Modified ventriculoperitoneal shunt applied to temporary external ventricular drainage.

External ventricular drainage (EVD) is a common procedure in neurosurgical practice. Presently, the three methods used most often include direct EVD (dEVD), long-tunneled external ventricular drains (LTEVDs), and EVD via the Ommaya reservoir (EVDvOR). But they possess drawbacks such as limited duration of retention, vulnerability to iatrogenic secondary infections, and challenges in regulating drainage flow. This study aimed to explore the use of a modified ventriculoperitoneal shunt (mVPS)-the abdominal end of the VPS device was placed externally-as a means of temporary EVD to address the aforementioned limitations. This retrospective cohort study, included 120 cases requiring EVD. dEVD was performed for 31 cases, EVDvOR for 54 cases (including 8 cases with previously performed dEVD), and mVPS for 35 cases (including 6 cases with previously performed EVDvOR). The one-time success rate (no need for further other EVD intervention) for dEVD, EVDvOR, and mVPS were 70.97%, 88.89%, and 91.42%, dEVD vs EVDvOR (P < 0.05), dEVD vs mVPS (P < 0.05), EVDvOR vs mVPS (P > 0.05). Puncture needle displacement or detachment was observed in nearly all cases of EVDvOR, while no such complications have been observed with mVPS. Apart from this complication, the incidence of postoperative complications was 35.48%, 14.81%, and 8.5%, dEVD vs EVDvOR (P < 0.05), dEVD vs mVPS (P < 0.05), EVDvOR vs mVPS (P > 0.05). Mean postoperative retention for EVD was 14.68 ± 9.50 days, 25.96 ± 15.14 days, and 82.43 ± 64.45 days, respectively (P < 0.001). In conclusion, mVPS significantly extends the duration of EVD, which is particularly beneficial for patients requiring long-term EVD.

An Advanced Deep Attention Collaborative Mechanism for Secure Educational Email Services.

The COVID-19 crisis has once again highlighted the vulnerabilities of some critical areas in cyberspace, especially in the field of education, as distance learning and social distance have increased their dependence on digital technologies and connectivity. Many recent cyberattacks on e-learning systems, educational content services, and trainee management systems have created severe demands for specialized technological solutions to protect the security of modern training methods. Email is one of the most critical technologies of educational organizations that are attacked daily by spam, phishing campaigns, and all kinds of malicious programs. Considering the efforts made by the global research community to ensure educational processes, this study presents an advanced deep attention collaborative filter for secure academic email services. It is a specialized application of intelligent techniques that, for the first time, examines and models the problem of spam as a system of graphs where collaborative referral systems undertake the processing and analysis of direct and indirect social information to detect and categorize spam emails. In this study, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is applied to the social graph adjacent table to place users in one (or more) overlapping communities. Also, using a deep attention mechanism, it becomes personalized for each user. At the same time, with the introduction of exponential random graph models (ERGMs) in the process of factorization, local dependencies are significantly mitigated to achieve the revelation of malicious communities. This methodology is being tested successfully in implementing mail protection systems for educational organizations. According to the findings, the proposed algorithm outperforms all other compared algorithms in every metric tested.

Tackling Explicit Material from Online Video Conferencing Software for Education Using Deep Attention Neural Architectures.

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic affected all areas of social life, especially education. Globally, many states have closed schools temporarily or imposed local curfews. According to UNESCO estimations, approximately 1.5 billion students have been affected by the closure of schools and the mandatory implementation of distance learning. Although rigorous policies are in place to ban harmful and dangerous content aimed at children, there are many cases where minors, mainly students, have been exposed relatively or unfairly to inappropriate, especially sexual content, during distance learning. Ensuring minors' emotional and mental health is a priority for any education system. This paper presents a severe attention neural architecture to tackle explicit material from online education video conference applications to deal with similar incidents. This is an advanced technique that, for the first time in the literature, proposes an intelligent mechanism that, although it uses attention mechanisms, does not have a square complexity of memory and time in terms of the size of the input. Specifically, we propose the implementation of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) with the help of a local, sparse attention mechanism, which can accurately detect obscene and mainly sexual content in streaming online video conferencing software for education.

Effects of ginsenoside Rb1 on second-degree burn wound healing and FGF-2/PDGF-BB/PDGFR-ß pathway modulation.

BACKGROUND: Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F. H. Chen (P. notoginseng) is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been used therapeutically for cardiovascular diseases, inflammatory diseases and traumatic injuries as well as for external and internal bleeding due to injury. Ginsenoside Rb1, a crucial monomeric active constituent extracted from P. notoginseng, has attracted widespread attention because of its potential anti-inflammatory, bacteriostatic, and cell growth-promoting effects. In this study, the therapeutic effects of ginsenoside Rb1 on second-degree burn in rats and the potential underlying mechanisms were explored. METHODS: A rat model of second-degree burn injury was established, and skin wound healing was monitored at different time points after ginsenoside Rb1 treatment. HE staining was performed to identify burn severity, and biological tissues were biopsied on days 0, 7, 14, and 24 after treatment. Skin wound healing at different time points was monitored by macroscopic observation. Furthermore, IHC, WB, and RT-PCR were utilized to determine the protein and mRNA expression levels of PDGF-BB, PDGFR-ß, and FGF-2 in wound tissues after treatment. RESULTS: HE staining showed that after 24 days of ginsenoside Rb1 treatment, skin tissue morphology was significant improved. Macroscopic observation demonstrated that in ginsenoside Rb1-treated rats, the scab removal time and fur growth time were decreased, and the wound healing rate was increased. Collectively, the results of IHC, WB and RT-PCR showed that PDGF-BB, PDGFR-ß, and FGF-2 expressions peaked earlier in ginsenoside Rb1-treated rats than in model rats, consistent with the macroscopic observations. CONCLUSION: Collectively, these findings  indicated that ginsenoside Rb1 promotes burn wound healing via a mechanism possibly associated with upregulation of FGF-2/PDGF-BB/PDGFR-ß gene and protein expressions.

Corilagin ameliorates atherosclerosis by regulating MMP-1, -2, and -9 expression in vitro and in vivo.

Corilagin is a polyphenol has been identified anti-inflammatory properties. However, the anti-atherosclerotic effects of corilagin are not well understood. Here, we evaluated the anti-atherosclerotic effects and the underlying mechanisms of corilagin. We also verified whether corilagin can reverse atherosclerosis by regulating matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1, -2, and -9 in vitro and in vivo. An atherosclerosis model was established by feeding minipigs a high-fat diet combined with balloon injury, and the effects of different concentrations of corilagin on common carotid artery atherosclerosis in minipigs were monitored. Murine RAW264.7 macrophages were cultured and induced with oxidized low-density lipoprotein; fluorescence microscopy revealed the nuclear translocation of NF-κB. Furthermore, MMP-1, -2, and -9 expression in common carotid artery plaques and cellular models was detected by immunohistochemistry, western blotting, and RT-PCR. The pathological results suggested that the vascular intima of the model control group was significantly thickened, a large amount of collagen fibers was deposited, endothelial cells were damaged and detached, and plaque and foam cell formation occurred to varying degrees on the arterial wall, with lipid deposition. Corilagin treatment significantly reduced the degree of injury in the common carotid artery and decreased the number of lipid plaques and foam cells. Additionally, corilagin downregulated MMP-1, -2, and -9 expression in the common carotid artery plaques and cellular model. Moreover, corilagin significantly inhibited NF-κB nuclear translocation in vitro. Overall, corilagin exerted substantial therapeutic effects on experimental atherosclerotic minipigs via the downregulation of MMP-1, -2, and -9 expression.