Potential biomarkers of acute myocardial infarction based on the composition of the blood microbiome.

BACKGROUND: It is difficult to distinguish between acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and unstable angina (UA) due to their similar clinical features. In recent years, studies have shown that microbiomes have great potential in distinguishing diseases. The purpose of this study is to describe the composition of serum microbiome in the AMI and UA by 16S rDNA sequencing. METHODS: Based on the high-throughput detection platform and 16S rDNA amplification sequencing technology, this study detected the blood microbial composition of 55 patients with AMI and 62 patients with UA. Alpha diversity and Beta diversity analysis were used to compare the differences in microbial composition and bacterial colony structure between AMI and UA groups. We perform PCoA (Principal Co-ordinates Analysis) based on Unweighted Unifrac distance. In addition, various statistical methods were employed to examine the significance of differences in microbial composition and genus between the two groups. PICRUSt (Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States) was employed to predict KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) function from 16S sequencing data. Random forest was applied to identify biomarkers and construct the diagnostic model. Subsequently, the stability of the model was verified by 10-fold cross and the diagnostic effectiveness was evaluated through ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic). RESULTS: In this study, we found that alpha diversity index of serum microbiome in AMI group was significantly higher than in UA group. T-test analysis demonstrated that the UA group presented a higher abundance of Ralstonia, Faecalibaculum and Gammaproteobacteria, while Bacteroides, Sphingomonas, Faecalibaculum, Haemophilus, Serratia, Bifidobacterium and Chloroplast were more abundant in the AMI group. The LefSe (LDA Effect Size) analysis showed that the Gammaproteobacteria, Proteobacteria, Ralstonia pickettli, Ralstonia, Burkholderiaceae and Burkholderiales were enriched in UA group, and Bacteroidales, Bacteroidia, Bacteroidota, Clostridia and Firmicutes were more abundant in the AMI group. Ten bacterial diagnostic models were constructed in the random forest. The area under the curve (AUC) in the training set was 88.01%, and the AUC value in the test set was 95.04%. CONCLUSION: In this study, the composition of blood microorganisms in the groups of patients with AMI and UA has been analyzed, providing novel insights for understanding the pathogenesis of AMI; Blood microbiome may serve as novel diagnostic biomarkers of AMI.

Raman suppression in high-power fiber oscillators by femtosecond-written chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings.

Realizing stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) suppression is a key topic for high-power fiber lasers. Here, we report an effective and simple strategy for SRS suppression using chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings (CTFBGs) in high-power fiber oscillators while maintaining the compactness and stability of the system. The CTFBG is inserted on the side of a cavity mirror FBG without cutting the gain fiber. To improve power handling capability, the CTFBG and cavity mirror FBGs are inscribed by femtosecond (fs) lasers. The optimal SRS suppression effect can be realized when the CTFBG is inserted into the resonant cavity and on the side of the output coupler FBG. The SRS threshold is increased by approximately 11% with an SRS suppression ratio of nearly 14 dB. Moreover, the output power of the fiber oscillator is improved to 3.5 kW, which is the maximum power achieved in fiber oscillators with SRS suppression using CTFBGs, to the best of our knowledge. The temperature of the air-cooled CTFBG is 50.2 °C, which has the potential to handle higher power. This work provides new insights for suppressing SRS in fiber oscillators, promoting the application of CTFBGs in high-power lasers.

Medical students' perceptions of LGBTQ+ healthcare in Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Introduction: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) individuals have an increased scope of healthcare needs and face many barriers to accessing healthcare. However, LGBTQ+ healthcare education remains scarce, and students' understanding of LGBTQ+ healthcare remains largely uncharacterised. This study investigated the knowledge of and attitudes toward LGBTQ+ healthcare among medical students in Singapore and the United Kingdom (UK), two culturally different countries. Methods: Medical students in two medical schools, one in Singapore and the other in the UK, completed self-administered cross-sectional surveys using multiple-choice, Likert scale, and free-text questions to explore their ideas, concerns, and expectations about LGBTQ+ healthcare education within their medical curricula. Results: From 330 responses, students' knowledge levels were moderate overall, with pronounced gaps in certain areas, including terminology, sexual health, and conversion therapy. Deficiencies in knowledge were significantly greater among students in Singapore compared to the UK (p < 0.001), whilst LGBTQ+ students and non-religious students had more positive knowledge and attitudes than students not identifying. At least 78% of students had positive attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals, but 84% had not received LGBTQ+-specific medical education. Although junior UK students were more satisfied with the adequacy of teaching by their medical school's incorporation of LGBTQ+ inclusive teaching in a newer curriculum, qualitative analyses suggested that students in both countries wanted to receive more training. Students further suggested improvements to the medical curriculum to meet their needs. Conclusion: Students in both schools lacked understanding of commonly-used terminology and topics such as sexual healthcare despite affirming attitudes towards LGBTQ+ healthcare. Although sociolegal contexts may affect students' perspectives, differences were less than thought, and students were equally keen to provide affirmative care to their patients. They emphasised a need for more formal teaching of LGBTQ+ healthcare professions to overcome healthcare disparities in these communities.

Nanoscale Investigation into Dynamics of Thin Liquid Films during Bouncing and Attachment of Rising Air Bubbles on Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic Surfaces.

Investigations on bouncing and attachment of free-rising air bubbles on hydrophobic surfaces have been limited to side-view, high-speed photography of the bubble-plate attachment process. In this work, an investigation of the dynamics as well as stability of thin liquid films (TLFs) between free-rising air bubbles and quartz surfaces was performed using a newly developed multiple-wavelength synchronized reflection interferometry microscopy (SRIM) technique. The effect of surface hydrophobicity on both the stability and critical rupture thickness of TLFs was investigated. Results showed that the TLF ruptured at a critical rupture thickness of 100-1000 nm or beyond during bubble's impact on hydrophobic quartz surfaces. The critical rupture thicknesses varied depending on the surface hydrophobicity as well as surface asperity. A higher surface hydrophobicity, in general, contributed to a higher critical rupture thickness. In addition, the effect of n-octanol on the stability of the TLFs was investigated. Results showed that film stability increased with increasing the concentration of n-octanol, which was accompanied by a significant decrease in the critical rupture thickness. The present result illustrates, for the first time, the dynamics of TLFs on hydrophobic surfaces under a dynamic condition compared with previous studies under a quasi-equilibrium condition. The information revealed from the present work has a significant implication to many industrial applications, including froth flotation and other biological and semiconductor applications.

Near-infrared light responsive intensified multiphoton ultraviolet upconversion in nanostructures towards efficient reactive oxygen species generation.

Near-infrared-to-ultraviolet (NIR-to-UV) multiphoton upconversion has recently received increasing attention owing to its promising frontier applications in the fields of biomedicine and nanophotonics. However, the realization of high-efficiency NIR-to-UV upconversion remains a dispiriting challenge due to weak excitation light harvesting and photo-conversion efficiency. Herein, we propose a mechanistic strategy to achieve intensified UV upconversion by manipulating the injected excitation energy flux. A simple LiYbF4:Tm@LiYF4 host-sensitized sublattice core-shell nanostructure was initially proposed to compete with the concentration quenching effect and increase energy transfer efficiency. Then, the organic dye ICG was further coated to introduce the antenna sensitization effect to highly increase the absorption ability of nanocrystals. After optimizing the ICG number loaded on the surface and separation distance, up to 167-fold UV upconversion emission enhancement was achieved under low-power excitation of 808 nm. More importantly, the efficient UV upconversion exhibits enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation activity by fabricating a TiO2-modified upconversion nanocomposite, revealing great application potential in frontier fields such as in vivo photodynamic therapy and bioimaging-guided therapeutics. Our results can provide versatile designs to achieve efficient UV upconversion, overcome conventional limitations, and offer exciting opportunities for potential applications in biomedical fields.

CCGL-YOLOV5:A cross-modal cross-scale global-local attention YOLOV5 lung tumor detection model.

BACKGROUND: Multimodal medical image detection is a key technology in medical image analysis, which plays an important role in tumor diagnosis. There are different sizes lesions and different shapes lesions in multimodal lung tumor images, which makes it difficult to effectively extract key features of lung tumor lesions. METHODS: A Cross-modal Cross-scale Clobal-Local Attention YOLOV5 Lung Tumor Detection Model (CCGL-YOLOV5) is proposed in this paper. The main works are as follows: Firstly, the Cross-Modal Fusion Transformer Module (CMFTM) is designed to improve the multimodal key lesion feature extraction ability and fusion ability through the interactive assisted fusion of multimodal features; Secondly, the Global-Local Feature Interaction Module (GLFIM) is proposed to enhance the interaction ability between multimodal global features and multimodal local features through bidirectional interactive branches. Thirdly, the Cross-Scale Attention Fusion Module (CSAFM) is designed to obtain rich multi-scale features through grouping multi-scale attention for feature fusion. RESULTS: The comparison experiments with advanced networks are done. The Acc, Rec, mAP, F1 score and FPS of CCGL-YOLOV5 model on multimodal lung tumor PET/CT dataset are 97.83%, 97.39%, 96.67%, 97.61% and 98.59, respectively; The experimental results show that the performance of CCGL-YOLOV5 model in this paper are better than other typical models. CONCLUSION: The CCGL-YOLOV5 model can effectively use the multimodal feature information. There are important implications for multimodal medical image research and clinical disease diagnosis in CCGL-YOLOV5 model.

An efficient LiSrGaF6:Cr3+ fluoride phosphor with broadband NIR emission towards sunlight-like full-spectrum lighting.

Sunlight-like full-spectrum phosphor-converted light-emitting diodes (pc-LEDs) require near-infrared (NIR) emission bands to fill the spectrum gap and consequently propel their widespread applications. Although fluoride NIR phosphors have been increasingly investigated, balancing high quantum efficiency (QE), high thermal stability, and wideband NIR emission to obtain excellent overall performance in a single system is still a challenge for Cr3+-doped fluoride NIR phosphor and is significant for direct utilization. Herein, a high-efficiency and thermally stable broadband NIR emission was realized in a novel LiSrGaF6:Cr3+ fluoride phosphor benefitting from a relatively weak crystal field and electron-phonon coupling effect. Upon blue light excitation, the ultra-broad NIR luminescence ranging from 650 to 1150 nm can be achieved with an FWHM of 149 nm peaking at ∼813 nm. Furthermore, this system possesses a high QE of up to 76.88% and its emission intensity at 423 K still maintains 61.62% of its initial intensity at room temperature. An NIR output power of 42.82 mW and photoelectric conversion efficiency of 14.27% of NIR pc-LED devices have also been presented based on this NIR phosphor, demonstrating its possible application in compact nonvisible light sources. In addition, a highly continuous sunlight-like vis-NIR pc-LED was further constructed by employing a blue chip with commercial cyan (BaSi2O2N2:Eu2+), yellow (Y3Al5O12:Ce3+), red (CaAlSiN3:Eu2+), and this LiSrGaF6:Cr3+ NIR phosphor. The as-obtained pc-LED exhibits an ultra-broad spectrum ranging from 400 nm to 1000 nm, exhibiting a higher color reproduction with a color rendering index (CRI) of 95.1 and luminous efficiency (LE) of 50.22 lm W-1. These results indicate that LiSrGaF6:Cr3+ phosphor can be a promising NIR phosphor candidate for high-quality sunlight-like full-spectrum lighting and infrared night vision technology.

Robust femtosecond-written chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings for Raman filtering in multi-kW fiber lasers.

We present a robust chirped and tilted fiber Bragg grating (CTFBG) in a large-mode-area double-cladding fiber (LMA-DCF) written by a femtosecond (fs) laser. By implementing the fs-CTFBG into the output end of a high-power fiber laser for Raman filtering, a power handling capability of 4 kW is achieved with a Raman filtering ratio of ∼13 dB. To the best of our knowledge, this is the maximum handling power of a CTFBG for Raman filtering. The signal loss of the fs-CTFBG is 0.03 dB, which has little effect on the output laser beam quality. The air-cooled fs-CTFBG has a minimum temperature slope of 7.8°C/kW due to a self-annealing effect. This work proves the excellent performance of the fs-CTFBG, promoting the development of high-power CTFBGs.

Femtosecond laser fabrication of chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings for stimulated Raman scattering suppression in kilowatt-level fiber lasers.

Chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings (CTFBGs) are important all-fiber filtering components in high-power fiber lasers for stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) suppression. The fabrication of CTFBGs in large-mode-area double-cladding fibers (LMA-DCFs) by femtosecond (fs) laser is reported for the first time to the best of our knowledge. The chirped and tilted grating structure is obtained by scanning the fiber obliquely and moving the fs-laser beam relative to the chirped phase mask at the same time. By this method, the CTFBGs with different chirp rates, grating lengths, and tilted angles are fabricated, and the maximum rejection depth and bandwidth are ∼25 dB and ∼12 nm, respectively. To test the performance of the fabricated CTFBGs, one is inserted between the seed laser and the amplifier stage of a 2.7 kW fiber amplifier, and an SRS suppression ratio of ∼4 dB is achieved with no reduction in laser efficiency and degradation in beam quality. This work provides a highly fast and flexible method to fabricate large-core CTFBGs, which is of great significance to the development of high-power fiber laser systems.

Myeloid-like tumor hybrid cells in bone marrow promote progression of prostate cancer bone metastasis.

BACKGROUND: Bone metastasis is the leading cause of death in patients with prostate cancer (PCa) and currently has no effective treatment. Disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow often obtain new characteristics to cause therapy resistance and tumor recurrence. Thus, understanding the status of disseminated prostate cancer cells in bone marrow is crucial for developing a new treatment. METHODS: We analyzed the transcriptome of disseminated tumor cells from a single cell RNA-sequencing data of PCa bone metastases. We built a bone metastasis model through caudal artery injection of tumor cells, and sorted the tumor hybrid cells by flow cytometry. We performed multi-omics analysis, including transcriptomic, proteomic and phosphoproteomic analysis, to compare the difference between the tumor hybrid cells and parental cells. In vivo experiments were performed to analyze the tumor growth rate, metastatic and tumorigenic potential, drug and radiation sensitivity in hybrid cells. Single cell RNA-sequencing and CyTOF were performed to analyze the impact of hybrid cells on tumor microenvironment. RESULTS: Here, we identified a unique cluster of cancer cells in PCa bone metastases, which expressed myeloid cell markers and showed a significant change in pathways related to immune regulation and tumor progression. We found that cell fusion between disseminated tumor cells and bone marrow cells can be source of these myeloid-like tumor cells. Multi-omics showed the pathways related to cell adhesion and proliferation, such as focal adhesion, tight junction, DNA replication, and cell cycle, were most significantly changed in these hybrid cells. In vivo experiment showed hybrid cells had a significantly increased proliferative rate, and metastatic potential. Single cell RNA-sequencing and CyTOF showed tumor-associated neutrophils/monocytes/macrophages were highly enriched in hybrid cells-induced tumor microenvironment with a higher immunosuppressive capacity. Otherwise, the hybrid cells showed an enhanced EMT phenotype with higher tumorigenicity, and were resistant to docetaxel and ferroptosis, but sensitive to radiotherapy. CONCLUSION: Taken together, our data demonstrate that spontaneous cell fusion in bone marrow can generate myeloid-like tumor hybrid cells that promote the progression of bone metastasis, and these unique population of disseminated tumor cells can provide a potential therapeutic target for PCa bone metastasis.

The postbiotic of hawthorn-probiotic ameliorating constipation caused by loperamide in elderly mice by regulating intestinal microecology.

Background: Constipation is common gastrointestinal disorder with high prevalence and recurrence, making people suffering. However, the treatment for constipation remains ineffectual. We aimed to the study the effects and mechanisms of postbiotic of hawthorn-probiotic on loperamide modeled old KM mice. Methods: Constipated mice were grouped and treated with 10% lactulose (Y), hawthorn group (S), probiotic group (F) and postbiotic of hawthorn-probiotic (FS). Fecal changes were observed. AQP3 and Enac-γ were measured by RT-qPCR and Western blotting, intestinal barrier by H&E and immunofluorescence staining, cell proliferation and apoptosis by CCK8 and flow cytometry. Gut microbiota was further determined by 16 s rRNA sequence of feces. Results: Postbiotic of hawthorn-probiotic improved intestinal movement and pathomorphology, elevated AQP3, Enac-γ and mucin-2 expression, accompanied by decreased serum TNF-α and cell apoptosis, but increased proliferation. Furthermore, it modified the gut microbiota of constipated mice, featured by upregulation of Lactobacillaceae. Conclusion: Postbiotic of hawthorn-probiotic relieved constipation by combined effects of regulating intestinal water and sodium metabolism, maintain intestinal barrier and gut microflora.Graphical Abstract.

Novel broadband NIR phosphors Y2Mg2Ga2Si2O12:xCr3+ for NIR LED applications.

The Cr3+-doped near-infrared (NIR) phosphors have been extensively investigated owing to their promising applications in biomedicine, food safety detection, and night vision surveillance. However, achieving broadband (FWHM > 160 nm) NIR emission is still challenging. In this paper, novel Y2Mg2Ga2-xSi2O12:xCr3+ (YMGS:xCr3+, x = 0.005-0.08) phosphors were prepared by a high-temperature solid-state reaction. The crystal structure, photoluminescence properties of the phosphor, and the device performance of a pc-LED were researched in detail. When excited at 440 nm, the YMGS:0.04Cr3+ phosphor exhibited broadband emission in the range of 650-1000 nm, peaking at 790 nm with a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of up to 180 nm. The wide FWHM of YMGS:Cr3+ is conducive to its extensive application in NIR spectroscopic technology. In addition, the YMGS:0.04Cr3+ phosphor could maintain 70% of the initial emission intensity at 373 K. By combining the commercial blue chip with the YMGS:0.04Cr3+ phosphor, the resulting NIR pc-LED demonstrated a near-infrared output power of 14 mW with a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 5% at a drive current of 100 mA. This work provides a broadband emission NIR phosphor option for NIR pc-LED devices.

A novel red phosphor Cs2NaGaF6:Mn4+ with ultra-strong zero-phonon lines and long wavelength phonon sidebands for high-quality WLEDs.

For high-efficiency lighting and wide color gamut backlight display, high-quality narrow-band red phosphors for WLEDs are still in high demand. Herein, a novel red-emitting fluoride phosphor Cs2NaGaF6:Mn4+ was successfully synthesized by a simple two-step co-precipitation method and exhibits ultra-intense zero-phonon lines (ZPLs) and long wavelength phonon sidebands under 468 nm blue light irradiation. The ZPL emission peak of Cs2NaGaF6:Mn4+ was located at 627 nm, which is much stronger than its υ6 vibration peak, more matchable with the eye-sensitive region of humans, and beneficial for obtaining higher luminous efficiency of WLEDs. Interestingly, the υ6 vibration peak of this red phosphor is at 636.5 nm, which is larger than that of the common fluoride phosphor A2BF6:Mn4+ (usually at about 630 nm, represented by K2SiF6:Mn4+) at about 6.5 nm. Thanks to the longer wavelength of the υ6 vibration peak, the chromaticity coordinates (0.7026, 0.2910) with a larger x-coordinate value were realized, leading to a potentially wider color gamut of WLEDs. In addition, this phosphor has high thermal stability and its emission intensity at 423 K remains 93.7% of the initial intensity at room temperature. The lumen efficiency of WLED1 packaged with a mixture of Cs2NaGaF6:Mn4+ and YAG:Ce3+ on the InGaN blue chip is 115.7 lm W-1 with the color temperature (Tc) = 3390 K and the colour rendering index (Ra) = 92.5 under 20 mA driving current. The chromaticity coordinates of WLED2 packaged with Cs2NaGaF6:Mn4+ and ß-SiAlON:Eu2+ on the InGaN blue chip are (0.3149, 0.3262) and the calculated color gamut is up to 118.4% (NTSC). These results indicate that Cs2NaGaF6:Mn4+ red phosphors have promising applications in the high-quality lighting and display fields.

Comparison of uniform-density, variable-density, and dual-density spiral samplings for multi-shot DWI.

PURPOSE: To compare the performances of uniform-density spiral (UDS), variable-density spiral (VDS), and dual-density spiral (DDS) samplings in multi-shot diffusion imaging, and determine a sampling strategy that balances reliability of shot navigator and overall DWI image quality. THEORY AND METHODS: UDS, VDS, and DDS trajectories were implemented to achieve four-shot diffusion-weighted spiral imaging. First, the static B0 off-resonance effects in UDS, VDS, and DDS acquisitions were analyzed based on a signal model. Then, in vivo experiments were performed to verify the theoretical analyses, and fractional anisotropy (FA) fitting residuals were used to quantitatively assess the quality of spiral diffusion data for tensor estimation. Finally, the SNR performances and g-factor behavior of the three spiral samplings were evaluated using a Monte Carlo-based pseudo multiple replica method. RESULTS: Among the three spiral trajectories with the same readout duration, UDS sampling exhibited the least off-resonance artifacts. This was most evident when the static B0 off-resonance effect was severe. The UDS diffusion images had higher anatomical fidelity and lower FA fitting residuals than the other two counterparts. Furthermore, the four-shot UDS acquisition achieved the best SNR performance in diffusion imaging with 12.11% and 40.85% improvements over the VDS and DDS acquisitions with the same readout duration, respectively. CONCLUSION: UDS sampling is an efficient spiral acquisition scheme for high-resolution diffusion imaging with reliable navigator information. It provides superior off-resonance performance and SNR efficiency over the VDS and DDS samplings for the tested scenarios.

DKK1 affects survival of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma by inducing resistance to radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

BACKGROUND: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been approved to treat various types of tumors, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC). However, most HNSC patients do not respond to ICIs. Radioimmunotherapy has been proposed to enhance the immune response rate in HNSC. Dickkopf-1 (DKK1), a secreted protein, plays important roles in the Wnt signaling pathways. Herein, we aimed to explore the effect of DKK1 on radioimmunotherapy in HNSC. METHODS: We collected the gene expression profile and clinical information of HNSC patients from TCGA and GEO databases. The immune cell infiltration and immune score were assessed using R package CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE. The level of related pathways and biological processes were analyzed by GSEA. The signature scores of gene sets of interest were calculated by GSVA. We also performed cell viability and apoptosis assay, and clonogenic assay to investigate the radiation sensitivity of HSC-3 cells and CNE-2 cells after silencing DKK1 by siRNA. RESULTS: We found DKK1 was significantly higher expressed in HNSC, and closely correlated with patients' survival time, especially the patients who received radiotherapy. DKK1-knockdown HSC-3 cells or CNE-2 cells showed a decrease in cell viability and colony formation, and an increase in apoptotic rate after radiation. DKK1high tumors showed a more immunosuppressive microenvironment with lower infiltration of T cells and higher infiltration of marrow-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs). CONCLUSION: Our data show that DKK1 can affect both radiotherapy and immunotherapy in HNSC, suggesting that DKK1 can be a potential target for radioimmunology in HNSC.

Simultaneous superresolution reconstruction and distortion correction for single-shot EPI DWI using deep learning.

PURPOSE: Single-shot (SS) EPI is widely used for clinical DWI. This study aims to develop an end-to-end deep learning-based method with a novel loss function in an improved network structure to simultaneously increase the resolution and correct distortions for SS-EPI DWI. THEORY AND METHODS: Point-spread-function (PSF)-encoded EPI can provide high-resolution, distortion-free DWI images. A distorted image from SS-EPI can be described as the convolution between a PSF function with a distortion-free image. The deconvolution process to recover the distortion-free image can be achieved with a convolution neural network, which also learns the mapping function between low-resolution SS-EPI and high-resolution reference PSF-EPI to achieve superresolution. To suppress the oversmoothing effect, we proposed a modified generative adversarial network structure, in which a dense net with gradient map guidance and a multilevel fusion block was used as the generator. A fractional anisotropy loss was proposed to utilize the diffusion anisotropy information among diffusion directions. In vivo brain DWI data were used to test the proposed method. RESULTS: The results show that distortion-corrected high-resolution DWI images with restored structural details can be obtained from low-resolution SS-EPI images by taking advantage of the high-resolution anatomical images. Additionally, the proposed network can improve the quantitative accuracy of diffusion metrics compared with previously reported networks. CONCLUSION: Using high-resolution, distortion-free EPI-DWI images as references, a deep learning-based method to simultaneously increase the perceived resolution and correct distortions for low-resolution SS-EPI was proposed. The results show that DWI image quality and diffusion metrics can be improved.

Developmental toxicity induced by brodifacoum in zebrafish (Danio rerio) early life stages.

OBJECTIVES: The present study mainly focused on the assessment of developmental toxicity induced by exposure to brodifacoum (BDF) in zebrafish at early life stages. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Zebrafish embryos were exposed to 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8 mg/L of BDF from 6 to 96 hr post-fertilization (hpf), and the toxic effects of BDF on early embryonic development were investigated in terms of morphological changes, oxidative stress, and alterations in heart development-related genes. RESULTS: The experimental results showed that BDF significantly decreased the heart rate, survival rate, body length, and spontaneous movements of zebrafish embryos at 0.8 mg/L, and the morphological developmental abnormalities were also observed at 96 hpf. In addition, exposure to BDF significantly increased oxidative stress levels in zebrafish embryos by increasing the enzymatic activities of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, and decreased glutathione (GSH) levels. Furthermore, BDF treatment-induced alterations in the expression levels of the heart development-related genes (gata4, sox9b, tbx2b, and nppa). CONCLUSION: Results from this study indicated that exposure to BDF could lead to marked growth inhibition and significantly alter the activities of antioxidant enzymes in zebrafish embryos. Moreover, BDF exposure exhibited severe cardiotoxicity and significantly disrupted heart development-related genes. The results indicated that BDF could induce developmental and cardiac toxicity in zebrafish embryos.

A Design Framework of Medical Wayfinding Signs for the Elderly: Based on the Situational Cognitive Commonness.

Older people in China have a poor understanding of hospital signage. To address this problem, in this study, we combined the theories of situated cognition and cognitive commonness in order to introduce the three main factors that affect the generation of situational cognitive commonness: composition of the situation, familiarity, and concreteness. We used these theories to construct a methodological framework for the design of geriatric hospital wayfinding signs that were based on situational cognitive commonness. The design of nine healthcare signs for Chinese national standards were used as examples in the study. First, users who were familiar with medical scenarios were asked to draw concrete cognitive conception graphics for the purposes of individual wayfinding targets from both physical and social situations. Next, we coded and grouped the generated graphics based on their situational features in order to extract groups of representative common graphics. Finally, we reorganized the common graphics and developed concrete designs, which were tested by the judgment test. The wayfinding signs designed according to the methodological framework of this study effectively improved the understanding of hospital signage among older Chinese people. This study took geriatric hospital wayfinding signs as the examples to provide a feasible theoretical basis and research reference for symbol design.

A field study on the composition, structure, and function of endophytic bacterial community of Robinia pseudoacacia at a composite heavy metals tailing.

Robinia pseudoacacia (R. pseudoacacia) is a well reported plant species for heavy metal phytoremediation, and it was capable to improve Cd uptake efficiency after inoculated with plant growth promoting endophytes. However, the knowledge on R. pseudoacacia associated endophytes in field condition and the relationship between these microbial communities and heavy metal uptake capacities are still scarce. In this study, the characteristics of heavy metal bioaccumulation and translocation in R. pseudoacacia, and the structure and function of its endophytic bacterial communities were revealed. The results showed that heavy metal pollution made microbes more sensitive to the environment as the diversity (Shannon) of endophyte community decreased but the abundance (Chao) increased. Redundancy analysis (RDA) also showed that heavy metals were the key factor affecting the composition of endophyte. In the co-occurrence network, 27 keystone taxa mainly from Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Firmicutes occupied the dominant niches, among which 16 OTUs mainly from lactobacillus, bacteroides, staphylococcus, methylorubrum and bifidobacterium were positively related to bioaccumulation and translocation of Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn. Besides, heavy metal stress enhanced the functional adaptability of endophytic bacteria community. Related predicted genes were enriched in immune response, physiological metabolism pathway and stress-resistant enzyme synthesis. This study showed that heavy metal stress enhanced the structural and functional adaptability of endophyte community and keystone taxa played significant role in improving the efficiency of phytoremediation.

A new broadband near-infrared emitting Mg2Al4Si5O18:Cr3+ phosphor for night-vision imaging.

Phosphor-converted light-emitting diodes (pc-LEDs) have important applications in security surveillance and food testing. However, developing new broadband near-infrared phosphors remains an important issue. Herein, the high-temperature solid-state reaction method was applied to synthesize a new type of Cr3+ doped Mg2Al4Si5O18 broadband NIR phosphor which matches a blue LED chip. It exhibits a broadband near-infrared (NIR) phosphor emission with a focus of 856 nm and a full width at half maximum >200 nm after excitation at 453 nm. The optimum concentration of Cr3+ was established to contain 2 mol%. At 398 K, the luminescence intensity is 45.2% of that at 298 K. The power output of NIR pc-LEDs fabricated by incorporating a 450 nm chip and the Mg2Al4Si5O18:0.02 Cr3+ phosphor is 19.69 mW at 300 mA current. Finally, the developed NIR pc-LED shows significant potential for use in night-vision imaging.