Transparent Silica Aerogels: Optical and Chemical Design, Controlled Synthesis, and Emerging Applications.

Transparent silica aerogel, serving as one typical porous and transparent material, possesses various unique features (e.g., large amounts of pores and interfaces, super-lightweight, super thermal insulation, low refractive index similar to gas), and it has attracted great attention in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and others. Transparency is one important evaluation index of transparent silica aerogel, and it was influenced by various factors such as raw materials, sol-gel reactions, phase separation, and drying methods. The structure design and fabrication of transparent silica aerogel is one huge and fine engineering. In this review, the optical/chemical guidance and design for the preparation of transparent silica aerogels are discussed, and typical applications, such as Cherenkov detectors, solar energy collection, lighting systems, and transparent fabric, also were discussed. Finally, a future outlook on the opportunities and challenges of transparent silica aerogels was proposed.

Taxonomy, biological characterization and fungicide sensitivity assays of Hypomyces cornea sp. nov. causing cobweb disease on Auricularia cornea.

Auricularia cornea is an important edible mushroom crop in China but the occurrence of cobweb disease has cause significance economic loss in its production. The rate of disease occurrence is 16.65% all over the country. In the present study, a new pathogen Hypomyces cornea sp. nov. was found to cause the cobweb disease. In July 2021, three strains of fungal pathogen were isolated from infected fruiting bodies and identified as H. cornea based on morphological studies and molecular phylogenetic analysis of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of nuclear ribosomal DNA, mitochondrial large subunit (LSU) of rRNA and the partial translation elongation factor 1-alpha genes. The representative isolates of the pathogenic Hypomyces species used to perform pathogenicity test with spore suspension that caused similar symptoms as those observed in the cultivated field, and same pathogens could be re-isolated, which fulfill Koch's postulates. The typical biological characterization was examined of the serious pathogen to determine its favorable growth conditions, including suitable temperature, pH, carbon, nitrogen sources and light conditions. The findings revealed an optimum temperature of 25 °C, pH of 6, and soluble starch and peptone as the preferred carbon and nitrogen sources, respectively. The hyphal growth inhibition method was used for primary in vitro screening test of seven common fungicides, and the most suitable fungicide is Prochloraz manganese chloride complex, the EC50 values of cobweb pathogen and mushrooms were 0.085 µg/mL and 2.452 µg/mL, respectively. The results of our research provide an evidence-based basis for the effective prevention and treatment of A. cornea cobweb disease.

Towards a Deeper Understanding of Global Covariance Pooling in Deep Learning: An Optimization Perspective.

Global covariance pooling (GCP) as an effective alternative to global average pooling has shown good capacity to improve deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in a variety of vision tasks. Although promising performance, it is still an open problem on how GCP (especially its post-normalization) works in deep learning. In this paper, we make the effort towards understanding the effect of GCP on deep learning from an optimization perspective. Specifically, we first analyze behavior of GCP with matrix power normalization on optimization loss and gradient computation of deep architectures. Our findings show that GCP can improve Lipschitzness of optimization loss and achieve flatter local minima, while improving gradient predictiveness and functioning as a special pre-conditioner on gradients. Then, we explore the effect of post-normalization on GCP from the model optimization perspective, which encourages us to propose a simple yet effective normalization, namely DropCov. Based on above findings, we point out several merits of deep GCP that have not been recognized previously or fully explored, including faster convergence, stronger model robustness and better generalization across tasks. Extensive experimental results using both CNNs and vision transformers on diversified vision tasks provide strong support to our findings while verifying the effectiveness of our method.

First report of cobweb disease in Auricularia cornea caused by Hypomyces mycophilus in Guizhou, China.

Auricularia cornea is a widely cultivated mushroom in China, which has high medicinal values such as hemostaticity, analgesia, antioxidation and anti-tumor (Wu et al., 2019). In 2022, an investigation on edible mushroom diseases in Guizhou Province observed a suspected cobweb disease in an A. cornea growing factory, with up to 30% incidence. The pathogen first produced flocculent hyphae on the surface of the fruiting body of A. cornea, and then developed spider web-like aerial hyphae, covering the entire fruiting bodies. It hinders the normal growth of A. cornea, resulting in deformity and rot of the fruiting bodies. These symptoms seriously affect the quantity and quality of mushroom yields and cause huge economic losses. Three fungal isolates (GUCCX001, GUCCX002 and GUCCX003) were recovered from the diseased mushroom fruiting bodies and purified through single spore isolation. The colonies of three isolates spread rapidly on PDA, reaching 79-82 mm in seven days. The flocculent mycelium was whitish, and its reverse turned from yellowish to amber after 14 days. The branched conidiophores arising from aerial mycelia were septate and each cell contained several denticulate conidiogenous loci. Each denticle contained a single conidium. Conidia were observed at the tip of conidiophore branches and were 0-1-septate, oval or spherical, transparent, 5.2-11.3 × 11.7-18.7 µm (n = 35). Chlamydospores were visible as 3-4 thick-walled cells at the tip of lateral hyphal branches. Three isolates were tentatively identified as H. mycophilus based on their morphological characteristics similar to those described by Rogerson and Samuels (1993). The sequence of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region (primers ITS5/ITS4) (Rehner and Samuels, 1994) and nuclear ribosomal large subunit (LSU) region (primers LR0R/LR5) (Vilgalys and Heste, 1990) of GUCCX001 (ITS: OP777905; LSU: OQ152071), GUCCX002 (ITS: OP862872; LSU: OQ152072) and GUCCX003 (ITS: OP862873; LSU: OP862873) were 99%-100% similar to H. mycophilus CBS 175.56 (ITS: MH857567; LSU: MH869110). Fifteen healthy fruiting bodies of A. cornea were inoculated by spraying spore suspension (106 conidia/mL) of the three isolates and five healthy fruiting bodies were sprayed with sterile water as control. All inoculated fruiting bodies were kept at 25 ℃. After three days, fruiting bodies of A. cornea treated with the spore suspension exhibited the same symptoms of cobweb as in the factory, while no symptom appeared in the control. Pathogens re-isolated from diseased fruiting bodies were confirmed to be H. mycophilus based on morphological characteristics, which fulfills the Koch's postulate. Zeng et al. (2017) reported H. mycophilus on the fruiting bodies of Auricularia sp. as a new record in Guangdong, China. H. mycophilus caused cobweb disease on A. auricula (Liu et al., 2020), A. cornea var. Li. (Cao et al., 2023) and A. heimuer (Zhang et al., 2023). To our knowledge, this is the first report of cobweb disease in A. cornea caused by H. mycophilus in Guizhou, China. Our findings will provide a basis for correct diagnosis and management of cobweb diseases on A. cornea.

Runt-related transcription factor 3, mediated by DNA-methyltransferase 1, regulated Schwann cell proliferation and myelination during peripheral nerve regeneration via JAK/STAT signaling pathway.

Schwann cells (SCs) play a crucial role in peripheral nerve injury and regeneration. Recently, RUNX3 was found to be linked with neurological dysfunction. We examined the RUNX3 expression in sciatic nerve stumps with peripheral nerve injury of rats, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)-induced SCs. MTT assay was applied to determine the proliferation of SCs. Cell migration and apoptosis were assessed using wound healing assay and flow cytometry. Subsequently, we detected the methylation level of RUNX3 using Methylation-specific PCR assay and verified its regulation by DNMT1. The RUNX3 expressions were increased in sciatic nerve stumps with peripheral nerve injury and cAMP-induced SCs differentiation, which were related to demethylation of its promoter region regulated by DNMT1. RUNX3 knockdown notably suppressed the proliferation and migration, and induced the cell apoptosis of SCs. Silencing of RUNX3 inhibited the cAMP-induced morphological changes of SCs and the increase of myelin-related proteins induced by cAMP in SCs, while RUNX3 overexpression exerted opposite effects. Besides, the overexpression of RUNX3 promoted the activation of JAK/STAT signaling to regulate SCs proliferation and myelination. Meanwhile, DNMT1 overexpression inhibited the expression of RUNX3, and cell proliferation and myelination. In conclusion, RUNX3 mediated by DNMT1 regulated SC proliferation and myelination via JAK/STAT signaling pathway.

PHOSPHO1 Serves as a Key Metabolism-Related Biomarker in the Tumorigenesis of Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma.

OBJECTIVE: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is an aggressive type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Due to its genetic heterogeneity and abnormal metabolism, many DLBCL patients have a poor prognosis. This study investigated the key metabolism-related genes and potential mechanisms. METHODS: Differentially expressed genes, differentially expressed transcription factors (TFs), and differentially expressed metabolism-related genes (DEMRGs) of glucose and lipid metabolic processes were identified using the edgeR package. Key DEMRGs were screened by Lasso regression, and a prediction model was constructed. The cell type identification by estimating relative subsets of RNA transcripts algorithm was utilized to assess the fraction of immune cells, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis was used to determine immune-related pathways. A regulatory network was constructed with significant co-expression interactions among TFs, DEMRGs, immune cells/pathways, and hallmark pathways. RESULTS: A total of 1551 DEMRGs were identified. A prognostic model with a high applicability (area under the curve=0.921) was constructed with 13 DEMRGs. Tumorigenesis of DLBCL was highly related to the neutrophil count. Four DEMRGs (PRXL2AB, CCN1, DECR2 and PHOSPHO1) with 32 TF-DEMRG, 36 DEMRG-pathway, 14 DEMRG-immune-cell, 9 DEMRG-immune-gene-set, and 67 DEMRG-protein-chip interactions were used to construct the regulatory network. CONCLUSION: We provided a prognostic prediction model based on 13 DEMRGs for DLBCL. We found that phosphatase, orphan 1 (PHOSPHO1) is positively regulated by regulatory factor X5 (RFX5) and mediates MYC proto-oncogene (MYC) targeting the V2 pathway and neutrophils.

Nigericin exerts anticancer effects through inhibition of the SRC/STAT3/BCL-2 in osteosarcoma.

The treatment of osteosarcoma has reached a bottleneck period in recent 30 years, there is an urgent need to find new drugs and treatment methods. Nigericin, an antibiotic derived from Streptomyces hygroscopicus, has exerted promising antitumoral effect in various tumors. The anticancer effect of Nigericin in human osteosarcoma has never been reported. In the present study, we explored the anticancer effects of Nigericin in osteosarcoma in vitro and in vivo. Our results showed that nigericin treatment significantly reduced tumor cell proliferation in dose-dependent and time-dependent in human osteosarcoma cells. Nigericin can inhibit cell growth of osteosarcoma cells, in addition to S-phase cycle arrest, the nigericin induces apoptosis. Furthermore, bioinformatics predicted that Nigericin exerts anticancer effects through inhibiting SRC/STAT3 signaling pathway in osteosarcoma. The direct binding between SRC and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) was confirmed by Western blot. Nigericin can down regulate STAT3 and Bcl-2. In order to further elucidate the inhibitory effect of nigericin on SRC/STAT3/Bcl-2 signal transduction mechanism, we established human osteosarcoma cancer cells stably expressing STAT3. Western blot confirmed that nigericin exerts anticancer effects on human osteosarcoma cancer cells by directly targeting STAT3. In addition, Nigericin can significantly inhibit tumor migration and invasion. Finally, Nigericin inhibits tumor growth in a mouse osteosarcoma model. The nigericin targeting the SRC/STAT3/BCL-2 signaling pathway may provide new insights into the molecular mechanism of nigericin on cancer cells and suggest its possible clinical application in osteosarcoma.

Detachable Second-Order Pooling: Toward High-Performance First-Order Networks.

Second-order pooling has proved to be more effective than its first-order counterpart in visual classification tasks. However, second-order pooling suffers from the high demand for a computational resource, limiting its use in practical applications. In this work, we present a novel architecture, namely a detachable second-order pooling network, to leverage the advantage of second-order pooling by first-order networks while keeping the model complexity unchanged during inference. Specifically, we introduce second-order pooling at the end of a few auxiliary branches and plug them into different stages of a convolutional neural network. During the training stage, the auxiliary second-order pooling networks assist the backbone first-order network to learn more discriminative feature representations. When training is completed, all auxiliary branches can be removed, and only the backbone first-order network is used for inference. Experiments conducted on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet data sets clearly demonstrated the leading performance of our network, which achieves even higher accuracy than second-order networks but keeps the low inference complexity of first-order networks.

Deep CNNs Meet Global Covariance Pooling: Better Representation and Generalization.

Compared with global average pooling in existing deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), global covariance pooling can capture richer statistics of deep features, having potential for improving representation and generalization abilities of deep CNNs. However, integration of global covariance pooling into deep CNNs brings two challenges: (1) robust covariance estimation given deep features of high dimension and small sample size; (2) appropriate usage of geometry of covariances. To address these challenges, we propose a global Matrix Power Normalized COVariance (MPN-COV) Pooling. Our MPN-COV conforms to a robust covariance estimator, very suitable for scenario of high dimension and small sample size. It can also be regarded as Power-Euclidean metric between covariances, effectively exploiting their geometry. Furthermore, a global Gaussian embedding network is proposed to incorporate first-order statistics into MPN-COV. For fast training of MPN-COV networks, we implement an iterative matrix square root normalization, avoiding GPU unfriendly eigen-decomposition inherent in MPN-COV. Additionally, progressive 1×1 convolutions and group convolution are introduced to compress covariance representations. The proposed methods are highly modular, readily plugged into existing deep CNNs. Extensive experiments are conducted on large-scale object classification, scene categorization, fine-grained visual recognition and texture classification, showing our methods outperform the counterparts and obtain state-of-the-art performance.

Resveratrol protects early brain injury after subarachnoid hemorrhage by activating autophagy and inhibiting apoptosis mediated by the Akt/mTOR pathway.

Early brain injury (EBI) plays a key role in determining the prognosis of patients suffering from subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Resveratrol, a natural polyphenol, serves a neuroprotection function on EBI after SAH. However, the potential mechanism of resveratrol on EBI remains to be elucidated. Akt, also known as protein kinase B, and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), the downstream protein of Akt, play key roles in cell survival and apoptosis, cell cycle regulation, and cellular protein homeostasis. In the present study, we examined the effect of resveratrol on EBI and their potential relationship with the Akt/mTOR pathway, autophagy, and apoptosis. Rats received intraperitoneal administration of resveratrol or vehicle immediately after establishing SAH model. We found that mortality and brain edema were significantly lower, whereas the neurological score was higher for resveratrol-treated rats. HE staining showed that resveratrol significantly reduced the neuronal pyknosis and swelling in the resveratrol-treated rats compared with SAH rats. The results were assessed by western blot, reverse transcription-PCR , and immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence at 24 h after injury to determine changes in the expression of the Akt/mTOR signaling pathway, autophagy, and apoptosis proteins. Western blot analysis showed that the expression of beclin-1, LC3-II, LC3-II/LC3-I, and Bcl-2 was increased in resveratrol-treated rats, whereas the expression of p-Akt, p-mTOR, p62, cleaved caspase-3, caspase-9, and Bcl-2-associated X protein was decreased. Immunohistochemistry analysis of beclin-1, LC3-B treated with resveratrol alone or in combination with 3-methyladenine (autophagy inhibitor) suggested that resveratrol induced the autophagy process and the inhibitor blocked the occurrence of autophagy, and also increased the number of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated digoxigenin-DUTP-biotin nick-end labeling (+) cells. Taken together, these findings indicate that resveratrol exerts neuroprotective effects on EBI after SAH by regulating autophagy and apoptosis mediated by the Akt/mTOR pathway.

The Diagnostic and Prognostic Role of Interleukin 12B and Interleukin 6R Gene Polymorphism in Patients With Ankylosing Spondylitis.

OBJECTIVES: Interleukin 23 (IL-23) pathway and IL-1 cluster genes play prominent role in the etiopathology of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic and prognostic role of 5 single-nucleotide polymorphisms related to IL-23 pathway and IL-1 cluster genes in AS patients. METHODS: Four hundred thirty-one patients with AS and 206 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were recruited in this prospective cohort study. Five potential single-nucleotide polymorphisms (IL-23R [rs11209026], IL-12B [rs6871626], TYK2 [rs6511701], IL-6R [rs4129267], and IL-1R2 [rs2192752]) related to IL-23 pathway and IL-1 cluster genes by analyzing previous studies were genotyped. Among 431 total AS patients, 198 active cases were treated and followed up for 24 weeks. RESULTS: Frequencies of IL-12B AA (rs6871626) and IL-6R TT (rs4129267) genotypes were increased in AS patients compared with healthy controls (both P < 0.001), and IL-12B A (rs6871626) as well as IL-6R T (rs4129267) allele increased the risk of AS independently (both P < 0.001). The Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index score was found to be elevated in AS patients with IL-12B AA (rs6871626) compared with patients with the CA and CC genotypes (P = 0.002 and P < 0.001, respectively), and the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index score was also increased in AS patents with IL-12B AA (rs6871626) than in those with the CA and CC genotypes (P = 0.001 and P < 0.001). In addition, IL-6R T (rs4129267) allele could predict a worse ASAS-20 (Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society) response at week 24 as an independent factor by multivariate logistic regression analysis with additive model (P = 0.011). CONCLUSIONS: Interleukin 12B (rs6871626) and IL-6R (rs4129267) gene polymorphisms could serve as promising biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis in AS patients.

Comparison of percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy versus open lumbar microdiscectomy for lumbar disc herniation: A meta-analysis.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study is to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the clinical results of percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PELD) and open lumbar microdiscectomy (OLM) for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation (LDH). METHODS: Randomized controlled trials or non-randomized controlled trials published from the time when databases were built to March 2016 that compared the clinical effectiveness of PELD and OLM surgical approaches for the treatment of LDH were acquired by a comprehensive search in four electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science and Cochrane library). A total of 7 studies (1389 patients) were included in this systematic review and meta-analysis. Pooled mean differences (MD) and odds ratios (OR) and with 95% CIs were calculated for the outcomes. RESULT: The results showed that there were no statistically between the PELD group and OLM group in terms of preoperative VAS-BP score (WMD = 0.03; 95% CI: -0.99 to 1.05; P = 0.95), postoperative VAS-BP score (WMD = -0.56; 95% CI: -1.43 to 0.31; P = 0.21), postoperative ODI (WMD = -0.98; 95% CI: -4.96 to 3.00; P = 0.63), complication rate (OR = 1.79; 95% CI: 0.95 to 3.37; P = 0.07) or reoperation rate (OR = 1.44; 95% CI: 0.94 to 2.20; P = 0.09). PELD group was associated with shorter operation time (WMD = -12.83; 95% CI: -24.79 to -0.87; P = 0.04) and hospital stay (WMD = -5.49; 95% CI: -8.63 to -2.35; P = 0.0006). CONCLUSION: The existing evidence indicate that no superiority exists between the two surgical approaches for the treatment of LDH in terms of functional outcome, complication rate and reoperation rate, in spite of that PELD surgical group can achieve shorter operation time and hospital stay than OLM surgical group.

Three single nucleotide polymorphisms of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene and glioma risk in a Chinese population.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene and the risk of glioma in a Han Chinese population. METHODS: This hospital-based case-control study used polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis to detect three SNPs (-634 G/C, +936 C/T and +1612 G/A) of the VEGF gene in patients with glioma compared with healthy control subjects. RESULTS: The study investigated 880 patients with gliomas and 880 age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects. Patients with gliomas had a significantly higher frequency of the -634 CC genotype (odds ratio [OR] 1.35, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.05, 1.75) and the +936 TT (OR 1.73, 95% CI 1.20, 2.48) genotype compared with the control subjects. Patients with glioblastomas had a significantly higher frequency of the -634 CC and +936 TT genotypes. Patients with grade IV gliomas had a significantly higher frequency of the -634 CC and +936 TT genotypes. The +1612 G/A polymorphisms were not associated with glioma risk. CONCLUSION: The VEGF - 634 CC and +936 TT genotypes were associated with a higher risk of glioma in a Han Chinese population.

Hypoxia regulates reactive oxygen species levels in SHG-44 glioma cells.

In the present study, cultured human SHG-44 glioma cells were subjected to a hypoxic environment simulated using the CoCl2 method. Flow cytometry showed increased reactive oxygen species production in these cells. Real-time reverse transcription-PCR showed significantly increased hypoxia-inducible factor-1α mRNA expression in cells exposed to the hypoxic condition. The antioxidant N-acetylcysteine significantly inhibited reactive oxygen species production and reduced hypoxia-inducible factor-1α mRNA expression in normoxic and hypoxic groups, especially in the latter group. These findings indicate that hypoxia induces reactive oxygen species production and hypoxia-inducible factor-1α mRNA expression in human SHG-44 glioma cells, and that the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine can inhibit these changes.

Synthesis and antiviral activity against Coxsackie virus B3 of some novel benzimidazole derivatives.

Some benzimidazole derivatives were synthesized and evaluated for their antiviral properties. Compounds 20 and 21 showed potent selective activity against Coxsackie virus B(3) in VERO cells. Some structure-activity relationships were discussed.

[Experimental study on stimulation of guided bone regeneration by autogenous bone marrow].

OBJECTIVE: To study the effect of autogenous bone marrow on guided bone regeneration (GBR), and evaluate the repairing ability of GBR in bone defect with autogenous bone marrow. METHODS: Ten mm segmental defects were produced in both radii of 18 rabbits. The defect was bridged with a silicon tube. Autogenous bone marrow was injected into the tube on the experimental group at 0, 2, 4 weeks after operation, and peripheral blood into the control group at the same time. The X-ray, gross, histological and biochemical examinations were observed in various times. RESULTS: The new bone formation of experimental group was prior to that of control group; calcium and alkaline phosphatase of experimental group were higher than those of control group. The experimental group had all been healed at the tenth week, but no one healed in control group. CONCLUSION: It can be conclude that autogenous bone marrow can stimulate bone formation and facilitate GBR in bone defect.