Deregulated miR-146a-3p alleviates disease progression in atherosclerosis through inactivating NF-κB: An experimental study.

BACKGROUND: Atherosclerosis (AS), as a complex chronic inflammatory disease, is 1 of the main causes of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. This study aimed to confirm the direct interaction between miR-146a-3p and NF-κB, and explore the role of miR-146a-3p/NF-κB in the regulation of inflammation in AS. METHODS: Bioinformatic prediction and dual-luciferase reporter assay were used to confirm the interaction between miR-146a-3p and NF-κB. Lipopolysaccharides stimulation was performed to establish AS inflammatory cell model, and the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines were estimated using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. miR-146a-3p and NF-κB expression were evaluated using reverse transcription quantitative PCR, and their clinical value was examined using a receiver operating characteristic curve. RESULTS: Inflammatory cell model showed increased IL-1ß, IL-6, and TNF-α. NF-κB was a target gene of miR-146a-3p, and mediated the inhibitory effects of miR-146a-3p on inflammatory responses in the cell model. In patients with AS, miR-146a-3p/NF-κB was associated with patients' clinical data and inflammatory cytokine levels, and aberrant miR-146a-3p and NF-κB showed diagnostic accuracy to distinguish AS patients from healthy populations. CONCLUSION: miR-146a-3p might inhibit inflammation by targeting NF-κB in AS progression, and miR-146a-3p/ NF-κB might provide novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for the prevention of AS and related vascular events.

Ion Implantation Combined with Heat Treatment Enables Excellent Conductivity and Corrosion Resistance of Stainless Steel Bipolar Plates for Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

316 L stainless steel is an ideal bipolar plate material for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). However, the thickening of the passivation film on the stainless steel surface and the dissolution of corrosive ions during operation will affect the durability of the PEMFC. Herein, a heterogeneous layer is prepared on the surface of 316 L stainless steel through dual ion implantation of molybdenum ion and carbon ion combined with heat treatment to promote the corrosion resistance and conductivity of the bipolar plate. The ion implantation technique resulted in a uniform distribution of Mo and C elements on the surface of 316 L stainless steel, with a modified layer depth of about 70-80 nm. The electrical conductivity of the ion implanted samples was significantly improved, and the interfacial contact resistance was reduced from 464.25 mΩ × cm2 to 42.49 mΩ × cm2. Heat treatment enhances the surface homogenization, repairs the defects of irradiation damage, and improves the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. The corrosion current density of (Mo+C)-600 samples decreased from 1.21 × 10-8 A/cm2 to 2.95 × 10-9 A/cm2 under the long-term corrosion condition of 4 h. These results can provide guidance for the modification of stainless steel bipolar plates.

Electron structure modulation and bicarbonate surrounding enhance Fenton-like reactions performance of Co-Co PBA.

Although several strategies have been developed to improve the efficiency of heterogeneous Fenton-like reactions, investigating the relationship among the electronic properties of the catalyst surface, the complex water matrix and catalytic activity remains challenges. Herein, the electron density of the active site Co(II) in Co Prussian blue analogs (Co-PBAs) is proved to be modulated by the anion source method. The elevated electron density of Co(II) and the higher metallicity of the catalyst lead to an increase in electron transport efficiency as revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Furthermore, the negative shift of the D-band center of Co(II) can effectively release intermediates to avoid catalyst poisoning. Bicarbonate has been demonstrated to activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) by weakening the peroxide bond. Its activation mechanism involves free radical mechanism and non-radical mechanism: the first step is the generation of HCO4-, then it is further hydrolyzed to generate •OH and 1O2, and the other is HCO4- interact with Co(III) to form Co(IV)=O. In addition, the degradation pathways of target contaminants p-nitrophenol and toxicity verification of intermediate products have been investigated. This study provides guidance for the research of Fenton-like reactions.

Association between carotid artery perivascular fat density and cerebral small vessel disease.

Studies aiming to identify the significance of the carotid artery perivascular fat density are limited. The present study investigated the distribution pattern of pericarotid fat and its association with imaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). In total, 572 subjects who underwent both neck computed tomography angiography and cranial magnetic resonance imaging were analyzed. The pericarotid fat density near the origin of the internal carotid artery (ICA) and imaging markers of CSVD, such as lacunes, white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) and dilated perivascular spaces (PVSs), were assessed. We found that an increased pericarotid fat density was associated with the presence of lacunes and a higher WMH grade in all subjects, but in the patients with acute ischemic stroke, there was a difference only among the WMH grades. There was no significant difference in the pericarotid fat density in different grades of PVSs. The patients with acute ischemic stroke had a significantly higher mean pericarotid fat density than those without stroke. In conclusion, our study provides evidence suggesting that an increased pericarotid fat density is associated with the presence and degree of WMHs and lacunes. Our findings suggested that features that appear to extend beyond the vessel lumen of the ICA may be linked to CSVD.

Efficient and Practical Correlation Filter Tracking.

Visual tracking is a basic task in many applications. However, the heavy computation and low speed of many recent trackers limit their applications in some computing power restricted scenarios. On the other hand, the simple update scheme of most correlation filter-based trackers restricts their robustness during target deformation and occlusion. In this paper, we explore the update scheme of correlation filter-based trackers and propose an efficient and adaptive training sample update scheme. The training sample extracted in each frame is updated to the training set according to its distance between existing samples measured with a difference hashing algorithm or discarded according to tracking result reliability. In addition, we expand our new tracker to long-term tracking. On the basis of the proposed model updating mechanism, we propose a new tracking state discrimination mechanism to accurately judge tracking failure, and resume tracking after the target is recovered. Experiments on OTB-2015, Temple Color 128 and UAV123 (including UAV20L) demonstrate that our tracker performs favorably against state-of-the-art trackers with light computation and runs over 100 fps on desktop computer with Intel i7-8700 CPU(3.2 GHz).