SDH5 down-regulation mitigates the damage of osteoporosis via inhibiting the MyD88/NF-κB signaling pathway.

BACKGROUND: Osteoporosis has become a serious public health problem especially in postmenopausal women. This work aims to assess both the function and mechanism of SDH5 in osteoporosis. METHODS: The animal model of osteoporosis in Sprague-Dawley rats was established by utilizing ovariectomy (OVX). The trabecular bone morphometry had been determined by micro-CT, and tibia injury of rats was detected through HE and alcian blue staining. Meanwhile, the levels of oxidative stress factors, including malondialdehyde, catalase, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), and superoxide (SOD), were detected by ELISA. The proliferation and apoptosis of osteoblasts isolated from OVX-induced rats were found out by CCK-8 and flow cytometry, respectively. The expression of SDH5, Osterix, Type I collagen (CoL1A1), osteocalcin (OC), SOD1, SOD2, p-MyD88/MyD88, and p-NF-κB p65/NF-κB p65 was assessed by Western blot. The effect and mechanism of SDH5 knockdown on osteoporosis were verified by lipopolysaccharide treatment. RESULTS: In the osteoporosis rat model, the expression of SDH5 had an up-regulated tend. A higher bone mineral density value was found in the SDH5 knockdown group. SDH5 inhibition ameliorated bone loss, mitigated bone histopathological injury, alleviated oxidative stress, and elevated osteogenic marker protein expression in vivo and in vitro. SDH5 down-regulation also promoted the proliferation and restrained apoptosis of osteoblasts extracted from OVX-induced rats. Furthermore, we found that the underlying mechanism was associated with the inhibition of the MyD88/NF-κB pathway. CONCLUSION: Down-regulation of SDH5 mitigates the damage of osteoporosis both in vivo and in vitro via inhibiting the MyD88/NF-κB signaling activation.

Effect of wastewater treatment plant discharge on the bacterial community in a receiving river.

The effluent of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is an important water resource for some rivers in regions with relatively low precipitation, which may pose ecological risks. Various pollutants and microorganisms are discharged into rivers, along with the WWTP effluent, but this process has not been thoroughly studied. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of WWTP effluent on the bacterial community in the sediment and water column of an urban river and to identify the relationship between the total and active bacterial communities. Five sites were sampled in the river, including the most upstream site of the river (Up-most), 200 m upstream of the WWTP (Up-200), at the point of effluent discharge of the WWTP (Eff-pl) and 50 m (Down-50) and 1000 m (Down-1000) downstream of the WWTP. Compared with the two upstream sites (Up-most and Up-200), the bacterial species composition of Eff-pl was significantly different (p < 0.05) in both the sediment and water columns, while the bacterial species composition at Down-1000 was significantly different (p < 0.05) in the sediment but not in the water. The relative abundance of Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota and Verrucomicrobiota was significantly different (p < 0.05) at Eff-pl in both the sediment and water columns compared with that at the upstream sites. The shared bacterial species between the DNA and RNA 16 S rRNA analyses were only 45.5-62.2% and 43.2-52.3% for the sediment and water, respectively. Accordingly, WWTP effluent drainage significantly alters (p < 0.05) the bacterial composition in the receiving river but can be recovered in water within a short distance. However, in sediment, a longer recovery space is probably needed. Analyses of the combination of total and active bacterial compositions are recommended to evaluate the ecological consequences of WWTP effluent drainage on the bacterial composition.

Sporthesia: Augmenting Sports Videos Using Natural Language.

Augmented sports videos, which combine visualizations and video effects to present data in actual scenes, can communicate insights engagingly and thus have been increasingly popular for sports enthusiasts around the world. Yet, creating augmented sports videos remains a challenging task, requiring considerable time and video editing skills. On the other hand, sports insights are often communicated using natural language, such as in commentaries, oral presentations, and articles, but usually lack visual cues. Thus, this work aims to facilitate the creation of augmented sports videos by enabling analysts to directly create visualizations embedded in videos using insights expressed in natural language. To achieve this goal, we propose a three-step approach - 1) detecting visualizable entities in the text, 2) mapping these entities into visualizations, and 3) scheduling these visualizations to play with the video - and analyzed 155 sports video clips and the accompanying commentaries for accomplishing these steps. Informed by our analysis, we have designed and implemented Sporthesia, a proof-of-concept system that takes racket-based sports videos and textual commentaries as the input and outputs augmented videos. We demonstrate Sporthesia's applicability in two exemplar scenarios, i.e., authoring augmented sports videos using text and augmenting historical sports videos based on auditory comments. A technical evaluation shows that Sporthesia achieves high accuracy (F1-score of 0.9) in detecting visualizable entities in the text. An expert evaluation with eight sports analysts suggests high utility, effectiveness, and satisfaction with our language-driven authoring method and provides insights for future improvement and opportunities.

Biodegradable Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg Alloy for Bone Regeneration In Vivo.

To evaluate the bone regeneration capacity of Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg alloy scaffold in vivo. Zn, Zn-2Ag and Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg scaffolds were implanted in the femur of New Zealand rabbits, and the degradation of the scaffolds and the regeneration of the bone were observed at 6th week and 6th month. Two-dimensional and three-dimensional micro-CT results showed the new bone in Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg alloy scaffold group was significant more than Zn scaffold group, the bone volume in Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg was higher. Moreover, the osteogenic index in the Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg alloy scaffold group was also higher than Zn scaffold group. At 6th month, the scaffold of Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg was smaller than Zn group or Zn-2Ag group. HE staining of the liver, kidney, and heart did not detect any abnormalities, confirmed the biosafety of the Zn-2Ag-0.04Mg alloy scaffold. The Zn-Ag-0.04Mg alloy scaffold exhibits good biocompatibility and bone regeneration ability in vivo.

Augmenting Sports Videos with VisCommentator.

Visualizing data in sports videos is gaining traction in sports analytics, given its ability to communicate insights and explicate player strategies engagingly. However, augmenting sports videos with such data visualizations is challenging, especially for sports analysts, as it requires considerable expertise in video editing. To ease the creation process, we present a design space that characterizes augmented sports videos at an element-level (what the constituents are) and clip-level (how those constituents are organized). We do so by systematically reviewing 233 examples of augmented sports videos collected from TV channels, teams, and leagues. The design space guides selection of data insights and visualizations for various purposes. Informed by the design space and close collaboration with domain experts, we design VisCommentator, a fast prototyping tool, to eases the creation of augmented table tennis videos by leveraging machine learning-based data extractors and design space-based visualization recommendations. With VisCommentator, sports analysts can create an augmented video by selecting the data to visualize instead of manually drawing the graphical marks. Our system can be generalized to other racket sports (e.g., tennis, badminton) once the underlying datasets and models are available. A user study with seven domain experts shows high satisfaction with our system, confirms that the participants can reproduce augmented sports videos in a short period, and provides insightful implications into future improvements and opportunities.

Visual quality after implantation of trifocal intraocular lenses in highly myopic eyes with different axial lengths.

AIM: To analyze postoperative clinical results after implantation of trifocal intraocular lenses (IOLs) in highly myopic eyes with different axial lengths (ALs). METHODS: This retrospective study describes 61 eyes of 44 patients that were implanted with trifocal diffractive IOLs (AT LISA tri 839MP). Twenty-one eyes (15 patients) were included in the AL<26 mm group, 19 eyes (13 patients) in the AL≥26 mm and <28 mm group, and 21 eyes (16 patients) in the AL≥28 mm group. Postoperative outcomes, including corrected and uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA), intermediate and near visual acuity at 167 cd/m2 luminance, depth of focus at 85 cd/m2 luminance, and objective optical quality parameters assessed using the Optical Quality Analysis System (OQAS), were compared among the groups at 3mo. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in the mean UDVA, uncorrected intermediate visual acuity, uncorrected near visual acuity, corrected distance visual acuity, distance-corrected intermediate visual acuity, and distance-corrected near visual acuity (DCNVA) among the three groups (P>0.05). Better near and intermediate visual acuity (from -1.5 D to -3.0 D) were noted on the defocus curve of the AL<26 mm group (P<0.01 vs AL≥28 mm group). Significantly higher objective scatter index (OSI) values and lower modulation transfer function (MTF) cut-off values, Strehl ratio (SR), and OQAS values (OVs) were observed in the AL≥28 mm group (P<0.01 vs AL<26 mm group). All OQAS parameters had statistically significant correlations with DCNVA and visual acuity at the vergence of -2.5 D (P<0.05 to P<0.01). CONCLUSION: Implantation of trifocal IOLs provides good short-term visual and refractive outcomes in highly myopic eyes with different ALs. However, the near vision decreases in the extremely myopic eyes at lower luminance, which is associated with the lower objective optical quality in these eyes.

Stable transfection into rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells by lentivirus-mediated NT-3.

Transplantation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) is the most promising therapeutic strategy in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. BMSCs have a wide variety of sources and are characterized by being exempt from immune rejection, marked secretory functions and neuronal plasticity during differentiation. The lentiviral vector, namely PLV.Ex3d.P/neo-EF1A-NT3-internal ribosome entry site-enhanced green fluorescent protein, was constructed and subsequently transfected into Sprague Dawley (SD) rat BMSCs. The gene and protein expression levels of the nucleic acid neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) were then detected. The results demonstrated that the constructed NT-3 gene lentiviral expression vector matched the expected design and that the NT-3 gene was transfected into the BMSCs via the lentivirus­mediated method at a transfection efficiency of 60­70%. NT-3 gene expression was detected within the stably transfected positive cells at the nucleic acid and protein levels. The cell morphology and biological activity of BMSCs did not alter significantly following transfection with NT-3. NT-3-transfected SD BMSCs were successfully constructed and served as effective vector seed cells with stable expression. These results can be used as a reference for subsequent studies on the transplantation therapy of rat spinal cord injuries using lentivirus-mediated NT-3-transfected SD BMSCs.