Analysis of the regulatory role of miR-34a-5p/PLCD3 in the progression of osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis is a heterogeneous disease with a complex etiology. However, there is no effective treatment strategy at present. The purpose of this study was to explore the miRNA‒mRNA regulatory network and molecular mechanism that regulate the progression of osteoarthritis. In this article, we downloaded datasets (GSE55457, GSE82107, GSE143514 and GSE55235) from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) to screen differentially expressed mRNAs in osteoarthritis. Then, through weighted gene coexpression network (WGCNA), functional enrichment, protein‒protein interaction (PPI) network, miRNA‒mRNA coexpression network, ROC curve, and immune infiltration analyses and qPCR, the mRNA PLCD3, which was highly expressed in osteoarthritis and had clinical predictive value, was screened. We found that PLCD3 directly targets miR-34a-5p through DIANA and dual-luciferase experiments. The expression levels of PLCD3 and miR-34a-5p were negatively correlated. In addition, CCK-8 and wound healing assays showed that the miR-34a-5p mimic inhibited hFLS-OA cell proliferation and promoted hFLS-OA cell migration. PLCD3 overexpression showed the opposite trend. Western blotting further found that overexpression of miR-34a-5p reduced the protein expression levels of p-PI3K and p-AKT, while overexpression of PLCD3 showed the opposite trend. In addition, combined with the effect of the PI3K/AKT pathway inhibitor BIO (IC50 = 5.95 µM), the results showed that overexpression of miR-34a-5p increased the inhibitory effects of BIO on p-PI3K and p-AKT protein expression, while overexpression of PLCD3 significantly reversed these inhibitory effects. Overall, the miR-34a-5p/PLCD3 axis may mediate the PI3K/AKT pathway in regulating cartilage homeostasis in synovial osteoarthritis. These data indicate that miR-34a-5p/PLCD3 may be a new prognostic factor in the pathology of synovial osteoarthritis.

Changes in the cortical network during sleep stage transitions.

Sleep state transitions are closely related to insomnia, drowsiness, and sleep maintenance. However, how the cortical network varies during such a transition process remains unclear. Changes in the cortical interaction during the short-term process of sleep stage transitions were investigated. In all, 40 healthy young participants underwent overnight polysomnography. The phase transfer entropy of six frequency bands was obtained from 16 electroencephalography channels to assess the strength and direction of information flow between the cortical regions. Differences in the cortical network between the first and the last 10 s in a 40-s transition period across wakefulness, N1, N2, N3, and rapid eye movement were, respectively, studied. Various frequency bands exhibited different patterns during the sleep stage transitions. It was found that the mutual transitions between the sleep stages were not necessarily the opposite. More significant changes were observed in the sleep deepening process than in the process of sleep awakening. During sleep stage transitions, changes in the inflow and outflow strength of various cortical regions led to regional differences, but for the entire sleep progress, such an imbalance did not intensify, and a dynamic balance was instead observed. The detailed findings of variations in cortical interactions during sleep stage transition promote understanding of sleep mechanism, sleep process, and sleep function. Additionally, it is expected to provide helpful clues for sleep improvement, like reducing the time required to fall asleep and maintaining sleep depth.

Genetic inconsistency at the D6S1043 locus caused by microdeletion at 6q15.

In the practice of parentage testing, short tandem repeat (STR) genetic inconsistencies occasionally occur and are usually treated as genetic mutations. However, they arise for various reasons. To elucidate the reasons for their occurrence, this study investigates a typical trio. For the D6S1043 locus, the genotype of the biological mother comprised the heterozygous alleles "7,20"; that of the child, allele 20; and that of the alleged father, a heterozygous allele "11,13," revealing a 7-step mutation. Different kits were first used to verify the data. The locus map, primers, and core sequences were then analyzed. Ultimately, the STR and single nucleotide polymorphisms of 6q were tested to determine the microdeletion range. The results revealed that this was indeed a true trio, and the underlying cause of the genetic inconsistency at this locus was a microdeletion of approximately 0.74-1.78 Mb in 6q15. Overall, genetic inconsistencies detected during practical work, and particularly rare multi-step mutations, cannot be directly identified as STR mutations. Different tools should be used to examine the causes of genetic inconsistencies from various perspectives and improve the effectiveness of genetic evidence.

The expression and significance of p4E-BP1/4E-BP1 in prostate cancer.

BACKGROUND: Although the phosphorylation of 4E-BP1 that has been detected in high-grade prostate cancer has been reported in previous studies, overexpression of p4E-BP1 and 4EBP1 and their clinical significance in prostate cancer still remain unknown. METHODS: One hundred six samples of prostate tissues were collected and analyzed by immunohistochemistry with p4E-BP1 or 4E-BP1 specific antibodies. Everolimus was used to block the phosphorylation of p4E-BP1, and then flow cytometry, clone formation, transwell, and wound healing assays were performed to detect the survival and invasive ability of the prostate cancer cells. RESULTS: We found that the expression of 4E-BP1 and p4E-BP1 was higher in prostate cancer tissues than in normal tissues. Interestingly, the expression of p4E-BP1 was significantly associated with Gleason score and lymph node metastasis, but had no obvious correlation with PSA and the presence of bone or visceral metastasis. However, no evident correlation was found between the positive expression of 4E-BP1 and these clinical characteristics. In in vitro experiments, we found similar results as the clinical presentation that 4E-BP1 and p4E-BP1 were low expressed in normal prostate epithelial cells, but in prostate cancer cells, as the malignancy increasing, 4E-BP1 and p4E-BP1 expression also gradually increased. Then, we used Everolimus to inhibit the phosphorylation of 4E-BP1 and found that Everolimus effectively reduced cloning formation, inhibited cell migration, and promoted apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner in PC3 cells. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that p4E-BP1 is a potential biomarker and therapy target for prostate cancer, and patients with high expressions of p4E-BP1 may benefit from Everolimus treatment.

Genetic and structural characterisation of 20 autosomal STR loci from the Henan Han population of Central China.

Aim: This study was designed to investigate the genetic polymorphisms and forensic parameters of the 20 autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci included in the PowerPlex® 21 System (Promega, USA) in the Henan Han population with a view to expand the genetic information available for this population in human genome databases.Subjects and methods: We evaluated the genetic polymorphisms from 20 autosomal STR loci using DNA typing based on 2995 individuals from the Henan Han population in Central China and then used this information to investigate the genetic relationships between this population and 10 other Han populations across China. These comparisons included genetic distance, phylogenetic trees, and principal component analysis (PCA).Results: We identified a total of 290 alleles and 1343 genotypes within the Henan Han population, with none of these loci deviating from their Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE). The population comparisons revealed that geographically close populations demonstrated closer genetic relationships. Thus, the Henan Han population was shown to be close to both the Beijing Han and Tianjin Han populations, creating a single cluster. In addition, these 20 STR loci exhibited a high degree of genetic polymorphisms, making them suitable for individual identification and parentage testing.Conclusions: The results of this study will enrich the forensic databases of Chinese Han populations and serve as a resource for further studies in these populations.

Putative functional variants of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway are associated with knee osteoarthritis susceptibility.

BACKGROUND: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative musculoskeletal disease which causes joint deformity and pain and finally leads to limb dysfunction. Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) has the highest incidence among all kinds of OA. Strong evidence leads to the understanding that P13K/AKT/mTOR signaling is very important in cartilage degeneration. METHODS: This research sought to understand the association between genetic variation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR genes and KOA susceptibility among Chinese population. All the genetic variants of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway were graded and selected using RegulomeDB database, and then, an association study including 278 osteoarthritis patients and 289 controls was conducted. RESULTS: Finally, eight SNPs' genotypes' distributions and susceptibility to KOA were presented. AKT1 rs2498789 was associated with KOA susceptibility in dominate genetic model (AA + GA vs GG) after adjusted for BMI, age, and gender: OR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.03-2.05, P = .03. PIK3CA rs7646409 was also associated with KOA susceptibility (TC vs TT) after adjusted for BMI, age, and gender: OR = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.36-0.93, P = .02. PIK3CA rs7646409 (TC vs TT) with KOA risk was more significant in age < 60 group (P for heterogeneity was .03). Risk score showed significant association with KOA susceptibility after cumulative analysis (OR = 2.45, 95% CI: 1.35-4.45, P = .003). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that genetic variation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR is associated with KOA susceptibility in Chinese Han population, indicating that PI3K/AKT/mTOR is very important in KOA pathogenesis.

Genetic analysis of 39 Y-STR loci in a Han population from Henan province, central China.

A total of 39 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat (Y-STR) loci included in the advanced commercial six-dye multiplex system (AGCU Database Y30 kit) and a custom-designed four-dye multiplex system were investigated in 259 unrelated healthy Chinese males residing in Henan Province, central China. The haplotype diversity (HD) values were 0.99997 and 1.0000 for the six and four fluorescent-multiplex amplification systems, respectively. The discrimination capacity (DC) values were 0.9961 and 1.0000, respectively. When the 39 Y-STR loci were considered, 259 unique haplotypes were obtained in Henan Han individuals with both the haplotype diversity and discrimination capacity being 1.000. The gene diversity (GD) of 39 Y-STR loci in the studied group ranged from 0.3956 (DYS588) to 0.9990 (DYF403S1). Population comparisons between the Henan Han and 24 reference groups were performed. Both multidimensional scaling plots and phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that significant genetic differences existed between Henan Han and reference ethnic minorities of China, particularly the Tibetan, Uighur, and Mongolian populations. Moreover, the results indicated that 39 Y-STRs included in the two fluorescent-multiplex amplification systems are highly polymorphic and informative in the studied populations and can be employed as complementary tools for forensic application and human genetics research.

Putative functional variants of lncRNA identified by RegulomeDB were associated with knee osteoarthritis susceptibility.

BACKGROUND: Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is the most common form of chronic degenerative joint disease worldwide. Its incidence has increased in recent years. Aberrant expression profile of lncRNAs in damaged bone and cartilage of KOA patients has been reported recently, indicating its potential contributions in KOA development and a promising target for disease diagnosis and treatment. The aim of this study was to identify the association between genetic variation in lncRNA and KOA. METHODS: We retrieved relevant articles from the PubMed, Medline and Embase databases up to Jul 2017 investigating the association between lncRNA and the risk of osteoarthritis. There are 15 lncRNAs which show connection with osteoarthritis. We selected potential functional polymorphisms identified by RegulomeDB database in these lncRNAs. A case-control study was conducted which contained 278 KOA patients and 289 OA-free controls. RESULTS: Logistic regression analyses revealed that H19 rs2067051 T allele was significantly associated with decreased risk of KOA after adjusted for age, gender and BMI in recessive genetic model (OR = 0.63, P = 0.03) and additive genetic model (OR = 0.79, P = 0.03). MEG3 rs4378559 T allele was significantly associated with increased risk of KOA in additive genetic model (OR = 1.32, P = 0.04). Heterogeneity tests proved that H19 rs2067051, MEG3 rs4378559 and HOTTIP rs202384's risk effects on KOA were more remarkable for female, BMI ≥ 25 and younger age (age < 60), respectively. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that potential functional genetic variation in lncRNA plays an important role in the pathogenesis of KOA.

The down-regulation of GADD45B leads to a conversion of cellular oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis and promotes the progression of bladder cancer.

Background: The predominant feature of cancer cells during the process of carcinogenesis is the inclination towards glycolytic metabolism rather than mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of research investigating the correlation between bladder cancer and mitochondrial energy metabolism. Methods: A qPCR array comprising 90 genes associated with mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation was employed to discern metabolic disparities between three sets of bladder cancer tissue and adjacent normal tissue. Wound healing and transwell assays were utilized to assess cell migration and invasion capabilities, respectively. Colony formation assays were conducted to ascertain the tumorigenic potential of the cells. The proliferative capacity of the cells was examined through in vitro CCK-8 assays. Additionally, nude mouse models were established to evaluate the impact of bladder tumor cells on in vivo proliferation. The Seahorse XFe96 Analyzer was utilized to quantify mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, while the levels of glucose-6-phosphate and pyruvate were assessed to evaluate glycolysis. Results: Examination of qPCR array data demonstrated a noteworthy inhibition of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation in bladder cancer tissue, as evidenced by the down-regulation of a majority of genes associated with mitochondrial energy metabolism. Notably, GADD45B may potentially exert a significant influence on bladder cancer development, warranting further investigation. The down-regulation of GADD45B in bladder cancer cells resulted in impaired mitochondrial respiration and elevated levels of glycolysis, thereby enhancing cell migration and invasion. Conversely, up-regulation of GADD45B had the opposite effect. Furthermore, over-expression of GADD45B inhibited tumor proliferation and tumorigenesis in both in vitro and in vivo settings. Conclusion: These findings from our study indicate that the down-regulation of GADD45B promotes the shift of cell mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation towards glycolysis, thereby facilitating the progression of bladder cancer.

Sinularin stabilizes FOXO3 protein to trigger prostate cancer cell intrinsic apoptosis.

Sinularin, a natural product that purified from soft coral, exhibits anti-tumor effects against various human cancers. However, the mechanisms are not well understood. In this study, we demonstrated that Sinularin inhibited the viability of human prostate cancer cells in a dose-dependent manner and displayed significant cytotoxicity only at high concentration against normal prostate epithelial cell RWPE-1. Flow cytometry assay demonstrated that Sinularin induced tumor cell apoptosis. Further investigations revealed that Sinularin exerted anti-tumor activity through intrinsic apoptotic pathway along with up-regulation of pro-apoptotic protein Bax and PUMA, inhibition of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, mitochondrial membrane potential collapses, and release of mitochondrial proteins. Furthermore, we illustrated that Sinularin induced cell apoptosis via up-regulating PUMA through inhibition of FOXO3 degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. To explore how Sinularin suppress FOXO3 ubiquitin-proteasome degradation, we tested two important protein kinases AKT and ERK that regulate FOXO3 stabilization. The results revealed that Sinularin stabilized and up-regulated FOXO3 via inhibition of AKT- and ERK1/2-mediated FOXO3 phosphorylation and subsequent ubiquitin-proteasome degradation. Our findings illustrated the potential mechanisms by which Sinularin induced cell apoptosis and Sinularin may be applied as a therapeutic agent for human prostate cancer.

Damage-Accumulation-Induced Crack Propagation and Fatigue Life Analysis of a Porous LY12 Aluminum Alloy Plate.

Rivets are usually used to connect the skin of an aircraft with joints such as frames and stringers, so the skin of the connection part is a porous structure. During the service of the aircraft, cracks appear in some difficult-to-detect parts of the skin porous structure, which causes great difficulties in the service life prediction and health monitoring of the aircraft. In this paper, a secondary development subroutine in PYTHON based on ABAQUS-XFEM is compiled to analyze the cracks that are difficult to monitor in the porous structure of aircraft skin joints. The program can automatically analyze the stress intensity factor of the crack tip with different lengths in the porous structure, and then the residual fatigue life can be deduced. For the sake of safety, the program adopts a more conservative algorithm. In comparison with the physical fatigue test results, the fatigue life of the simulation results is 16% smaller. This project provides a feasible simulation method for fatigue life prediction of porous structures. It lays a foundation for the subsequent establishment of digital twins for damage monitoring of aircraft porous structures.

Joint Answering and Explanation for Visual Commonsense Reasoning.

Visual Commonsense Reasoning (VCR), deemed as one challenging extension of Visual Question Answering (VQA), endeavors to pursue a higher-level visual comprehension. VCR includes two complementary processes: question answering over a given image and rationale inference for answering explanation. Over the years, a variety of VCR methods have pushed more advancements on the benchmark dataset. Despite significance of these methods, they often treat the two processes in a separate manner and hence decompose VCR into two irrelevant VQA instances. As a result, the pivotal connection between question answering and rationale inference is broken, rendering existing efforts less faithful to visual reasoning. To empirically study this issue, we perform some in-depth empirical explorations in terms of both language shortcuts and generalization capability. Based on our findings, we then propose a plug-and-play knowledge distillation enhanced framework to couple the question answering and rationale inference processes. The key contribution lies in the introduction of a new branch, which serves as a relay to bridge the two processes. Given that our framework is model-agnostic, we apply it to the existing popular baselines and validate its effectiveness on the benchmark dataset. As demonstrated in the experimental results, when equipped with our method, these baselines all achieve consistent and significant performance improvements, evidently verifying the viability of processes coupling.

[One-stage repair of full-thickness skin defect at dorsal skin of middle phalanx fingers using artificial dermis combing with digital artery perforator fascial flaps].

OBJECTIVE: To explore clinical effects of the stageⅠrepair of full-thickness skin defect at dorsal skin of middle phalanx fingers using artificial dermis combing with digital artery perforator fascial flaps. METHODS: From January 2019 to May 2020, 21 patients(27 middle phalanx fingers)with full-thickness skin defect were repaired at stageⅠusing artificial dermis combing with digital artery perforator fascial flaps. All patients were emergency cases, and were accompanied by the exposure of bone tendon and the defects of periosteum and tendon membrane. Among patients, including 11 males and 10 females aged from 18 to 66 years old with an average age of (39.00±8.01) years old;9 index fingers, 10 middle fingers and 8 ring fingers;range of skin defect area ranged from (2.5 to 3.5) cm×(1.5 to 3.0) cm;range of exposed bone tendon area was (1.5 to 2.0) cm×(1.0 to 2.0) cm. The time from admission to hospital ranged from 1 to 6 h, operation time started from 3 to 8 h after injury. RESULTS: All patients were followed up from 6 to12 months with an average of (9.66±1.05) months. The wounds in 26 cases were completely healed at 4 to 6 weeks after operation. One finger has changed into wound infection with incompletely epithelialized dermis, and achieved wound healing at 8 weeks after dressing change. All fingers were plump with less scars. The healed wound surface was similar to the color and texture of the surrounding skin. These fingers have excellent wearability and flexibility. According to the upper limb function trial evaluation standard of Hand Surgery Society of Chinese Medical Association, the total score ranged from 72 to 100. 26 fingers got excellent result and 1 good. CONCLUSION: StageⅠrepair of full-thickness skin defect at dorsal skin of middle phalanx fingers using artificial dermis combing with digital artery perforator fascial flaps is easy to operate with less trauma. It has made satisfactory recovery of appearance and function of fingers. It could provide an effective surgical method for clinical treatment of full-thickness skin loss of fingers with tendon and bone exposure.

SFT-Net: A Network for Detecting Fatigue From EEG Signals by Combining 4D Feature Flow and Attention Mechanism.

Fatigued driving is a leading cause of traffic accidents, and accurately predicting driver fatigue can significantly reduce their occurrence. However, modern fatigue detection models based on neural networks often face challenges such as poor interpretability and insufficient input feature dimensions. This paper proposes a novel Spatial-Frequency-Temporal Network (SFT-Net) method for detecting driver fatigue using electroencephalogram (EEG) data. Our approach integrates EEG signals' spatial, frequency, and temporal information to improve recognition performance. We transform the differential entropy of five frequency bands of EEG signals into a 4D feature tensor to preserve these three types of information. An attention module is then used to recalibrate the spatial and frequency information of each input 4D feature tensor time slice. The output of this module is fed into a depthwise separable convolution (DSC) module, which extracts spatial and frequency features after attention fusion. Finally, long short-term memory (LSTM) is used to extract the temporal dependence of the sequence, and the final features are output through a linear layer. We validate the effectiveness of our model on the SEED-VIG dataset, and experimental results demonstrate that SFT-Net outperforms other popular models for EEG fatigue detection. Interpretability analysis supports the claim that our model has a certain level of interpretability. Our work addresses the challenge of detecting driver fatigue from EEG data and highlights the importance of integrating spatial, frequency, and temporal information. Codes are available at https://github.com/wangkejie97/SFT-Net.

CO2-mediated catalytic upcycling of plastic waste for H2-rich syngas and carbon nanomaterials.

To establish a reliable disposal platform of plastic waste, this work developed a novel dual-stage CO2-medaited decomposition-catalysis route by applying multi-functional zeolite-supported bimetallic catalysts. Catalytic upcycling of plastic was first performed in Ar as a reference environment. Bimetallic Fe-Co/ZSM5 catalyst achieved the highest gas yield (53.98 mmol/g), with a H2 proportion of 62.17 vol%. It was evidenced that the Fe-Co alloy had an apparent positive synergistic effect on catalytic cracking and reforming of intermediate volatiles into H2-rich fuel gas and pure carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Regarding CO2-mediated decomposition-catalysis of plastic, there was an apparent synergistic effect between metallic Ni and Fe on gas production so that bimetallic Ni-Fe catalyst gained the maximum cumulative gas yield of 82.33 mmol/g, with a syngas purity of ∼74%. Ni-Fe/ZSM5 also achieved the maximum hydrogen efficiency (87.38%) and CO2-to-CO conversion efficiency (98.62%), implying hydrogen content in plastic and oxygen content in CO2 were essentially converted into gases. Additionally, bimetallic Ni-Fe catalyst revealed the highest carbon production (33.74 wt%), witnessing a synergistic enhancement of 43.45%; specially, approximately 257 mg/g CNTs were anchored on Ni-Fe/ZSM5, with a CNTs purity of over 76%. Overall, this study offers a superb solution in plastic waste valorization and greenhouse gas emission management.

Passivating Lead Halide Perovskites Using Pyridinium Salts with Superhalogen Atoms.

Passivating lead halide perovskites using pyridinium salts has attracted enormous attention, but the excellent surface passivation of the halide perovskites has not been achieved by using only a pyridinium salt until now. Herein, passivating the (001) planes of the cubic CsPbI3, CH3NH3PbI3, and NH2CHNH2PbI3 perovskites using the pyridinium salts of C5NH6X (X = Cl, Br, I, PF6, ClO4, or BF4) is systematically studied by high-throughput first-principle calculations and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. The results show that the excellent surface passivation of the three perovskites is achieved by the pyridinium salt of C5NH6BF4 (i.e., shallow level, negative formation energy, unchanged band-edge construction, and stable dynamics property are obtained for the three passivated perovskites), which strongly imply that their devices can show excellent performances, such as long-term stability, low ion migration, and high efficiency. However, the C5NH6ClO4 and C5NH6PF6 pyridinium salts are only profitable for passivating the (001) PbI2 plane of the three perovskites, and other C5NH6X pyridinium salts have adverse effects.

Associations between cortical activation and network interaction during sleep.

Cortical activation and network interaction, two characterizations of the cortical states, are separately studied in most previous studies. To further clarify the underlying mechanism, the association between these two indicators during sleep was investigated in this study. Twenty healthy individuals were enrolled and all of them underwent overnight polysomnography (PSG) recording. The relative spectral powers and the phase transfer entropy (PTE) of various frequency components were extracted from 6 electroencephalographic (EEG) channels, to assess the cortical activation and network interaction, respectively. Pearson correlation coefficient was employed to estimate their associations. The results suggested that there was a negative correlation between spectral power and phase transfer entropy in δ and α frequency bands during sleep. As the sleep deepened, an increased negative correlation in the δ frequency band was noted, but the negative correlation became less extreme in the α frequency band. The extremum of the correlation coefficient was noted in δ of N3, and α of Wake. Overall, this study provides a connection between these two cortical activity assessments, especially reveals the variable characteristics of different frequency components, which is conducive to better understand sleep state.

A Comprehensive Hydrothermal Co-Liquefaction of Diverse Biowastes for Energy-Dense Biocrude Production: Synergistic and Antagonistic Effects.

Hydrothermal co-liquefaction (co-HTL) is a promising technology to valorize binary or even ternary biowastes into bioenergy. However, the complex biochemical compositions and unclear synergistic effect prevent the development of this technology. Thus, this study explored a comprehensive co-HTL of representative biowastes to investigate the synergistic and antagonistic effects. An apparent synergistic effect on biocrude yield was observed when sewage sludge was co-liquefied with cow manure or wheat straw. Further, the co-HTL of sewage sludge-cow manure was investigated in a detailed manner. The highest yield (21.84 wt%) of biocrude, with a positive synergistic effect (11.37%), the highest energy recovery (47.48%), and a moderate biocrude HHV (34.31 MJ/kg) were achieved from co-HTL at 350 °C for 30 min. Hydrochar and gas products were also characterized to unravel the reaction pathways. Accordingly, this work indicates that sewage sludge co-liquefied with other biowastes can serve as a multi-purpose solution for biowaste treatment and bioenergy production.

Minimal EEG channel selection for depression detection with connectivity features during sleep.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Sleeping cortical electroencephalogram (EEG) has the potential for depression detection, for different sleep structure and cortical connection have been proved in depressed patients. However, the operation of multi-channel sleep EEG recording is cumbersome and requires laboratory equipment and professional sleep technician. Here, we focus on the depression detection using minimal sleep EEG channels. METHODS: Sixteen channels of EEG data of 30 patients with depression and 30 age-matched normal controls were recorded during sleep. Power spectral density of each single EEG channel was calculated, followed by measuring the symbolic transfer entropy (STE) and weighed phase lag index (WPLI) between EEG channel pairs in various frequency bands. Thereafter, these features were evaluated by F-score in the two-way classification (depression vs. control) of 30-s sleep EEG segments. Based on the F-score, entropy method was introduced to calculate the weight which could further assess the classification ability of various EEG channels or channel pairs. Finally, machine learning was implemented to verify the important EEG channels or channel pairs in depression diagnosis. RESULTS: The features characterizing the inter-hemispheric connectivity in the posterior lobe, especially in the temporal lobe, showed high classification capacity. The classification accuracy of using two and four EEG channels in the temporal lobe were 97.96% and 99.61%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed the possibility of using only a few sleep EEG channels for depression screening, which may greatly facilitate the diagnosis of depression outside the hospital.

Graph Theory Analysis of the Cortical Functional Network During Sleep in Patients With Depression.

Depression, a common mental illness that seriously affects the psychological health of patients, is also thought to be associated with abnormal brain functional connectivity. This study aimed to explore the differences in the sleep-state functional network topology in depressed patients. A total of 25 healthy participants and 26 depressed patients underwent overnight 16-channel electroencephalography (EEG) examination. The cortical networks were constructed by using functional connectivity metrics of participants based on the weighted phase lag index (WPLI) between the EEG signals. The results indicated that depressed patients exhibited higher global efficiency and node strength than healthy participants. Furthermore, the depressed group indicated right-lateralization in the δ band. The top 30% of connectivity in both groups were shown in undirected connectivity graphs, revealing the distinct link patterns between the depressed and control groups. Links between the hemispheres were noted in the patient group, while the links in the control group were only observed within each hemisphere, and there were many long-range links inside the hemisphere. The altered sleep-state functional network topology in depressed patients may provide clues for a better understanding of the depression pathology. Overall, functional network topology may become a powerful tool for the diagnosis of depression.