Network Analysis of Osteoarthritis Progression Using a Steiner Minimal Tree Algorithm.

Purpose: To provide a comprehensive analysis of associated genes with osteoarthritis (OA). Here, we reported a network analysis of OA progression by using a Steiner minimal tree algorithm. Methods: We collected the OA-related genes through screening the publications in MEDLINE. We performed functional analysis to analyze the associated biochemical pathways of the OA-related genes. Pathway crosstalk analysis was constructed to explore interactions of the enriched pathways. Steiner minimal tree algorithm was used to analyze molecular pathway networks. The average clustering coefficient was compared with the corresponding values of the Osteoarthritis-specific network. The new finding RNA was compared with former single-cell RNA-seq analysis results. Results: A gene set with 177 members reported to be significantly associated with Osteoarthritis was collected from 187 studies. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a specific related-OA gene including skeletal system development, cytokine-mediated signaling pathway, inflammatory response, cartilage development, and extracellular matrix organization. We performed a pathway crosstalk analysis among the 72 significantly enriched pathways. A total of 151 of the 177 genes in the Osteoarthritis gene set were included in the human interactome network. There were 31 genes in the former single-cell RNA-seq analysis results. The CLU, ENO1, SRRM1, UBC, HMGB1, NR3C1, NOTCH2NL, and CBX5 have significantly increased expression in seven molecularly defined populations of OA cartilage. Conclusion: The Steiner tree-based approach finds new biological molecules associated with OA genes.

Key point calibrating and clustering for hard example mining of dense analogs in the fish-eye lens.

Recent years have witnessed widespread applications of the fish-eye lens with a wide field-of-view. However, its inherent distortion poses a big challenge to the intelligent recognition of dense analogs (IRDA) by convolutional neural networks (CNN). The major bottleneck of existing CNN models lies in their limited modeling capacity for distorted objects in fish-eye images, leading to the misclassification of hard examples. To further improve the accuracy of IRDA, we propose a novel key point calibrating and clustering (KPCC) algorithm based on the hemispherical projection model. Our method can effectively correct the hard example misclassification predicted by the CNN, significantly enhancing the performance of the IRDA. The experiments show that, as a light-weight computation calibrating and stable adaptive clustering method, the KPCC increases the precision and recall rate of IRDA on the intelligent retail dataset by 8.55% and 8.07%, respectively; compared with the classic Focalloss, QFocalloss, and OHEM (online hard example mining), it can mine hard examples more sufficiently, especially in the scene of distorted dense analog detection.

Detection of Transdermal Drug Delivery Efficiency by Shock Wave.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to observe the drug distribution ex-vivo after transdermal drug delivery (TDD) by Shock Wave (SW) and to explore the different effects of the two types of shock waves. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine female Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into 3 groups: (i) control group; (ii) RESW group (0.35mJ/mm2, 2 Hz, 400 pulse); (iii) FESW group (0.16mJ/mm2, 2 Hz, 400 pulse). Micro positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) was used to observe the distribution of [18]F-NaF. Furthermore, 12 SD rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: (i) control group; (ii) FESW group 1 (0.03mJ/mm2, 2 Hz, 400 pulse); (iii) FESW group 2 (0.16mJ/mm2, 2 Hz, 400 pulse); (iv) FESW group 3 (0.35mJ/mm2, 2 Hz, 400 pulse). High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) tested diclofenac sodium and glucose percutaneously TDD by FESW. Statistical significance was conducted by analysis of variance of repeated measurement. RESULTS: The micro PET/CT observed FESW could penetrate [18]F-NaF through the skin, while RESW could not. The second study found the higher the energy of the FESW, the more diclofenac sodium and glucose penetration. Repeated measures analysis of variance found a within-subject effect (diclofenac sodium, F = 4.77, p = 0.03), (glucose, F = 8.95, p = 0.006), significant differences between the control group, FESW group 1, and FESW group 2 (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The study found that FESW can penetrate [18]F-NaF, sugar and diclofenac sodium into the rat body. FESW has a good indication of drug penetration, which provides new biological evidence for route administration.

The Effect of Stimulation Position and Ear Canal Occlusion on Perception of Bone Conducted Sound.

The position of a bone conduction (BC) transducer influences the perception of BC sound, but the relation between the stimulation position and BC sound perception is not entirely clear. In the current study, eleven participants with normal hearing were evaluated for their hearing thresholds and speech intelligibility for three stimulation positions (temple, mastoid, and condyle) and four types of ear canal occlusion produced by headphones. In addition, the sound quality for three types of music was rated with stimulation at the three positions. Stimulation at the condyle gave the best performance while the temple showed the worst performance for hearing thresholds, speech intelligibility, and sound quality. The in-ear headphones gave the highest occlusion effect while fully open headphones gave the least occlusion effect. BC stimulated speech intelligibility improved with greater occlusion, especially for the temple stimulation position. The results suggest that BC stimulation at the condyle is generally superior to the other positions tested in terms of sensitivity, clarity, and intelligibility, and that occlusion with ordinary headphones improves the BC signal.