Real-Time Ferrogram Segmentation of Wear Debris Using Multi-Level Feature Reused Unet.

The real-time monitoring and fault diagnosis of modern machinery and equipment impose higher demands on equipment maintenance, with the extraction of morphological characteristics of wear debris in lubricating oil emerging as a critical approach for real-time monitoring of wear, holding significant importance in the field. The online visual ferrograph (OLVF) technique serves as a representative method in this study. Various semantic segmentation approaches, such as DeepLabV3+, PSPNet, Segformer, Unet, and other models, are employed to process the oil wear particle image for conducting comparative experiments. In order to accurately segment the minute wear debris in oil abrasive images and mitigate the influence of reflection and bubbles, we propose a multi-level feature reused Unet (MFR Unet) that enhances the residual link strategy of Unet for improved identification of tiny wear debris in ferrograms, leading to superior segmentation results.

Primer Exchange Reaction Coupled with DNA-Templated Silver Nanoclusters for Label-Free and Sensitive Detection of MicroRNA.

MicroRNAs (MiRNAs) play pivotal roles in regulating gene expression, and serve as crucial biomarkers for diagnosis of a variety of disease. However, label-free and sensitive miRNA detection remains a huge challenge due to the low abundance. Herein, we developed an approach through integrating primer exchange reaction (PER) with DNA-templated silver nanoclusters (AgNCs) for label-free and sensitive miRNA detection. In this method, PER was used to amplify miRNA signals and produce single-strand DNA (ssDNA) sequences. The produced ssDNA sequences mediated DNA-templated AgNCs based signal generation by unfolding the designed hairpin probe (HP). The generated AgNCs signal was correlated with the dosage of target miRNA. Eventually, the established approach exhibited a low detection of limit of 47 fM with a great dynamic range of more than five orders of magnitude. In addition, the method was also utilized to detect the miRNA-31 expression in collected clinical samples from pancreatitis patients and demonstrated that miRNA-31 was upregulated in patients, showing a great promising of the method in clinical application.

Toxicity of nickel and cobalt in Japanese flounder.

Nickel and cobalt are essential elements that become toxic at high concentrations. Little is known about nickel and cobalt toxicity in aquatic animals. This study aimed to investigate acute and chronic toxicity of nickel and cobalt in Japanese flounder (Paralichthys olivaceous), with emphasis on oxidative stress reactions, histopathological changes, and differences in gene expression. The lethal concentration for 50% mortality (LC50) in 3 and 8 cm Japanese flounder exposed to nickel for 96 h was found to be 86.2 ± 0.018 and 151.3 ± 0.039 mg/L; for cobalt exposure, LC50 was 47.5 ± 0.015 and 180.4 ± 0.034 mg/L, respectively. Chronic nickel and cobalt exposure caused different degrees of oxidative enzyme activity changes in gill, liver, and muscle tissues. Erythrocyte deformations were detected after acute or chronic exposure to nickel and cobalt. the nickel and cobalt exposure also caused pathological changes such as spherical swelling over other gill patches, rod-like proliferations in the gill patch epithelial cell layer, and disorder in hepatocyte arrangement, cell swelling, and cytoplasm loosening. RNA-Seq indicated that there were 184 upregulated and 185 downregulated genes in the liver of Japanese flounder exposed to 15 mg/L nickel for 28 d. For cobalt, 920 upregulated and 457 downregulated genes were detected. Among these differentially expressed genes, 162 were shared by both nickel and cobalt exposure. In both nickel and cobalt, pathways including fatty acid elongation, steroid biosynthesis, unsaturated fatty acid biosynthesis, fatty acid metabolism, PPAR signaling, and ferroptosis were significantly enriched. Taken together, these results aided our understanding of the toxicity of nickel and cobalt in aquatic animals.

Influence of Alloy Substrate Treatment on Microstructure and Surface Performances of Arc-Ion Plated Gold-Like Film.

Three typical surface pretreatment strategies (grind, drawing, polishing) are employed to explore the influence of alloy substrate treatment on microstructure and surface performances of arc-ion plated TiN and ZrN films. The luminance and color of the films are measured by the color coordinate value of CIELab system (a color system which is defined by the International Commission on illumination). The crystal phases, morphology and microstructure are characterized and analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). In addition, the anti-alkali, salt corrosion and anti-oxidation performances of films are systematically researched. The results show that the films with grinding pretreatment are more like gold color, "L" values are 77.27 cd/m² and 80.30 cd/m². The "b" value of TiN film is 29.96, which is the same as that of pure gold. The "a" value of ZrN film is 0.31, which is the same as pure silver. The density of TiN and ZrN films is the best, and both TiN and ZrN films were crystalline. They have the best anti-alkali and anti-oxidation performance. The films with drawing pretreatment show slant red color and have medium brightness values (74.07⁻76.37 cd/m²), worse compactness, obvious furrows and holes in their microstructures and worse salt corrosion and anti-oxidation performances. However, the TiN films are in amorphous states. The films with polishing pretreatment have the lowest brightness (72.66 cd/m²), gold-like color, superior compactness and best salt corrosion performance, which have a small number of holes. The TiN films with polishing pretreatment are also in amorphous state. Above all, alloy substrate pretreatment by grinding has the best gold-like color, brightness, compactness and corrosion resistance performance. This work exclusively sheds new light on surface pretreatment of alloy substrate by arc-ion plated films and also provides a reference for corrosion resistance performance of gold-like films.

Gonadal Transcriptome Analysis in Sterile Double Haploid Japanese Flounder.

Sterility is a serious problem that can affect all bionts. In teleosts, double haploids (DHs) induced by mitogynogenesis are often sterile. This sterility severely restricts the further application of DHs for production of clones, genetic analysis, and breeding. However, sterile DH individuals are good source materials for investigation of the molecular mechanisms of gonad development, especially for studies into the role of genes that are indispensable for fish reproduction. Here, we used the Illumina sequencing platform to analyze the transcriptome of sterile female DH Japanese flounder in order to identify major genes that cause sterility and to provide a molecular basis for an intensive study of gonadal development in teleosts. Through sequencing, assembly, and annotation, we obtained 52,474 contigs and found that 60.7% of these shared homologies with existing sequences. A total of 1225 differentially expressed unigenes were found, including 492 upregulated and 733 downregulated genes. Gene Ontology and KEGG analyses showed that genes showing significant upregulation, such as CYP11A1, CYP11B2, CYP17, CYP21, HSD3ß, bcl2l1, and PRLR, principally correlated with sterol metabolic process, steroid biosynthetic process, and the Jak-stat signaling pathway. The significantly downregulated genes were primarily associated with immune response, antigen processing and presentation, cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, and protein digestion and absorption. Using a co-expression network analysis, we conducted a comprehensive comparison of gene expression in the gonads of fertile and sterile female DH Japanese flounder. Identification of genes showing significantly different expression will provide further insights into DH reproductive dysfunction and oocyte maturation processes in teleosts.

Effects of sodium houttuyfonate on phosphorylation of CaMK II, CREB and ERK 1/2 and expression of c-Fos in macrophages.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of sodium houttuyfonate on the phosphorylation of CaMK II, CREB and ERK 1/2, and the expression of c-Fos. Macrophages were cultured in vitro with or without sodium houttuyfonate in the culture medium. After cell culture, macrophages were lysed and the lysate of the macrophages was collected for analysis. Western-blotting method was adopted to investigate the phosphorylation or the expression of these signal elements. It was found in this research that the phosphorylation levels of CaMK II and CREB and the expression of c-Fos protein in macrophages were increased by sodium houttuyfonate treatment; however, the phosphorylation level of ERK 1/2 was not affected by the treatment.

[Study on the blood glucose and lipid of soybean milk rich in chromium to diabetic rats].

UNLABELLED: To reveal the effects of soybean milk with chromium fortification on the blood glucose and lipid of diabetic rat dealt with alloxan. The alloxan diabetic rats were divided into three groups and were fed continuously with the soybean milk without chromium fortification [Cr 0.25 microgram/(d.kg BW)], and with low chromium [Cr 30 micrograms/(d.kg BW)] and high chromium fortification [Cr 300 micrograms/(d.kg BW)] respectively for four weeks. The blood samples from all experimental rats tail vine were obtained each week. Blood glucose, total cholesterol, triglyceride, very low-density lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein and insulin were tested. RESULTS: The concentrations of blood glucose, total cholesterol, triglyceride, very low-density lipoprotein and insulin were lowered significantly, and high-density lipoprotein was elevated significantly in the rats fed by soybean milk with high chromium fortification during the experimental period. The effect of improving blood glucose concentration in the group of soybean milk with high chromium fortification is significantly better than that in other groups. CONCLUSION: The present investigation indicates that soybean milk with chromium fortification can improve glucose and lipid metabolism of diabetic rat, and has a potential use in the diabetes mellitus prevention and control.

Studies on adjuvanticity of sodium houttuyfonate and its mechanism.

The adjuvanticity of sodium houttuyfonate (SH) and its mechanism were studied in this research. Significant enhancement of antibody production was observed when co-injected with antigen. The levels of anti-BSA antibodies were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The possible mechanism of this phenomenon was also investigated in this research, which included the effects of SH on the phagocytosis of macrophages, the production of lysozyme, acid phosphotase and IL-1beta generated by macrophages, the proliferation of the lymphocytes in spleen and the production of IL-2 generated by lymphocytes. IL-1beta is a co-stimulator in activating Th cells, which manifests its activity together with LFA-1, ICAM-1 and ICAM-2. These observations suggested that SH could be used as a new adjuvant.