Bioactive sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables: advances in biosynthesis, metabolism, bioavailability, delivery, health benefits, and applications.

Chronic inflammation-induced diseases (CID) are the dominant cause of death worldwide, contributing to over half of all global deaths. Sulforaphane (SFN) derived from cruciferous vegetables has been extensively studied for its multiple functional benefits in alleviating CID. This work comprehensively reviewed the biosynthesis, metabolism, bioavailability, delivery, health benefits, and applications of SFN and its potential mechanisms against CID (e.g., cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, et al.), and neurological disorders based on a decade of research. SFN exerts its biological functions through the hydrolysis of glucosinolates by gut microbiota, and exhibits rapid metabolism and excretion characteristics via metabolization of mercapturic acid pathway. Microencapsulation is an important way to improve the stability and targeted delivery of SFN. The health benefits of SNF against CID are attributed to the multiple regulatory mechanisms including modulating oxidative stress, inflammation, apoptosis, immune response, and intestinal homeostasis. The clinical applications of SFN and related formulations show promising potential; however, further exploration is required regarding the sources, dosages, toxicity profiles, and stability of SFN. Together, SFN is a natural product with great potential for development and application, which is crucial for the development of functional food and pharmaceutical industries.

[Research on grading algorithm of diabetic retinopathy based on cross-layer bilinear pooling].

Considering the small differences between different types in the diabetic retinopathy (DR) grading task, a retinopathy grading algorithm based on cross-layer bilinear pooling is proposed. Firstly, the input image is cropped according to the Hough circle transform (HCT), and then the image contrast is improved by the preprocessing method; then the squeeze excitation group residual network (SEResNeXt) is used as the backbone of the model, and a cross-layer bilinear pooling module is introduced for classification. Finally, a random puzzle generator is introduced in the training process for progressive training, and the center loss (CL) and focal loss (FL) methods are used to further improve the effect of the final classification. The quadratic weighted Kappa (QWK) is 90.84% in the Indian Diabetic Retinopathy Image Dataset (IDRiD), and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) in the Messidor-2 dataset (Messidor-2) is 88.54%. Experiments show that the algorithm proposed in this paper has a certain application value in the field of diabetic retina grading.

A new type of power energy for accelerating chemical reactions: the nature of a microwave-driving force for accelerating chemical reactions.

The use of microwave (MW) irradiation to increase the rate of chemical reactions has attracted much attention recently in nearly all fields of chemistry due to substantial enhancements in reaction rates. However, the intrinsic nature of the effects of MW irradiation on chemical reactions remains unclear. Herein, the highly effective conversion of NO and decomposition of H2S via MW catalysis were investigated. The temperature was decreased by several hundred degrees centigrade. Moreover, the apparent activation energy (Ea') decreased substantially under MW irradiation. Importantly, for the first time, a model of the interactions between microwave electromagnetic waves and molecules is proposed to elucidate the intrinsic reason for the reduction in the Ea' under MW irradiation, and a formula for the quantitative estimation of the decrease in the Ea' was determined. MW irradiation energy was partially transformed to reduce the Ea', and MW irradiation is a new type of power energy for speeding up chemical reactions. The effect of MW irradiation on chemical reactions was determined. Our findings challenge both the classical view of MW irradiation as only a heating method and the controversial MW non-thermal effect and open a promising avenue for the development of novel MW catalytic reaction technology.