Improved deep neural network (EnhanceNet) for real-time detection of some publicly prohibited items.

Public safety is a critical concern, typically addressed through security checks at entrances of public places, involving trained officers or X-ray scanning machines to detect prohibited items. However, many places like hospitals, schools, and event centres lack such resources, risking security breaches. Even with X-ray scanners or manual checks, gaps can be exploited by individuals with malicious intent, posing significant security risks. Additionally, traditional methods, relying on manual inspections and conventional image processing techniques, are often inefficient and prone to high error rates. To mitigate these risks, we propose a real-time detection model - EnhanceNet using a customized Scale-Enhanced Pooling Network (SEP-Net) integrated into the YOLOv4. The innovative SEP-Net enhances feature representation and localization accuracy, significantly contributing to the model's efficacy in detecting prohibited items. We annotated a custom dataset of nine classes and evaluated our models using different input sizes (608 and 416). The 608 input size achieved a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 74.10% with a detection speed of 22.3 Frames per Second (FPS). The 416 input size showed superior performance, achieving a mAP of 76.75% and a detection speed of 27.1 FPS. These demonstrate that our models are accurate and efficient, making them suitable for real-time applications.

The relationship between future time perspective and suicide ideation in college students: Multiple mediating effects of anxiety and depression.

Background: Suicide ideation has high prevalence in adolescents, better future time perspective is considered a protective role for anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation. However, the impact of future time perspective on suicide ideation remains unclear, especially when anxiety and depression as mediating roles. Methods: A cross-sectional study of college students was performed in Chongqing, China. There are 851 students enrolled in this study and we distribute questionnaires through the WeChat platform to obtain data in 2023. We conducted Pearson correlation analysis and descriptive statistics. Model 6 in PROCESS 4.0 was used to test the multiple mediating effect. Results: College students who have higher future time perspective are associated with a lower risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation. Future time perspective not only affects suicide ideation directly, but also influence it by means of two mediating pathways: ①depression, the mediation effect is 37.41 %; ②the multiple mediating effects of anxiety and depression with a mediating effect of 29.68 %. Conclusion: Higher future time perspective functions as a protective role in anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation; future time perspective can affect and predict the occurrence of suicide ideation by influencing anxiety and depression in college students. This conclusion will be a novel and insightful part of adolescent mental health research, and provide a new perspective to prevent college students from committing suicide in the future.

Identification of hypoxic macrophages in glioblastoma: Unveiling therapeutic insights from tumour microenvironment analysis.

Tumor-associatedmacrophages (TAMs) exhibit remarkable heterogeneity in glioblastoma. Spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomic studies identified a monocyte-derived TAM subset localized in the peri-necrotic niche, driven by hypoxic cues to acquire ahypoxia response signature. These hypoxia-TAMs destabilize endothelial adherens junctions through adrenomedullin paracrine signaling, promoting the formation of hyperpermeable neovasculature that impedes drug delivery. Blocking adrenomedullin produced by hypoxia-TAMs restores vascular integrity, increases drug deliveryinto tumors, and provides combinatorial therapeutic benefits. Here we discuss the heterogeneity of TAMs regarding functional states and locations in glioblastomas, and propose future directions for studying the temporospatial dynamics of multifaceted TAM. HIGHLIGHTS: Single-cell omics reveal a functionally and spatially distinct hypoxia-TAM subset in glioblastoma. Adrenomedullin secreted by hypoxia-TAM destabilizes tumor vasculature and its blockade enhances vessel integrity and drug delivery.

Understanding cachexia and its impact on lung cancer and beyond.

Cancer cachexia is a multifactorial syndrome characterized by loss of body weight secondary to skeletal muscle atrophy and adipose tissue wasting. It not only has a significant impact on patients' quality of life but also reduces the effectiveness and tolerability of anticancer therapy, leading to poor clinical outcomes. Lung cancer is a prominent global health concern, and the prevalence of cachexia is high among patients with lung cancer. In this review, we integrate findings from studies of lung cancer and other types of cancer to provide an overview of recent advances in cancer cachexia. Our focus includes topics such as the clinical criteria for diagnosis and staging, the function and mechanism of selected mediators, and potential therapeutic strategies for clinical application. A comprehensive summary of current studies will improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying cachexia and contribute to the identification of high-risk patients, the development of effective treatment strategies, and the design of appropriate therapeutic regimens for patients at different disease stages.

Photomechanical responses of coordination polymers regulated by precise organization of the photoactive centers.

Three photoactive Cd(II) coordination polymers (CPs), [Cd (Fsbpe)(DBBA)2]·2DMF (CP1), [Cd(Fepbpe)(DBBA)2]·2DMF (CP2) and [Cd(Fsbpeb)(DBBA)2] (CP3) (DBBA = 3,5-dibromobenzoic acid, DMF = dimethyl formamide) with similar 1D chain motifs exhibited completely different photosalient behaviors (PS) in response to UV light. Mechanical motion was triggered by [2+2] photocycloaddition and regulated by positioning of the photoactive alkene centers relative to the crystal axis. This solid-state reaction was reversed by heating and photomechanical behaviour was repeated over several cycles. A simple photoactuating device was prepared using a CP3-PVA composite.

AI hybrid survival assessment for advanced heart failure patients with renal dysfunction.

Renal dysfunction (RD) often characterizes the worse course of patients with advanced heart failure (AHF). Many prognosis assessments are hindered by researcher biases, redundant predictors, and lack of clinical applicability. In this study, we enroll 1736 AHF/RD patients, including data from Henan Province Clinical Research Center for Cardiovascular Diseases (which encompasses 11 hospital subcenters), and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. We developed an AI hybrid modeling framework, assembling 12 learners with different feature selection paradigms to expand modeling schemes. The optimized strategy is identified from 132 potential schemes to establish an explainable survival assessment system: AIHFLevel. The conditional inference survival tree determines a probability threshold for prognostic stratification. The evaluation confirmed the system's robustness in discrimination, calibration, generalization, and clinical implications. AIHFLevel outperforms existing models, clinical features, and biomarkers. We also launch an open and user-friendly website www.hf-ai-survival.com , empowering healthcare professionals with enhanced tools for continuous risk monitoring and precise risk profiling.

Transcriptomic responses to shifts in light and nitrogen in two congeneric diatom species.

Light and nitrogen availability are basic requirements for photosynthesis. Changing in light intensity and nitrogen concentration may require adaptive physiological and life process changes in phytoplankton cells. Our previous study demonstrated that two Thalassiosira species exhibited, respectively, distinctive physiological responses to light and nitrogen stresses. Transcriptomic analyses were employed to investigate the mechanisms behind the different physiological responses observed in two diatom species of the genus Thalassiosira. The results indicate that the congeneric species are different in their cellular responses to the same shifting light and nitrogen conditions. When conditions changed to high light with low nitrate (HLLN), the large-celled T. punctigera was photodamaged. Thus, the photosynthesis pathway and carbon fixation related genes were significantly down-regulated. In contrast, the small-celled T. pseudonana sacrificed cellular processes, especially amino acid metabolisms, to overcome the photodamage. When changing to high light with high nitrate (HLHN) conditions, the additional nitrogen appeared to compensate for the photodamage in the large-celled T. punctigera, with the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle) and carbon fixation significantly boosted. Consequently, the growth rate of T. punctigera increased, which suggest that the larger-celled species is adapted for forming post-storm algal blooms. The impact of high light stress on the small-celled T. pseudonana was not mitigated by elevated nitrate levels, and photodamage persisted.

The application status of sequencing technology in global respiratory infectious disease diagnosis.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized clinical microbiology, particularly in diagnosing respiratory infectious diseases and conducting epidemiological investigations. This narrative review summarizes conventional methods for routine respiratory infection diagnosis, including culture, smear microscopy, immunological assays, image techniques as well as polymerase chain reaction(PCR). In contrast to conventional methods, there is a new detection technology, sequencing technology, and here we mainly focus on the next-generation sequencing NGS, especially metagenomic NGS(mNGS). NGS offers significant advantages over traditional methods. Firstly, mNGS eliminates assumptions about pathogens, leading to faster and more accurate results, thus reducing diagnostic time. Secondly, it allows unbiased identification of known and novel pathogens, offering broad-spectrum coverage. Thirdly, mNGS not only identifies pathogens but also characterizes microbiomes, analyzes human host responses, and detects resistance genes and virulence factors. It can complement targeted sequencing for bacterial and fungal classification. Unlike traditional methods affected by antibiotics, mNGS is less influenced due to the extended survival of pathogen DNA in plasma, broadening its applicability. However, barriers to full integration into clinical practice persist, primarily due to cost constraints and limitations in sensitivity and turnaround time. Despite these challenges, ongoing advancements aim to improve cost-effectiveness and efficiency, making NGS a cornerstone technology for global respiratory infection diagnosis.

MACCoM: A multiple attention and convolutional cross-mixer framework for detailed 2D biomedical image segmentation.

The UNet architecture, which is widely used for biomedical image segmentation, has limitations like blurred feature maps and over- or under-segmented regions. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel network architecture called MACCoM (Multiple Attention and Convolutional Cross-Mixer) - an end-to-end depthwise encoder-decoder fully convolutional network designed for binary and multi-class biomedical image segmentation built upon deeperUNet. We proposed a multi-scope attention module (MSAM) that allows the model to attend to diverse scale features, preserving fine details and high-level semantic information thus useful at the encoder-decoder connection. As the depth increases, our proposed spatial multi-head attention (SMA) is added to facilitate inter-layer communication and information exchange, enabling the network to effectively capture long-range dependencies and global context. MACCoM is also equipped with a convolutional cross-mixer we proposed to enhance the feature extraction capability of the model. By incorporating these modules, we effectively combine semantically similar features and reduce artifacts during the early stages of training. Experimental results on 4 biomedical datasets crafted from 3 datasets of varying modalities consistently demonstrate that MACCoM outperforms or matches state-of-the-art baselines in the segmentation tasks. With Breast Ultrasound Image (BUSI), MACCoM recorded 99.06 % Jaccard, 77.58 % Dice, and 93.92 % Accuracy, while recording 99.50 %, 98.44 %, and 99.29 % respectively for Jaccard, Dice, and Accuracy on the Chest X-ray (CXR) images used. The Jaccard, Dice, and Accuracy for the High-Resolution Fundus (HRF) images are 95.77 %, 74.35 %, and 95.95 % respectively. The findings here highlight MACCoM's effectiveness in improving segmentation performance and its valuable potential in image analysis.

Tagging large CNV blocks in wheat boosts digitalization of germplasm resources by ultra-low-coverage sequencing.

BACKGROUND: The massive structural variations and frequent introgression highly contribute to the genetic diversity of wheat, while the huge and complex genome of polyploid wheat hinders efficient genotyping of abundant varieties towards accurate identification, management, and exploitation of germplasm resources. RESULTS: We develop a novel workflow that identifies 1240 high-quality large copy number variation blocks (CNVb) in wheat at the pan-genome level, demonstrating that CNVb can serve as an ideal DNA fingerprinting marker for discriminating massive varieties, with the accuracy validated by PCR assay. We then construct a digitalized genotyping CNVb map across 1599 global wheat accessions. Key CNVb markers are linked with trait-associated introgressions, such as the 1RS·1BL translocation and 2NvS translocation, and the beneficial alleles, such as the end-use quality allele Glu-D1d (Dx5 + Dy10) and the semi-dwarf r-e-z allele. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these tagged CNVb markers promote a stable and cost-effective strategy for evaluating wheat germplasm resources with ultra-low-coverage sequencing data, competing with SNP array for applications such as evaluating new varieties, efficient management of collections in gene banks, and describing wheat germplasm resources in a digitalized manner. We also develop a user-friendly interactive platform, WheatCNVb ( http://wheat.cau.edu.cn/WheatCNVb/ ), for exploring the CNVb profiles over ever-increasing wheat accessions, and also propose a QR-code-like representation of individual digital CNVb fingerprint. This platform also allows uploading new CNVb profiles for comparison with stored varieties. CONCLUSIONS: The CNVb-based approach provides a low-cost and high-throughput genotyping strategy for enabling digitalized wheat germplasm management and modern breeding with precise and practical decision-making.

Photoreduced Ag+/sodium alginate supramolecular hydrogel as a sensitive SERS membrane substrate for rapid detection of uranyl ions.

BACKGROUND: In the fields of environmental monitoring and nuclear emergency, in order to obtain the relevant information of uranyl-induced environmental pollution and nuclear accident, it is necessary to establish a rapid quantitative analytical technique for uranyl ions. As a new promising technique, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is hopeful to achieve this goal. However, uranyl ions are easily desorbed from SERS substrates under acidic conditions, and the structures of SERS substrates will be destroyed in the strong acidic aqueous solutions. Besides, the quantitative detection ability of SERS for uranyl ions needs to be promoted. Hence, it is necessary to develop new SERS substrates for accurate quantitative detection of trace uranyl in environmental water samples, especially in acidic solutions. RESULTS: In this work, we prepared silver ions/sodium alginate supramolecular hydrogel membrane (Ag+/SA SMH membrane), and the Ag+ ions from the membrane were transformed into Ag/Ag2O complex nanoparticles under laser irradiation. The Raman signal of uranyl was strongly enhanced under the synergistic interaction of electromagnetic enhancement derived from the Ag nanoparticles and charge transfer enhancement between uranyl and Ag2O. Utilizing the peak of SA (550 cm-1) as an internal standard, a quantitative detection with a LOD of 6.7 × 10-9 mol L-1 was achieved due to a good linear relation of uranyl concentrations from 1.0 × 10-8 mol L-1 to 2 × 10-6 mol L-1. Furthermore, foreign metal ions hardly affected the SERS detection of uranyl, and the substrate could determine trace uranyl in natural water samples. Particularly, the acidity had no obvious effect on SERS signals of uranyl ions. Therefore, in addition to the detection of uranyl ions in natural water samples, the proposed strategy could also detect uranyl ions in strong acidic solutions. SIGNIFICANCE AND NOVELTY: A simple one-step method was used to prepare an Ag+/SA SMH membrane for rapid quantitative detection of uranyl ions for the first time. The proposed substrate successfully detected uranyl ions under acidic conditions by immobilizing uranyl ion in hydrogel structure. In comparison with the previous studies, a more accurate quantitative analysis for uranyl ions was achieved by using an internal standard, and the proposed strategy could determine trace uranyl in either natural water samples or strong acidic solutions.

Identification of diagnostic signature and immune infiltration for ischemic cardiomyopathy based on cuproptosis-related genes through bioinformatics analysis and experimental validation.

BACKGROUND: Ischemic cardiomyopathy (IC) is primarily due to long-term ischemia/hypoxia of the coronary arteries, leading to impaired cardiac contractile or diastolic function. A new form of cell death induced by copper, called "cuproptosis" is related to the development and progression of multiple diseases. The cuproptosis-related gene (CuGs) plays an important role in acute myocardial infarction, while the specific mechanisms of CuGs in ischemic cardiomyopathy remain unclear. METHODS: The expressions of CuGs and their immune characteristics were analyzed with the IC datasets obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus, namely GSE5406 and GSE57338, identifying core genes associated with IC development. By comparing RF, SVM, GLM and XGB models, the optimal machine learning model was selected. The expression of marker genes was validated based on the GSE57345, GSE48166 and GSE42955 datasets. Construct a CeRNA network based on core genes. Therapeutic chemiacals targeting core genes were acquired using the CTD database, and molecular docking was performed using Autodock vina software. By ligating the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery, an IC mouse model is established, and core genes were experimentally validated using Western blot (WB) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods. RESULTS: We identified 14 CuGs closely associated with the onset of IC. The SVM model exhibited superior discriminative power (AUC = 0.914), with core genes being DLST, ATP7B, FDX1, SLC31A1 and DLAT. Core genes were validated on the GSE42955, GSE48166 and GSE57345 datasets, showing excellent performance (AUC = 0.943, AUC = 0.800, and AUC = 0.932). The CeRNA network consists of 218 nodes and 264 lines, including 5 core diagnostic genes, 52 miRNAs, and 161 lncRNAs. Chemicals predictions indicated 8 chemicals have therapeutic effects on the core diagnostic genes, with benzo(a)pyrene molecular docking showing the highest affinity (-11.3 kcal/mol). Compared to the normal group, the IC group,which was established by LAD ligation, showed a significant decrease in LVEF as indicated by cardiac ultrasound, and increased fibrosis as shown by MASSON staining, WB results suggest increased expression of DLST and ATP7B, and decreased expression of FDX1, SLC31A1 and DLAT in the myocardial ischemic area (p < 0.05), which was also confirmed by IHC in tissue sections. CONCLUSION: In summary, this study comprehensively revealed that DLST, ATP7B, FDX1, SLC31A1 and DLAT could be identified as potential immunological biomarkers in IC, and validated through an IC mouse model, providing valuable insights for future research into the mechanisms of CuGs and its diagnostic value to IC.

Label-free investigation of infected acute pyelonephritis tissue by FTIR microspectroscopy with unsupervised and supervised analytical methods.

Acute pyelonephritis (AP) is a severe urinary tract infection (UTI) syndrome with a large population of patients worldwide. Current approaches to confirming AP are limited to urinalysis, radiological imaging methods and histological assessment. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy is a promising label-free modality that can offer information about both morphological and molecular pathologic alterations from biological tissues. Here, FTIR microspectroscopy serves to investigate renal biological histology of a rat model with AP and classify normal cortex, normal medulla and infected acute pyelonephritis tissues. The spectra were experimentally collected by FTIR with an infrared Globar source through raster scanning procedure. Unsupervised analysis methods, including integrating, clustering and principal component analysis (PCA) were performed on such spectra data to form infrared histological maps of entire kidney section. In comparison to Hematoxylin & Eosin-stained results of the adjacent tissue sections, these infrared maps were proved to enable the differentiation of the renal tissue types. The results of both integration and clustering indicated that the concentration of amide II decreases in the infected acute pyelonephritis tissues, with an increased presence of nucleic acids and lipids. By means of PCA, the infected tissue was linearly separated from normal ones by plotting confident ellipses with the score values of the first and second principal components. Moreover, supervised analysis was performed based on the supported vector machines (SVM). Normal cortex, normal medulla and infected acute pyelonephritis tissues were classified by SVM models with the best accuracy of 96.11% in testing dataset. In addition, these analytical methods were further employed on synchrotron-based FTIR spectra data and successfully form high-resolution infrared histological maps of glomerulus and necrotic cell mass. This work demonstrates that FTIR microspectroscopy will be a powerful manner to investigate AP tissue and differentiate infected tissue from normal tissue in a renal infected model system.

Berberine hydrochloride alleviates chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome by modifying gut microbiome signaling.

ABSTRACT: Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) is highly prevalent worldwide and poses a significant threat to men's health, particularly affecting young men. However, the exact causes and mechanisms behind CP/CPPS remain unclear, leading to challenges in its treatment. In this research, a CP/CPPS rat model was established with complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA), and berberine hydrochloride was administered through daily gavage to assess its therapeutic effects. The alterations in the gut microbiome induced by CP/CPPS and berberine hydrochloride were investigated through 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing of cecum content and colonic epithelial cells. To investigate the impact of the gut microbiome on CP/CPPS, a pseudo germ-free rat model was established, and fecal microbiome transplantation (FMT) was performed on these rats. In all, berberine hydrochloride demonstrated effective reduction of inflammation and oxidative stress in the prostate, offering significant therapeutic advantages for CP/CPPS. Through analysis of the gut microbiome using 16S ribosome RNA sequencing, distinct differences were observed between CP/CPPS rats and control rats, and Clostridium butyricum was identified as a key bacteria. Pseudo germ-free rats that underwent FMT from CP/CPPS rats or rats treated with berberine hydrochloride displayed varying levels of inflammatory cytokine production, oxidative stress, and activity of associated signaling pathways. In conclusion, the therapeutic potential of berberine hydrochloride in addressing CP/CPPS is highly significant. The gut microbiome has emerged as a critical factor in the development of CP/CPPS and plays a pivotal role in mediating the therapeutic effects of berberine hydrochloride.

The effectiveness of booster vaccination of inactivated COVID-19 vaccines against susceptibility, infectiousness, and transmission of omicron BA.2 variant: a retrospective cohort study in Shenzhen, China.

Little studies evaluated the effectiveness of booster vaccination of inactivated COVID-19 vaccines against being infected (susceptibility), infecting others (infectiousness), and spreading the disease from one to another (transmission). Therefore, we conducted a retrospective cohort study to evaluate the effectiveness of booster vaccination of inactivated COVID-19 vaccines against susceptibility, infectiousness, and transmission in Shenzhen during an Omicron BA.2 outbreak period from 1 February to 21 April 2022. The eligible individuals were classified as four sub-cohorts according to the inactivated COVID-19 vaccination status of both the close contacts and their index cases: group 2-2, fully vaccinated close contacts seeded by fully vaccinated index cases (reference group); group 2-3, booster-vaccinated close contacts seeded by fully vaccinated index cases; group 3-2, fully vaccinated close contacts seeded by booster-vaccinated index cases; and group 3-3, booster-vaccinated close contacts seeded by booster-vaccinated index cases. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were applied to estimate the effectiveness of booster vaccination. The sample sizes of groups 2-2, 2-3, 3-2, and 3-3 were 846, 1,115, 1,210, and 2,417, respectively. We found that booster vaccination had an effectiveness against infectiousness of 44.9% (95% CI: 19.7%, 62.2%) for the adults ≥ 18 years, 62.2% (95% CI: 32.0%, 78.9%) for the female close contacts, and 60.8% (95% CI: 38.5%, 75.1%) for the non-household close contacts. Moreover, booster vaccination had an effectiveness against transmission of 29.0% (95% CI: 3.2%, 47.9%) for the adults ≥ 18 years, 38.9% (95% CI: 3.3%, 61.3%) for the female close contacts, and 45.8% (95% CI: 22.1%, 62.3%) for the non-household close contacts. However, booster vaccination against susceptibility did not provide any protective effect. In summary, this study confirm that booster vaccination of the inactivated COVID-19 vaccines provides low level of protection and moderate level of protection against Omicron BA.2 transmission and infectiousness, respectively. However, booster vaccination does not provide any protection against Omicron BA.2 susceptibility.

Prevalence of Cannabis Use around the World: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2000-2024.

This study aims to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis on the global prevalence of cannabis use to inform drug prevention strategies, policy-making, and resource allocation. This study initially screened 177,843 studies published between January 1, 2000, and January 15, 2024, using peer-reviewed databases including Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Cochrane Library. Ultimately, 595 studies were identified for data extraction, and 39 of these were selected as country-representative studies. Heterogeneity among the selected studies was assessed using the chi-squared test and I2 statistic, while sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the robustness of the results. The prevalence of cannabis use varied between 0.42% and 43.90% across 33 European countries, 1.40% to 38.12% across 15 North and South American countries, 0.30% to 19.10% across 16 Asian countries, and 1.30% to 48.70% across 18 Oceania and African countries. The pooled prevalence of cannabis use was 12.0% [95% confidence interval (CI): 10.0, 14.3] in countries where cannabis is legalized, compared to 5.4% (95% CI: 4.3, 6.9) in non-legalized countries. Our findings indicate that the prevalence of cannabis use has disproportionately increased in most countries with the implementation of medical or recreational cannabis legalization policies and relevant geographic proximity. Increased efforts are needed to monitor newly cannabis-legalized countries and prevent initial use.

Stereoselective Solid-State Synthesis of Biologically Active Cyclobutane and Dicyclobutane Isomers via Conformation Blocking and Transference.

Conformations in the solid state are typically fixed during crystallization. Transference of "frozen" C=C conformations in 3,5-bis((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)methylbenzene (CH3-3,5-bpeb) by photodimerization selectively yielded cyclobutane and dicyclobutane isomers, one of which (Isomer 2) exhibited excellent in vitro anti-cancer activity towards T-24, 7402, MGC803, HepG-2, and HeLa cells.