-L,CIDEr scores compared with some state-of-the-art approaches,demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.
基金partially supported by the Intermtional Islamic University Malaysia(HUM)through EDWB1002-350
文摘Objective:To study the chemical constituents of stembark of Garcinia malaccenm（G.malaccenm） together with apoptotic.antimicrobial and antioxidant activities.Methods:Purification and structure elucidation were carried out by chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques, respectively.MTT and trypan blue exclusion methods were performed to study the cytotoxic activity.Antibacterial activity was conducted by dise diffusion and microdilulion methods, whereas antioxidant activities were done by ferric thiocyanate method and DPPH radical scavenging.Results:The phylochemical study led lo the isolation ofα,β-mangostin and cycloarl-24-en-3β-ol.α-Mangostin exhibited cytotoxic activity against HSC-3 cells with an IC<sub>50</sub> of 0.33μM.β- andα-mangostin showed activity against K562 cells with IC<sub>50</sub> of 0.40μM and 0.48μM,respectively,α-Mangostin was active against Gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus（S.aureus） and Bacilus anthracis（B.anthmcis） with inhibition zone and MIC value of（19 mm;0.02S mg/mL） and（20 mm;0.013 mg/mL）,respectively.In antioxidant assay,α-mangostin exhibited activity as an inhibitor of lipid peroxidation.Conclusions:G.malaccenm presenceα- andβ-mangostin and cycloart-24-en-3β-ol.β-Mangostin was found very active against H.SC-3 cells and KS62.The results suggest that mangoslins derivatives have the potential to inhibit the growth of cancer cells by inducing apoptosis.In addition,α-andβ-mangostin was found inhibit the growth of Cram-positive pathogenic bacteria and also showed the activity as an inhibitor of lipid peroxidation.
文摘Indonesia is the most producer of crude palm oil (CPO) worldwide with production more that 25 million tons in 2013. Through increasing production of CPO the wastes generated are growing up as well. The empty fruit bunch of oil palm (EFB) is one of the solid waste (biomass) which is generated at the palm oil mill. Its amount is equivalent to the CPO production, but only about 50% of its weight are good fibers for further usage as industrial raw material. The EFB fiber consists an interesting honey comb/lightweight structure. By mixing the EFB natural fiber with bio binding agent based on potato the environmental friendly materials (biocomposites) can be produced which are 100% biodegadrable. The biocomposites with 2 mm thickness have strengthness about 7 GPa according to the 3 points bending test standard of DIN 53 457. After coating process the environmental friendly lightweight materials with density less than 0.4 g/cm3 will be ready to be implemented for different technical applications.
文摘AIM: To evaluate mucosal healing in patients with small bowel plus colonic Crohn's disease(CD) with a single non-invasive examination, by using PillCam COLON 2.(PCC2).METHODS: Patients with non-stricturing nonpenetrating small bowel plus colonic CD in sustained corticosteroid-free remission were included. At diagnosis,patients had undergone ileocolonoscopy to identify active CD lesions, such as ulcers and erosions, and small bowel capsule endoscopy to assess the Lewis Score(LS). After ≥ 1 year of follow-up, patients underwent entire gastrointestinal tract evaluation with PCC2. The primary endpoint was assessment of CD mucosal healing, defined as no active colonic CD lesions and LS < 135.RESULTS: Twelve patients were included(7 male;mean age: 32 years), and mean follow-up was 38 mo.The majority of patients(83.3%) received immunosuppressive therapy. Three patients(25%) achieved mucosal healing in both the small bowel and the colon,while disease activity was limited to either the small bowel or the colon in 5 patients(42%). It was possible to observe the entire gastrointestinal tract in 10 of the12 patients(83%) who underwent PCC2.CONCLUSION: Only three patients in sustainedcorticosteroid-free clinical remission achieved mucosal healing in both the small bowel and the colon, highlighting the limitations of clinical assessment when stratifying disease activity, and the need for pan-enteric endoscopy to guide therapeutic modification.
文摘In this paper,we proposed an innovation diffusion model with three compartments to investigate the diffusion of an innovation(product)in a particular region.The model exhibits two equilibria,namely,the adopter-free and an interior equilibrium.The existence and local stability of the adopter-free and interior equilibria are explored in terms of the effective Basic Influence Number(BIN)R_(A).It is investigated that the adopter free steady-state is stable if R_(A)<1.By consideringτ(the adoption experience of the adopters)as the bifurcation parameter,we have been able to obtain the critical value ofτresponsible for the periodic solutions due to Hopf bifurcation.The direction and stability analysis of bifurcating periodic solutions has been performed by using the arguments of normal form theory and the center manifold theorem.Exhaustive numerical simulations in the support of analytical results have been presented.
基金Universidad de Chile for providing the academic support to conduct the research presented in this article and also PT Freeport Indonesia for supporting this project and facilitating the edition of this article.
文摘This article describes an undergoing research at PT Freeport, Indonesia, in which the main goal is to use the microseismic information recorded as a result of mining to analyze cave propagation and stress performance on the actual production and fixed infrastructure. At the moment, several numerical experiments have been conducted to correlate the mining activity with the microseismic events using the data collected during year 2005 and 2006. As a result of the preliminary analysis a micro- and a macrocracking envelop were proposed on the basis of computation of stress behavior at the location of the events. Stresses have been computed using standard elastic continuous boundary element models. The correlation between the average source radius and the stress performance has provided a method to propose a macrocracking criterion. Several techniques have been tested to nucleate the microseismic activity around different geological features. This last attempt was aimed to look at potential overstresses induced over the undercut and extraction level drifts. A method was devised to integrate the microseismicity into a 3-dimensional ride distribution model. This model has shown to be very effective to quantify the overstress induced as a result of computing volumetric microseismicity density. The volumetric microseismic model showed to induce overstress up to 10 MPa over a period of two months. The future work will concentrate on the calibration of the integrated model with actual damage observations made at the current mining infrastructure.
文摘AIM: To investigate the influence of Trichuris muris (T. muris) infection in a mouse model of genetic susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease, Mdr1a-/-.
文摘<span style="font-family:Verdana;">This study aims to evaluate the optical losses of photovoltaic modules due to Saharan dust deposition in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. For this purpose, an air-dust-glass system is modeled to simulate optical losses in transmittance </span><span style="font-family:Verdana;">and reflectance. To do this, we have collected dust samples from Photo-Voltaic</span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> (PV) surface in Dakar area (14<span style="white-space:nowrap;">°</span>42'N latitude, 17<span style="white-space:nowrap;">°</span>28'W longitude), Senegal. X-ray fluorescence reveals that silicon (Si), iron (Fe), calcium (Ca) and potassium (K) mainly </span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">compose</span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:;" "=""><span style="font-family:Verdana;">d these dust samples. Then, dust refractive indices obtained from an ellipsometer were used as an input to be used in the model. Simulations show that for radiation (at normal incidence) arriving on a dust layer of 30 μm-thick (corresponding to a dust deposit of 1.63 g/m</span><sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">2</span></sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">), 79% of the visible spectrum is transmitted</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">;</span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:;" "=""><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> 19% is reflected and 2% is absorbed. Overall, the transmittance decreases by more than 50% as of dust layer of 70 μm-thick corresponding to a dust deposit of 3.3 g/m</span><sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">2</span></sup><span style="font-family:Verdana;">.</span></span></span></span></span>
基金Institutions of Higher Education for Academic Disciplinary Innovations(the“111 Project”)(B08006)Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University(IRT0810)+1 种基金Research Project for Practice Development of National TCM Clinical Research Bases(JDZX2015297)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(81573824,81503625,and 81473518).
文摘Objective:To evaluate the efficacy of the Chinese herbal compound GAPT for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease(AD)and to provide current evidence for potential treatment mechanisms.Methods:A comprehensive search of PubMed,Embase,Web of Science,SinoMed,China Network Knowledge Infrastructure,Wanfang Data,and Chinese Scientific Journals Database was performed to identify GAPT mouse/rat studies published from inception to July 2019.The outcomes extracted were Morris water maze results and molecular biological quantifications.Results:A total of 19 studies were included in this analysis.The analysis indicated that GAPT was able to significantly improve learning and memory abilities compared with model mice/rats,as assessed by Morris water maze,and showed similar efficacy as donepezil.Subgroup analyses showed that low,medium,and high doses resulted in no obvious dose-dependent effects.Additionally,the GAPT group had significantly reduced expression levels of amyloid-beta peptide,presenilin 1,phosphorylated tau,acetylcholinesterase,and glycogen synthase kinase-3b,but increased expression levels of Shank1,and protein phosphatase-2A,and improved synapses structures compared with the model group,and subgroup analyses showed the medium dose of GAPT was superior to the low and high doses.Conclusions:Based on the pooled analysis,GAPT improved the learning and memory abilities and regulated the expression levels of related proteins during the progression of AD in mouse/rat studies.Notably,the medium dose of GAPT exhibited better performance than the other two doses,providing experimental evidence for further applications of GAPT during clinical practice.
基金supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund,Macao S.A.R(FDCT)(0070/2022/A2,005/2023/SKL,China)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(82173848)+1 种基金the Research Fund of University of Macao(MYRG2020-00053-ICMS,MYRG-GRG2023-00072-ICMS-UMDF,China)the Ministry of Education Frontiers Science Centre for Precision Oncology,University of Macao(SP2023-00001-FSCPO,China).
文摘Human NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1(NQO1)is a flavoenzyme expressed at high levels in multiple solid tumors,making it an attractive target for anticancer drugs.Bioactivatable drugs targeting NQO1,such asβ-lapachone(β-lap),are currently in clinical trials for the treatment of cancer.β-Lap selectively kills NQO1-positive(NQO1^(+))cancer cells by inducing reactive oxygen species(ROS)via catalytic activation of NQO1.In this study,we demonstrated that cryptotanshinone(CTS),a naturally occurring compound,induces NQO1-dependent necrosis without affecting NQO1 activity.CTS selectively kills NQO1^(+)cancer cells by inducing NQO1-dependent necrosis.Interestingly,CTS directly binds to NQO1 but does not activate its catalytic activity.In addition,CTS enables activation of JNK1/2 and PARP,accumulation of iron and Ca^(2+),and depletion of ATP and NAD^(+).Furthermore,CTS selectively suppressed tumor growth in the NQO1^(+)xenograft models,which was reversed by NQO1 inhibitor and NQO1 shRNA.In conclusion,CTS induces NQO1-dependent necrosis via the JNK1/2/iron/PARP/NAD^(+)/Ca^(2+)signaling pathway.This study demonstrates the non-enzymatic function of NQO1 in inducing cell death and provides new avenues for the design and development of NQO1-targeted anticancer drugs.
基金the Department of Science and Technology(DST-FIST)Letter no-SR/FST/COLLEGE/2018/418New Delhi for providing financial assistance.The authors AV acknowledge the Department of Science and Technology,New Delhi,India(DST/INSPIRE Fellowship/2019/IF190329 and DST/NM/NT/2018/20)for providing financial assistance for the successful completion of this work.
文摘Simvastatin, a BCS class II drug, is associated with poor aqueous solubility, first-pass metabolism and short half-life. In the present work, nanoparticles were prepared and evaluated. Optimization of formulation and process parameters was done through the use of independent and dependent variables. Preliminary studies were done to determine suitable range of the concentration of Eudragit polymer (10%–30%) and the ratio of drug to polymer (1:1 to 1:5) for the formation of nanoparticles by emulsification and a solvent evaporation technique. Results revealed that the mean size of nanoparticles was affected by stirring speed from 5000 RPM, 8000 RPM, and 12000 RPM. The results of increase in association efficiency and percent yield with increase in amount of drug from 100 mg, 150 mg, and 200 mg in selected range were observed. In-vitro release studies showed that two formulations possess highest initial burst and slow sustained drug release. There was 2.93-fold decrease in total cholesterol and 3.27-fold increases in triglyceride level during in-vivo study.
