Wastewater multiplex PCR amplicon sequencing revealed community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 lineages during the outbreak of infection in Chinese Mainland.

During the COVID-19, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become a powerful epidemic surveillance tool widely used worldwide. However, the development and application of this technology in Chinese Mainland are relatively lagging. Herein, we for the first time monitored the community circulation of SARS-CoV-2 lineages using WBE methods in Chinese Mainland. During the peak period of infection outbreak at the end of 2022, six precious sewage samples were collected from the manhole in the student dormitory area on Wangjiang Campus of Sichuan University. RT-qPCR revealed that the six sewage samples were all positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Multiplex PCR amplicon sequencing of the sewage samples reflected the local transmission of SARS-CoV-2 variants. The results of two deconvolution methods indicate that the main virus lineages have clear evolutionary genetic correlations. Furthermore, the sampling time is consistent with the timeline of concern for these virus lineages, as well as the timeline of uploading the nucleic acid sequences from the corresponding lineages in Sichuan to the database. These results demonstrate the reliability of the sewage sequencing results. Multiplex PCR amplicon sequencing is by far the most powerful analytical tool of WBE, enabling quantitative detection of virus lineages transmission and evolution at the community level.

Low-frequency rTMS modulated the excitability and high-frequency firing in hippocampal neurons of the Alzheimer's disease mouse model.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, holds potential for applications in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This study aims to compare the therapeutic effects of rTMS at different frequencies on Alzheimer's disease and explore the alterations in neuronal electrophysiological properties throughout this process. APP/PS1 AD mice were subjected to two rTMS treatments at 0.5 Hz and 20 Hz, followed by assessments of therapeutic outcomes through the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) and Morris Water Maze (MWM) tests. Following this, whole-cell patch-clamp techniques were used to record action potential, voltage-gated sodium channel currents, and voltage-gated potassium channel currents in dentate gyrus granule neurons. The results show that AD mice exhibit significant cognitive decline compared to normal mice, along with a pronounced reduction in neuronal excitability and ion channel activity. Both frequencies of rTMS treatment partially reversed these changes, demonstrating similar therapeutic efficacy. Furthermore, the investigation indicates that low-frequency magnetic stimulation inhibited the concentrated firing of early action potentials in AD.

Joint Unsupervised Learning of Depth, Pose, Ground Normal Vector and Ground Segmentation by a Monocular Camera Sensor.

We propose a completely unsupervised approach to simultaneously estimate scene depth, ego-pose, ground segmentation and ground normal vector from only monocular RGB video sequences. In our approach, estimation for different scene structures can mutually benefit each other by the joint optimization. Specifically, we use the mutual information loss to pre-train the ground segmentation network and before adding the corresponding self-learning label obtained by a geometric method. By using the static nature of the ground and its normal vector, the scene depth and ego-motion can be efficiently learned by the self-supervised learning procedure. Extensive experimental results on both Cityscapes and KITTI benchmark demonstrate the significant improvement on the estimation accuracy for both scene depth and ego-pose by our approach. We also achieve an average error of about 3° for estimated ground normal vectors. By deploying our proposed geometric constraints, the IOUaccuracy of unsupervised ground segmentation is increased by 35% on the Cityscapes dataset.

Visual Semantic Landmark-Based Robust Mapping and Localization for Autonomous Indoor Parking.

Autonomous parking in an indoor parking lot without human intervention is one of the most demanded and challenging tasks of autonomous driving systems. The key to this task is precise real-time indoor localization. However, state-of-the-art low-level visual feature-based simultaneous localization and mapping systems (VSLAM) suffer in monotonous or texture-less scenes and under poor illumination or dynamic conditions. Additionally, low-level feature-based mapping results are hard for human beings to use directly. In this paper, we propose a semantic landmark-based robust VSLAM for real-time localization of autonomous vehicles in indoor parking lots. The parking slots are extracted as meaningful landmarks and enriched with confidence levels. We then propose a robust optimization framework to solve the aliasing problem of semantic landmarks by dynamically eliminating suboptimal constraints in the pose graph and correcting erroneous parking slots associations. As a result, a semantic map of the parking lot, which can be used by both autonomous driving systems and human beings, is established automatically and robustly. We evaluated the real-time localization performance using multiple autonomous vehicles, and an repeatability of 0.3 m track tracing was achieved at a 10 kph of autonomous driving.

[A Meta-analysis on Acupuncture and Moxibustion Treatment of Schizophrenia].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical efficacy and security of acupuncture therapy combined with conventional antipsychotics in the treatment of schizophrenia. METHODS: We first comprehensively retrieved papers about acupuncture or moxibustion treatment of schizophrenia published from the time of establishment of the database to April of 2017 in Chinese databases such as Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI), Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database (VIP), Wanfang, and Chinese BioMedical Literature (CBM) by using keywords "acupuncture""moxibustion""acupuncture ＋moxibustion""acupuncture ＋medication""electroacupuncture""filiform needle""scalp-acupuncture""auricular acupuncture"， etc. Then, according to the principles and methods of evidence-based medicine, papers conformed to the included standards were enrolled to Meta-analysis by using Review Manager 5.3 software. RESULTS: A total of 618 studies were identified, with only 17 articles (containing 1 542 patients) conformed to our included standards and analyzed finally. In regard to the total effective rate of acupuncture or moxibustion for schizophrenia, the combined OR＝3.09, 95% CI (2.31, 4.13), the diamond was on the right side of the vertical line (suggesting being effective), OR checked by Z test (Z＝7.61, P<0.000 01). In regard to the untoward effect, the combined OR＝0.34, 95% CI (0.16, 0.75), the diamond was on the left side of the vertical line (suggesting less adverse effects), OR checked by Z test (Z＝2.67，P＝0.008). Sensitivity analysis: the combined standardized mean difference (SMD)＝－0.61, 95% CI(－0.88, －0.34), the diamond was on the left side of the vertical line (suggesting having more profits than simple medication), SMD checked by Z test (Z＝4.39, P<0.000 1)．. CONCLUSION: Acupuncture and moxibustion combined with conventional antipsychotics is significantly better than that of antipsychotics alone in the treatment of schizophrenia and has less side effects. But, high quality clinical studies with rigorous experimental design and large sample size are needed to provide more reliable evidence.

Escherichia coli toxin gene hipA affects biofilm formation and DNA release.

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems in Escherichia coli may play a role in biofilm formation, but the mechanism involved remains debatable. It is not known whether the TA systems are responsible for extracellular DNA (eDNA) in biofilms. In this study, we investigated the function of the hipBA TA system in biofilm formation by Escherichia coli strain BW25113. First, the deletion of the HipBA TA system in E. coli BW25113 significantly reduced the biofilm biomass without antibiotic stress. Second, treatment of the BW25113 biofilm with DNase I caused a major reduction in biofilm formation, whereas similar treatment of the hipA mutant biofilm had only a minor effect. Third, the inactivation of HipA reduced the level of eDNA present in biofilm formation, and addition of BW25113 genomic DNA stimulated biofilm formation for both the wild-type and hipA mutant. Fourth, the wild-type cells underwent significantly more cell lysis than the hipA mutant. These results suggest that hipA plays a significant role during biofilm development and that eDNA is an important structural component of E. coli BW25113 biofilms. Thus, the TA system may enhance biofilm formation through DNA release.

Characterization of luminescent Vibrio campbellii LZ5 and its potential application in the detection of environmental heavy metals.

A luminescent strain was isolated and identified as Vibrio campbellii strain LZ5 by 16S rDNA analysis. It grew well in broad living conditions, and the relative fluorescence intensity was stable at pH ranging from 5 to 7.5, NaCl concentrations from 0% to 3%, KCl from 1.5% to 5%, and CaCl2 from 1% to 3%. In contrast, the relative fluorescence intensity was negatively correlated with both CdCl2 and HgCl2 concentrations from 0 to 1 mg/L. The luminescent fraction from the cell lysate was purified by ion-exchange chromatography, and identified as a luciferase by using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry. Furthermore, the biofilm of V. campbellii LZ5 was formed constantly under different conditions, and was not affected by heavy metal ions. The data collectively reveal that strain LZ5 has the potential to be developed into a biosensor for real-time monitoring of heavy metals.