Oxygenated Cembrane Diterpenes from the South China Sea Soft Coral Sinularia tumulosa.

The chemical investigation of the rarely studied soft coral Sinularia tumulosa resulted in the discovery of five oxygenated cembrane diterpenes 1-5, including two new compounds situmulins A (1) and B (2). The structures of 1 and 2 were established through the extensive analyses of 1D and 2D NMR spectral data together with the comparisons with the known compounds. Furthermore, the absolute configuration of 1 was determined by the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) ECD approach, while the relative configuration of 2 was assigned via the quantum mechanical-NMR (QM-NMR) calculations. It might be worth to point out it is the first time to disclose the presence of cembrane diterpenes in the title species. In the bioassays, compound 2 not only showed strong antibacterial activities against fish pathogenic bacteria Streptococcus parauberis FP KSP28 and Phoyobacterium damselae FP2244 with both minimum inhibitory concentration for 90 % (MIC90 ) values of 25 µM, but also demonstrated substantial inhibitory efficacy against vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium bacteria G1, G4, G7, G8 and G13 from several individuals, with MIC90 values of 25, 50, 100, 50 and 25 µM, respectively.

High-Capacity Spatial Structured Light for Robust and Accurate Reconstruction.

Spatial structured light (SL) can achieve three-dimensional measurements with a single shot. As an important branch in the field of dynamic reconstruction, its accuracy, robustness, and density are of vital importance. Currently, there is a wide performance gap of spatial SL between dense reconstruction (but less accurate, e.g., speckle-based SL) and accurate reconstruction (but often sparser, e.g., shape-coded SL). The central problem lies in the coding strategy and the designed coding features. This paper aims to improve the density and quantity of reconstructed point clouds by spatial SL whilst also maintaining a high accuracy. Firstly, a new pseudo-2D pattern generation strategy was developed, which can improve the coding capacity of shape-coded SL greatly. Then, to extract the dense feature points robustly and accurately, an end-to-end corner detection method based on deep learning was developed. Finally, the pseudo-2D pattern was decoded with the aid of the epipolar constraint. Experimental results validated the effectiveness of the proposed system.

3D reconstruction of the specular surface using an iterative stereoscopic deflectometry method.

Phase measuring deflectometry (PMD) is an effective technique for three-dimensional measurement of specular surfaces. However, the ambiguity of monoscopic PMD and the time-consuming searching process of stereoscopic PMD are challenges for specular surface reconstruction. To solve it, we propose an iterative reconstruction algorithm for the stereoscopic phase measuring deflectometry system free of the time-consuming searching process for each pixel. An arbitrary seed point on the specular surface is accurately obtained via a coarse-to-fine optimization means without any other expensive and complicate auxiliaries. Then, a plane with the height of seed point is set as the initial surface form for the iteration, in which the pinhole model is used to find the linear relation to update the surface form. The converging height is the output as the final result. Simulations and experiments verify the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed method based on the stereoscopic phase measuring deflectometry system. The accuracy and robustness are comprehensively evaluated as well.

Human inflammatory dendritic cells in malignant pleural effusions induce Th1 cell differentiation.

Dendritic cells are crucial for the initiation and regulation of immune responses against cancer and pathogens. DCs are heterogeneous and highly specialized antigen-presenting cells. Human DCs comprise several subsets with different phenotypes and functional properties. In the steady state, human DC subsets have been well studied. However, the components of DC subsets and their immune functions during the inflamed setting are poorly understood. We identified and characterized DC subsets in the malignant pleural effusions of NSCLC patients. We analyzed the capacity of these DC subsets to induce T-cell differentiation. We observed the presence of inflammatory DCs (infDCs) and macrophages in the malignant pleural effusions of NSCLC patients, as identified by the CD11C+HLA-DR+CD16-BDCA1+ and CD11C+HLA-DR+CD16+BDCA1- phenotypes, respectively. InfDCs represented approximately 1% of the total light-density cells in the pleural effusion and were characterized by the expression of CD206, CD14, CD11b, and CD1α, which were absent on blood DCs. InfDCs also expressed CD80, although at a low level. As infDCs did not express CD40, CD83 and CD275, they remained functionally immature. We found that TLR agonists promoted the maturation of infDCs. Compared with macrophages, infDCs had a weaker capacity to phagocytose necrotic tumor cell lysates. However, only infDCs induced autologous memory CD4+ T-cell differentiation into Th1 cells. For the first time, we found that infDCs were present in the malignant pleural effusions of NSCLC patients. We conclude that infDCs represent a distinct human DC subset and induce Th1 cell differentiation in the presence of TLR agonists.

Micrometer-level 3D measurement techniques in complex scenes based on stripe-structured light and photometric stereo.

Compared with existing depth cameras, such as RGB-D, RealSense and Kinect, stripe-based structured light (SL) has the potential for micrometer-level 3D measurement; this can be attributed to its higher coding capacity. While surface texture, high-reflective region, and occlusion remain some of the main sources leading to degraded reconstruction quality in complex objects, methods that are only based on SL cannot completely solve such problems in complex object reconstruction. In this paper, we developed an advanced fusion strategy for the reconstruction of complex objects in micrometer-level 3D measurement. This includes solving the above-mentioned inherent problems of a stripe-based SL system with the aid of photometric stereo (PS). Firstly, to improve the robustness of decoding and eliminate the effects of noise and occlusion on stripe detection, a novel scene-adaptive decoding algorithm based on a binary tree was proposed. Further, a robust and practical calibration method for area light sources in the PS system, which utilizes the absolute depth information from SL system, was introduced. A piecewise integration algorithm, which is based on a subregion divided by Gray code, was proposed by combining the depth values from SL with the normal information from PS. Remarkably, this method eliminates the effects of surface texture and high-reflective region on the reconstruction quality and improves the resolution to camera-level resolution. In experimental parts, a regular cylinder was reconstructed to demonstrate micrometer-level measurement accuracy and resolution enhancement by the proposed method. Then, improvement of the reconstruction accuracy for objects with surface texture was validated with a regular pyramid that had textures on it and a white paper with characters printed on it. Lastly, a complex object containing multiple phenomena was reconstructed with the newly proposed method to show its effectiveness for micrometer-level 3D measurement in complex objects. Evaluation of our proposed method shows the improvement of the proposed method on the existing methods being used for micrometer-level 3D measurement in complex objects.

Dot-coded structured light for accurate and robust 3D reconstruction.

Speckle dots have the advantage of easy projection, which makes them good candidate features of structured light (SL) cameras, such as Kinect v1. However, they generally yield poor accuracy due to block matching. To improve their accuracy, this paper proposes a dot-coded SL, the coding information of which is added into dot distribution. Some of the dots are arranged regularly to provide easy-to-locate corner features, while others are specially designed to form different shapes of unique identification. A Gaussian-cross module and a simplified ResNet have been proposed to conduct robust decoding. Various experiments are performed to verify the accuracy and robustness of our framework.

Single-Shot Structured Light Sensor for 3D Dense and Dynamic Reconstruction.

Structured light (SL) has a trade-off between acquisition time and spatial resolution. Temporally coded SL can produce a 3D reconstruction with high density, yet it is not applicable to dynamic reconstruction. On the contrary, spatially coded SL works with a single shot, but it can only achieve sparse reconstruction. This paper aims to achieve accurate 3D dense and dynamic reconstruction at the same time. A speckle-based SL sensor is presented, which consists of two cameras and a diffractive optical element (DOE) projector. The two cameras record images synchronously. First, a speckle pattern was elaborately designed and projected. Second, a high-accuracy calibration method was proposed to calibrate the system; meanwhile, the stereo images were accurately aligned by developing an optimized epipolar rectification algorithm. Then, an improved semi-global matching (SGM) algorithm was proposed to improve the correctness of the stereo matching, through which a high-quality depth map was achieved. Finally, dense point clouds could be recovered from the depth map. The DOE projector was designed with a size of 8 mm × 8 mm. The baseline between stereo cameras was controlled to be below 50 mm. Experimental results validated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Compared with some other single-shot 3D systems, our system displayed a better performance. At close range, such as 0.4 m, our system could achieve submillimeter accuracy.

FOXA1+ regulatory T cells: A novel T cell subset that suppresses antitumor immunity in lung cancer.

INTRODUCTION: Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are important in the tumor microenvironment. Many subpopulations of Tregs have participated in suppressing antitumor immunity. Recently, FOXA1+ Tregs were reported as a novel subset of Tregs that control autoimmune diseases. However, their clinical value in lung cancer is unknown. METHODS: We included 92 subjects in this study. Peripheral blood samples were collected from 15 lung cancer patients. Another 45 advanced stage lung cancer patients with malignant pleural effusion were enrolled for the analysis of FOXA1+ Tregs in pleural effusions. Lung cancer tissues were collected from 3 patients. In vitro experiments were conducted to ascertain the influence of FOXA1+ Tregs on T cells. Tumor-bearing mice model was utilized to explore the effects of Foxa1+ Treg on tumor growth and the prognoses. RESULTS: Our data demonstrated that FOXA1+ Tregs were increased in lung cancer. Moreover, patients with more FOXA1+ Tregs showed more liver metastases and poorer treatment responses. In vitro assays revealed that FOXA1+ Tregs inhibited the proliferation of T cells, the production of IFN-γ and IL-2 by T cells. FOXA1+ Tregs promoted tumor growth and indicated poor prognosis in the mice model of lung cancer. DISCUSSION: Collectively, our study is the first to investigate the suppressive function of FOXA1+ Tregs against T cells in lung cancer, and the results showed that FOXA1+ Tregs are markers of poor treatment responses in lung cancer patients. The inhibition of FOXA1+ Tregs represents a promising new strategy to enhance antitumor immunity.

LncRNA CAIF was downregulated in end-stage cardiomyopathy and is a promising diagnostic and prognostic marker for this disease.

Cardiac autophagy inhibitory factor (CAIF) is a novel lncRNA with protective effects on myocardial infarction. We explored the involvement of CAIF in end-stage cardiomyopathy. Patients with end-stage cardiomyopathy and healthy volunteers were included in this study. Myocardial tissues and serum were collected. CAIF was detected by RT-qPCR. ROC curve was used for diagnostic analysis. Prognostic value of CAIF expression for end-stage cardiomyopathy was evaluated by survival curve analysis. Correlations between CAIF expression and clinicopathological data of patients with end-stage cardiomyopathy were analysed by chi-square test. Downregulated CAIF was observed in end-stage cardiomyopathy patients than in healthy controls. CAIF expression distinguished end-stage cardiomyopathy patients from healthy controls and predict the survival of patients. LncRNA CAIF was downregulated in end-stage cardiomyopathy and may serve as a promising prognostic and diagnostic marker for this disease.

Robust and flexible method for calibrating the focal length of on-orbit space zoom camera.

For the on-orbit space zoom camera, the camera focal length is in a constant process of change; accordingly, compared with calibrating other camera intrinsic parameters, calibrating the focal length has a practical significance for the space zoom camera. With the vanishing points obtained from the solar panel of human-made space satellites, this paper introduces a focal length self-calibration method for the on-orbit space zoom camera. First, the geometrical relationship and infinite homography of vanishing points at various camera positions are used to derive the method. To improve the accuracy and robustness performance of this approach, an optimization method is then proposed to nonlinearly optimize the camera focal length. Finally, simulation and real physical experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is flexible and accurate with good anti-noise interference and real-time capacity. The method proposed in this paper makes more realistic sense for a number of important space tasks.

Characterization and complete genome of the virulent Myoviridae phage JD007 active against a variety of Staphylococcus aureus isolates from different hospitals in Shanghai, China.

BACKGROUND: The implementation of phage therapy is re-emerging with the increase in widespread antibiotic-resistant bacteria. METHODS: Staphylococcus phage JD007 was characterized and its complete genome sequence analysed. RESULTS: Staphylococcus phage JD007 was classified as belonging to the Myoviridae family based on its morphology, as observed by transmission electron microscopy. Its lytic activity was stable between pH 5-11 and below 42 °C; moreover, an absorbance curve showed that nearly 90% of the viral particles had adsorbed to its host after a 20 min co-incubation. The complete genome size is 141,836 bp, making JD007 one of the largest Staphylococcus phages of Myoviridae. No identifiable resistance or virulence genes were found in the JD007 genome. JD007 was able to lyse 95% of S. aureus isolates, including the prevalent ST239-MRSA and ST59-MRSA strains isolated from different hospitals in Shanghai, China, and inhibition assays showed that JD007 could inhibit S. aureus growth at a multiplicity of infection of 0.1. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggested that Staphylococcus phage JD007 can potentially be used in phage therapy or for the detection of S. aureus.

Photometric invariant stereo matching method.

A robust stereo matching method based on a comprehensive mathematical model for color formation process is proposed to estimate the disparity map of stereo images with noise and photometric variations. The band-pass filter with DoP kernel is firstly used to filter out noise component of the stereo images. Then the log-chromaticity normalization process is applied to eliminate the influence of lightning geometry. All the other factors that may influence the color formation process are removed through the disparity estimation process with a specific matching cost. Performance of the developed method is evaluated by comparing with some up-to-date algorithms. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the method.

Advances in malignant peritoneal mesothelioma.

BACKGROUND: Malignant mesothelioma is a rare, insidious, and aggressive tumor arising from the mesothelial surface of pleural and peritoneal cavities, the pericardium, or the tunica vaginalis, with an increasing incidence worldwide, high misdiagnosis rate, and overall negative prognosis. A total of 20% of all cases is peritoneum in origin. METHODS: The present study is a review of literatures focusing on the advances in epidemiology, clinical presentations, radiological features, diagnosis, misdiagnosis, management, and prognostic factors of malignant peritoneal mesothelioma (MPM) occurred in the past decades. RESULTS: Asbestos, SV40, and radiation exposures have been demonstrated to be correlated with the pathogenesis of MPM. The main presentations are abdominal distension and pain. Computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron-emission tomography (PET) play an important role in the preoperative imaging and staging. Definitive diagnosis is made on the basis of immunohistochemistry. Prognostic factors have been identified and verified. Negative indicators include advanced age, male gender, poor performance status, non-epithelial histology, and absence of surgery. The management of MPM has evolved from single chemotherapy to multimodality treatment of cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy. Promising results have been achieved after a combined treatment of CRS and HIPEC, with an elevated median survival time of 29.5-92 months and a 5-year survival rate of 39-63%. CONCLUSIONS: CRS and HIPEC represent the standard treatment strategy for selected patients with MPM, and patients with unresectable tumors can benefit from the combined treatment of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy.

Non-null testing for aspheric surfaces using elliptical sub-aperture stitching technique.

We propose an elliptical sub-aperture stitching (ESAS) method to measure the aspheric surfaces. In our method, the non-null configuration is used to overcome the disadvantages of the null testing. By adding the dynamic tilt, the different local nearly null fringe patterns are obtained and the corresponding phase data in the elliptical masks is extracted with negligible retrace errors. In order to obtain the full aperture result, a stitching algorithm is developed to stitch all the phase data together. We firstly show the principle of our method. Then the performance of the proposed method is analyzed by simulation experiments. In the end, practical examples are given to demonstrate the correctness of the proposed method. The stitching result shows a good agreement with the full-aperture null testing result.

Genome-wide comparative analysis of CC1 Staphylococcus aureus between colonization and infection.

BACKGROUND: Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most important bacteria in human colonization and infection. Clonal complex1 (CC1) is one of the largest and most important S. aureus CCs, and it is a predominant clone in S. aureus colonization and can cause a series of S. aureus infections including bloodstream infections. No studies on the relationship of CC1 S. aureus between colonization and infection have been published. METHODS: To figure out if there are some significant factors in CC1 S. aureus help its colonization or infection, 15 CC1 S. aureus isolates including ten from colonization and five from bloodstream infections were enrolled in this study. Whole-genome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis were performed. RESULTS: Virulence factor regulators XdrA, YSIRK signal peptide, CPBP family and OmpR family specifically found in infection isolates can promote virulence factors and enhance the pathogenicity of S. aureus. In addition, some significant differences in metabolism and human diseases were discovered between colonization and infection. Fst family of type I toxin-antitoxin system that mainly maintains stable inheritance was specifically found in CC1 S. aureus colonization isolates and might help S. aureus survive for colonization. No significant differences in genomic evolutionary relationship were found among CC1 S. aureus isolates between colonization and infection. CONCLUSIONS: Virulence factor regulators and metabolic state can promote CC1 S. aureus pathogenic process compared with colonization, and it seems that the strains of colonization origin cannot have pathogenic potential. Experimental confirmation and a bigger number of CC1 S. aureus strains are necessary for further study about the details and mechanism between colonization and infection.

Diagnosis of cognitive and motor disorders levels in stroke patients through explainable machine learning based on MRI.

BACKGROUND: Globally, stroke is the third most significant cause of disability. A stroke may produce motor, sensory, perceptual, or cognitive disorders that result in disability and affect the likelihood of recovery, affecting a person's ability to function. Evaluation post-stroke is critical for optimal stroke care. PURPOSE: Traditional methods for classifying the clinical disorders of cognitive and motor in stroke patients use assessment and interrogative measures, which are time-consuming, complex, and labor-intensive. In response to the current situation, this study develops an algorithm to automatically classify motor and cognitive disorders in stroke patients by 3D brain MRI to assist physicians in diagnosis. METHODS: First, radiomics and fusion features are extracted from the OAx T2 Propeller of 3D brain MRI. Then, we use 14 machine learning models and one model ensemble method to predict Fugl-Meyer and MMSE levels of stroke patients. Next, we evaluate the models using accuracy, recall, f1-score, and area under the curve (AUC). Finally, we employ SHAP to explain the output of the model. RESULTS: The best predictive models come from Random Forest (RF) Classifier with fusion features in cognitive classification and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) with radiomics features in motor classification. The highest accuracies are 92.0 and 82.5% for cognitive and motor disorders. CONCLUSIONS: MRI brain maps can classify the cognitive and motor disorders of stroke patients. Radiomics features demonstrate its merits. The proposed algorithms with MRI images can efficiently assist physicians in diagnosing the cognitive and motor disorders of stroke patients in clinical practice. Additionally, this lessens labor costs, improves diagnostic effectiveness, and avoids the subjective difference that comes with manual assessment.

Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Offers Clinical Benefits to Diabetic Patients With Stable Chronic Total Occlusion.

Whether percutaneous coronary intervention for chronic total occlusion (CTO-PCI) in diabetic patients offers more benefits compared with initial medical therapy (CTO-MT) is unclear. In this study, diabetic patients with one CTO (clinical manifestations: stable angina or silent ischemia) were enrolled. Consecutively, enrolled patients (n = 1605) were assigned to different groups: CTO-PCI (1044 [65.0%]) and initial CTO-MT (561 [35%]). After a median follow-up of 44 months, CTO-PCI tended to be superior to initial CTO-MT in major adverse cardiovascular events (adjusted hazard-ratio [aHR]: .81, 95% conference-interval: .65-1.02) and significantly superior in cardiac death (aHR: .58 [.39-.87]) and all-cause death (aHR: .678[.473-.970]). Such superiority mainly attributed to a successful CTO-PCI. CTO-PCI tended to be performed in patients with younger age, good collaterals, left anterior descending branch CTO, and right coronary artery CTO. While, those with left circumflex CTO and severe clinical/angiographic situations were more likely to be assigned to initial CTO-MT. However, none of these variables influenced the benefits of CTO-PCI. Thus, we concluded that for diabetic patients with stable CTO, CTO-PCI (mainly successful CTO-PCI) offered patients survival benefits over initial CTO-MT. These benefits were consistent regardless of clinical/angiographic characteristics.

OTUB1 Targets CHK1 for Deubiquitination and Stabilization to Facilitate Lung Cancer Progression and Radioresistance.

PURPOSE: Radioresistance of lung cancer poses a significant challenge when it comes to the treatment of advanced, recurrent, and metastatic cases. Ovarian tumor domain ubiquitin aldehyde binding 1 (OTUB1) is a key member of the deubiquitinase OTU superfamily. This protein is involved in various cellular functions, including cell proliferation, iron death, lipid metabolism, and cytokine secretion as well as immune response processes. However, its specific role and molecular mechanism in lung cancer radioresistance remain to be clarified. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The expression levels of OTUB1 in paired lung cancer tissues were determined by immunohistochemistry. In vitro and in vivo experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of OTUB1 on the growth and proliferation of lung cancer. Coimmunoprecipitation and Western blotting techniques were performed to examine the interaction between OTUB1 and CHK1. The DNA damage response was measured by comet tailing and immunofluorescence staining. KEGG pathways and Gene Ontology terms were analyzed based on RNA sequencing. RESULTS: Our findings reveal a high frequency of OTUB1 overexpression, which is associated with an unfavorable prognosis in patients with lung cancer. Through comprehensive investigations, we demonstrate that OTUB1 depletion impairs the process of DNA damage repair and overcomes radioresistance. In terms of the underlying mechanism, our study uncovers that OTUB1 deubiquitinates and stabilizes CHK1, which enhances CHK1 stability, thereby regulating DNA damage and repair. Additionally, we identify CHK1 as the primary downstream effector responsible for mediating the functional effects exerted by OTUB1 specifically in lung cancer. Importantly, OTUB1 has the potential to be a valuable marker for improving the efficacy of radiation therapy for lung adenocarcinoma. CONCLUSIONS: These findings unveil a novel role for OTUB1 in enhancing radioresistance by deubiquitination and stabilization of the expression of CHK1 in lung cancer and indicate that targeting OTUB1 holds great potential as an effective therapeutic approach for enhancing the efficacy of radiation therapy in lung cancer.

A regionalism shift? Chinese undergraduate students' choice of study in Asia Under COVID-19.

This paper draws attention to the current and possible effects of COVID-19 on the mobility trajectories of mainland Chinese students studying in Asia. By drawing on 35 biographical interviews, this paper focuses on their decision to study in Asian countries and regions. Particularly, it calls for more attention to Asia in global student mobilities and discusses whether COVID-19 has changed the position of Asia in the global landscape of student mobility. Results show that even if COVID-19 provides an opportunity for Asian universities to embrace more international students, Asia still lacks the capability to attract great numbers of them. Finally, the study argues that college students' choice of mobility destinations is shaped by their perception of the central-periphery structure of higher education, which is hard to be shaken by the pandemic.

A 10-year retrospective study of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus from burn wound infection in southeast China from 2013 to 2022.

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most commonly encountered pathogens among burn patients incurring substantial morbidity and mortality. To investigate the epidemiology and features of MRSA in burn wound infections, we conducted a 10-year retrospective study on MRSA isolated from burn patients with burn wound infections from southeast China from 2013 to 2022. Methods: One hundred MRSA isolates (10 isolates each year) from burn wound infection among burn patients from 2013 to 2022 were randomly selected and enrolled. In addition to the clinical data of the 100 burn patients, MRSA isolates were characterized by antimicrobial susceptibility testing, detection of toxin genes, and molecular typing. Results: The median time from the onset of burns and admission to MRSA detected was 13 and 5 days, respectively. No MRSA isolate was found resistant to quinupristin/dalfopristin, linezolid, and vancomycin. Toxin gene seg was found most frequently (90%) followed by sea (70%) and eta (64%). CC8 (74%), ST239 (70%), and SCCmec III (72%) were the most common CC, ST, and SCCmec types, respectively. Conclusion: ST239-III (70%) was the predominant clone found in MRSA from burn wound infection among burn patients in southeast China. ST239-III was less found from 2018 to 2022. A higher diversity of MRSA clones was observed in these recent 5 years than that from 2013 to 2017.