RNA velocity prediction via neural ordinary differential equation.

RNA velocity is a crucial tool for unraveling the trajectory of cellular responses. Several approaches, including ordinary differential equations and machine learning models, have been proposed to interpret velocity. However, the practicality of these methods is constrained by underlying assumptions. In this study, we introduce SymVelo, a dual-path framework that effectively integrates high- and low-dimensional information. Rigorous benchmarking and extensive studies demonstrate that SymVelo is capable of inferring differentiation trajectories in developing organs, analyzing gene responses to stimulation, and uncovering transcription dynamics. Moreover, the adaptable architecture of SymVelo enables customization to accommodate intricate data and diverse modalities in forthcoming research, thereby providing a promising avenue for advancing our understanding of cellular behavior.

Bioactive poly(salicylic acid)-poly(citric acid) scaffolds improve diabetic wound repair via regulating HIF-1α, Nrf2 and macrophage.

Diabetic wounds environment is over-oxidized, over-inflammatory, leading to difficulties in regenerating blood vessels, and retardation of healing in diabetic wounds. Therefore, diabetic wounds can be treated from the perspective of scavenging oxidative free radicals and reducing the level of inflammation. Herein, we report a bioactive poly(salicylic acid)-poly(citric acid) (FPSa-PCG) hydrogel for diabetic wound repair. The FPSa-PCG hydrogel shows abilities of antioxidation, anti-inflammation, and regulation of macrophage phenotype. The FPSa-PCG hydrogel showed good biocompatibility, and obtain the abilities of promotion of macrophages migration, reduction of ROS generation, suppression of the M1-type macrophage polarization. FPSa and PCG could synergistically enhance the angiogenesis through upregulating the mRNA expression of HIF1Α, VEGF, and CD31 in endothelial cells and reduce the ROS level of macrophages through upregulating the mRNA expression of Nrf2. The in vivo diabetic wound model confirmed the promoting effect of FPSa-PCG hydrogel on wound closure in diabetes. The further studies found that FPSa-PCG hydrogel could induce the CD31 protein expression in the subcutaneous tissue and inhibit the TNF-a protein expression. This work shows that the simple composition FPSa-PCG hydrogel has a promising therapeutic potential in the treatment of diabetic wounds.

Crosstalk Between circRNA and Tumor Microenvironment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Mechanism, Function and Applications.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common aggressive tumors in the world. Despite the availability of various treatments, its prognosis remains poor due to the lack of specific diagnostic indicators and the high heterogeneity of HCC cases. CircRNAs are noncoding RNAs with stable and highly specific expression. Extensive research evidence suggests that circRNAs mediate the pathogenesis and progression of HCC through acting as miRNA sponges, protein modulators, and translation templates. Tumor microenvironment (TME) has become a hotspot of immune-related research in recent years due to its effects on metabolism, secretion and immunity of HCC. Accordingly, understanding the role played by circRNAs in TME is important for the study of HCC. This review will discuss the crosstalk between circRNAs and TME in HCC. In addition, we will discuss the current deficiencies and controversies in research on circRNAs and predict future research directions.

Predictive value of HTS grade in patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma undergoing radical resection: a multicenter study from China.

BACKGROUND: Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a highly malignant tumor with a poor prognosis. This study aimed to investigate whether Hemoglobin, Albumin, Lymphocytes, and Platelets (HALP) score and Tumor Burden Score (TBS) serves as independent influencing factors following radical resection in patients with ICC. Furthermore, we sought to evaluate the predictive capacity of the combined HALP and TBS grade, referred to as HTS grade, and to develop a prognostic prediction model. METHODS: Clinical data for ICC patients who underwent radical resection were retrospectively analyzed. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were first used to find influencing factors of prognosis for ICC. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were then used to find the optimal cut-off values for HALP score and TBS and to compare the predictive ability of HALP, TBS, and HTS grade using the area under these curves (AUC). Nomogram prediction models were constructed and validated based on the results of the multivariate analysis. RESULTS: Among 423 patients, 234 (55.3%) were male and 202 (47.8) were aged ≥ 60 years. The cut-off value of HALP was found to be 37.1 and for TBS to be 6.3. Our univariate results showed that HALP, TBS, and HTS grade were prognostic factors of ICC patients (all P < 0.05), and ROC results showed that HTS had the best predictive value. The Kaplan-Meier curve showed that the prognosis of ICC patients was worse with increasing HTS grade. Additionally, multivariate regression analysis showed that HTS grade, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), tumor differentiation, and vascular invasion were independent influencing factors for Overall survival (OS) and that HTS grade, CA19-9, CEA, vascular invasion and lymph node invasion were independent influencing factors for recurrence-free survival (RFS) (all P < 0.05). In the first, second, and third years of the training group, the AUCs for OS were 0.867, 0.902, and 0.881, and the AUCs for RFS were 0.849, 0.841, and 0.899, respectively. In the first, second, and third years of the validation group, the AUCs for OS were 0.727, 0.771, and 0.763, and the AUCs for RFS were 0.733, 0.746, and 0.801, respectively. Through the examination of calibration curves and using decision curve analysis (DCA), nomograms based on HTS grade showed excellent predictive performance. CONCLUSIONS: Our nomograms based on HTS grade had excellent predictive effects and may thus be able to help clinicians provide individualized clinical decision for ICC patients.

Rethinking Lightweight Salient Object Detection via Network Depth-Width Tradeoff.

Existing salient object detection methods often adopt deeper and wider networks for better performance, resulting in heavy computational burden and slow inference speed. This inspires us to rethink saliency detection to achieve a favorable balance between efficiency and accuracy. To this end, we design a lightweight framework while maintaining satisfying competitive accuracy. Specifically, we propose a novel trilateral decoder framework by decoupling the U-shape structure into three complementary branches, which are devised to confront the dilution of semantic context, loss of spatial structure and absence of boundary detail, respectively. Along with the fusion of three branches, the coarse segmentation results are gradually refined in structure details and boundary quality. Without adding additional learnable parameters, we further propose Scale-Adaptive Pooling Module to obtain multi-scale receptive field. In particular, on the premise of inheriting this framework, we rethink the relationship among accuracy, parameters and speed via network depth-width tradeoff. With these insightful considerations, we comprehensively design shallower and narrower models to explore the maximum potential of lightweight SOD. Our models are proposed for different application environments: 1) a tiny version CTD-S (1.7M, 125FPS) for resource constrained devices, 2) a fast version CTD-M (12.6M, 158FPS) for speed-demanding scenarios, 3) a standard version CTD-L (26.5M, 84FPS) for high-performance platforms. Extensive experiments validate the superiority of our method, which achieves better efficiency-accuracy balance across five benchmarks.

Photoactivated MXene Nanosheets for Integrated Bone-Soft Tissue Therapy: Effect and Potential Mechanism.

The bone defects caused by trauma are inevitably accompanied by soft tissue damage. The development of multifunctional bioactive biomaterials with integrated bone and soft tissue regeneration is necessary and needed urgently in orthopedics. In this work, we found that the photoactivated MXene (Ti3C2Tx) nanosheet showed positive effects on promoting both bone and soft tissue regeneration. We further investigated the detailed effect and potential mechanism of photoactivated MXene on tissue regeneration. Photoactivated MXene shows a good thermal effect and robust antibacterial activity to inhibit the expression of inflammation factors and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection and induces the expression of pro-angiogenic factors and soft tissue wound repair. Photoactivated MXene can also regulate the osteogenic differentiation of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) through the ERK signaling pathway by activating the heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) and enhancing the repair of bone tissue. This work sheds light on the development of bioactive MXene with photothermal activation as an efficient strategy for bone and soft tissue regeneration simultaneously.

Boosting Broader Receptive Fields for Salient Object Detection.

Salient Object Detection has boomed in recent years and achieved impressive performance on regular-scale targets. However, existing methods encounter performance bottlenecks in processing objects with scale variation, especially extremely large- or small-scale objects with asymmetric segmentation requirements, since they are inefficient in obtaining more comprehensive receptive fields. With this issue in mind, this paper proposes a framework named BBRF for Boosting Broader Receptive Fields, which includes a Bilateral Extreme Stripping (BES) encoder, a Dynamic Complementary Attention Module (DCAM) and a Switch-Path Decoder (SPD) with a new boosting loss under the guidance of Loop Compensation Strategy (LCS). Specifically, we rethink the characteristics of the bilateral networks, and construct a BES encoder that separates semantics and details in an extreme way so as to get the broader receptive fields and obtain the ability to perceive extreme large- or small-scale objects. Then, the bilateral features generated by the proposed BES encoder can be dynamically filtered by the newly proposed DCAM. This module interactively provides spacial-wise and channel-wise dynamic attention weights for the semantic and detail branches of our BES encoder. Furthermore, we subsequently propose a Loop Compensation Strategy to boost the scale-specific features of multiple decision paths in SPD. These decision paths form a feature loop chain, which creates mutually compensating features under the supervision of boosting loss. Experiments on five benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed BBRF has a great advantage to cope with scale variation and can reduce the Mean Absolute Error over 20% compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Capsulized Fecal Microbiota Transplantation Induces Remission in Patients with Ulcerative Colitis by Gut Microbial Colonization and Metabolite Regulation.

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) can induce clinical remission in ulcerative colitis (UC) patients. Enemas, nasoduodenal tubes, and colonoscopies are the most common routes for FMT administration. However, there is a lack of definitive evidence regarding the effectiveness of capsulized FMT treatment in UC patients. In this study, we administered capsulized FMT to 22 patients with active UC to assess the efficiency of capsulized FMT and determine the specific bacteria and metabolite factors associated with the response to clinical remission. Our results showed that the use of capsulized FMT was successful in the treatment of UC patients. Capsulized FMT induced clinical remission and clinical response in 57.1% (12 of 21) and 76.2% (16 of 21) of UC patients, respectively. Gut bacterial richness was increased after FMT in patients who achieved remission. Patients in remission after FMT exhibited enrichment of Alistipes sp. and Odoribacter splanchnicus, along with increased levels of indolelactic acid. Patients who did not achieve remission exhibited enrichment of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella and increased levels of biosynthesis of 12,13-DiHOME (12,13-dihydroxy-9Z-octadecenoic acid) and lipopolysaccharides. Furthermore, we identified a relationship between specific bacteria and metabolites and the induction of remission in patients. These findings may provide new insights into FMT in UC treatment and provide reference information about therapeutic microbial manipulation of FMT to enhance its effects. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrails.gov under registration no. NCT03426683). IMPORTANCE Fecal microbiota transplantation has been successfully used in patients. Recently, capsulized FMT was reported to induce a response in patients with UC. However, limited patients were enrolled in such studies, and the functional factors of capsulized FMT have not been reported in the remission of patients with UC. In this study, we prospectively recruited patients with UC to receive capsulized FMT. First, we found that capsulized FMT could induce clinical remission in 57.1% of patients and clinical response in 76.2% after 12 weeks, which was more acceptable. Second, we found a relationship between the decrease of opportunistic pathogen and lipopolysaccharide synthesis in patients in remission after capsulized FMT. We also identified an association between specific bacteria and metabolites and remission induction in patients after capsulized FMT. These findings put forward a possibility for patients to receive FMT at home and provide reference information about therapeutic microbial manipulation of FMT to enhance its effects.

Multi-layer-structured bioactive glass nanopowder for multistage-stimulated hemostasis and wound repair.

Current treatments for full-thickness skin injuries are still unsatisfactory due to the lack of hierarchically stimulated dressings that can integrate the rapid hemostasis, inflammation regulation, and skin tissue remodeling into the one system instead of single-stage boosting. In this work, a multilayer-structured bioactive glass nanopowder (BGN@PTE) is developed by coating the poly-tannic acid and ε-polylysine onto the BGN via facile layer-by-layer assembly as an integrative and multilevel dressing for the sequential management of wounds. In comparison to BGN and poly-tannic acid coated BGN, BGN@PTE exhibited the better hemostatic performance because of its multiple dependent approaches to induce the platelet adhesion/activation, red blood cells (RBCs) aggregation and fibrin network formation. Simultaneously, the bioactive ions from BGN facilitate the regulation of the inflammatory response while the poly-tannic acid and antibacterial ε-polylysine prevent the wound infection, promoting the wound healing during the inflammatory stage. In addition, BGN@PTE can serve as a reactive oxygen species scavenger, alleviate the oxidation stress in wound injury, induce the cell migration and angiogenesis, and promote the proliferation stage of wound repair. Therefore, BGN@PTE demonstrated the significantly higher wound repair capacity than the commercial bioglass dressing Dermlin™. This multifunctional BGN@PTE is a potentially valuable dressing for full-thickness wound management and may be expected to extend to the other wounds therapy.

Novel deep learning-based computer-aided diagnosis system for predicting inflammatory activity in ulcerative colitis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Endoscopy is increasingly performed for evaluating patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). However, its diagnostic accuracy is largely affected by the subjectivity of endoscopists' experience and scoring methods, and scoring of selected endoscopic images cannot reflect the inflammation of the entire intestine. We aimed to develop an automatic scoring system using deep-learning technology for consistent and objective scoring of endoscopic images and full-length endoscopic videos of patients with UC. METHODS: We collected 5875 endoscopic images and 20 full-length videos from 332 patients with UC who underwent colonoscopy between January 2017 and March 2021. We trained the artificial intelligence (AI) scoring system using these images, which was then used for full-length video scoring. To more accurately assess and visualize the full-length intestinal inflammation, we divided the large intestine into a fixed number of "areas" (cecum, 20; transverse colon, 20; descending colon, 20; sigmoid colon, 15; rectum, 10). The scoring system automatically scored inflammatory severity of 85 areas from every video and generated a visualized result of full-length intestinal inflammatory activity. RESULTS: Compared with endoscopist scoring, the trained convolutional neural network achieved 86.54% accuracy in the Mayo-scored task, whereas the kappa coefficient was .813 (95% confidence interval [CI], .782-.844). The metrics of the Ulcerative Colitis Endoscopic Index of Severity-scored task were encouraging, with accuracies of 90.7%, 84.6%, and 77.7% and kappa coefficients of .822 (95% CI, .788-.855), .784 (95% CI, .744-.823), and .702 (95% CI, .612-.793) for vascular pattern, erosions and ulcers, and bleeding, respectively. The AI scoring system predicted each bowel segment's score and displayed distribution of inflammatory activity in the entire large intestine using a 2-dimensional colorized image. CONCLUSIONS: We established a novel deep learning-based scoring system to evaluate endoscopic images from patients with UC, which can also accurately describe the severity and distribution of inflammatory activity through full-length intestinal endoscopic videos.

Increased modified DUBLIN scores are associated with serious ulcerative colitis and treatment failure.

Background: Grading of endoscopic lesions is important for determining the severity of ulcerative colitis and developing treatment strategies, but the commonly used methods are not sufficient. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate whether new endoscopic scoring systems incorporating lesions and disease extent are associated with clinical disease severity and maintainable remission. Design: This was a retrospective study. In all, 110 patients with ulcerative colitis were included and 87 completed 12-month follow-up. Methods: Colonoscopy was performed within 1 week before blood samples were taken. Degree of ulcerative colitis burden of luminal inflammation (DUBLIN) scores were calculated as the product of Mayo endoscopic score (MES) by disease extent and ulcerative colitis endoscopic index of severity was used to replace MES when calculating modified DUBLIN scores. Results: DUBLIN and modified DUBLIN scores were increased in the moderate and severe groups significantly (p < 0.05). Both of increased scores contributed to the detection of serious diseases, and the clinical cutoff values of DUBLIN and modified DUBLIN were 3[area under the curve (AUC) = 0.809, p = 0.001) and 7(AUC = 0.815, p = 0.001), respectively. They were with high sensitivity, but the specificity of DUBLIN was lower. Both scores were correlated to partial Mayo scores, C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate positively, and they were correlated to the albumin negatively (p < 0.05). Higher modified DUBLIN scores (>7) were associated with an increased risk of treatment failure (hazard ratio = 4.96, 95% confidence interval: 1.17-21.00, p = 0.03), but there were no association between DUBLIN scores and long-term remission (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Increased DUBLIN and modified DUBLIN scores were conducive to screening serious disease, but only modified DUBLIN scores had the potential to assist in making an upgraded therapeutic schedule.

[Effect of a Simple Home-Based Oral Care Regimen on Oral Mucositis in Patients With Oral Cavity and Nasopharyngeal Cancer: A Quasi-Experimental Study].

BACKGROUND: The majority of patients with oral cavity and nasopharyngeal cancer experience severe oral mucositis during concurrent radiochemotherapy. The effectiveness of routine nursing education remains limited. PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect of a simple home-based oral care regimen on oral mucositis. METHODS: A double-group quasi-experimental design was adopted in this study. The participants were all newly diagnosed patients with oral cavity and nasopharyngeal cancer who were scheduled to receive concurrent radiochemotherapy in a northern medical center. A total of 31 patients in the experimental group and 32 patients in the control group were enrolled as participants. The control group received routine care, while the experimental group received an additional six- to seven-week two-way interactive home-based oral care regimen. The measurement tools included a plaque record and oral assessment guide (OAG) implemented twice during the study period. Study data were collected at 8 time points, including before treatment, at 1-5 weeks of treatment, at the end of treatment, and at one-month post-treatment. Data analysis was performed using two-way repeated measures ANCOVA. RESULTS: After controlling for OAG score, nutrition, age, living habits, and oral hygiene, the development of mucositis was found to be significantly slower in the experimental group than in the control group during the traumatic phase (effect of group: F = 11.1, p < .01; effect of group x time: F = 3.5, p = .01). However, both groups reported a statistically similar rate of improvement during the repair phase (effect of group and group x time: F = 0.19, p = .67). CONCLUSIONS / IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The simple home-based oral care regimen introduced in this study may be used to improve traumatic oral mucositis in patients with oral cavity and nasopharyngeal cancer. It is recommended that even after the completion of radiotherapy, medical staffs should continue to strengthen patients' execution of proper oral care to maintain the positive effect until the mucositis has abated.

Multiple Coordination-Derived Bioactive Hydrogel with Proangiogenic Hemostatic Capacity for Wound Repair.

Bioactive hydrogels with multifunctional properties have shown promising potential in promoting wound repair and skin tissue regeneration. The regulation on different stages of skin wound healing (hemostasis and inflammation) is important for wound repair. Herein, a multiple coordination-derived bioactive hydrogel (SGPA) with anti-inflammatory proangiogenic hemostatic capacity for wound repair is reported. The SGPA is prepared through a facile multiple metal coordination action based on the sodium alginate, metal ions (Gd3+ ), and bisphosphate functionalized polycitrate. The SGPA exhibits a large porous structure, good injectability, and self-healing performance, as well as controlled biodegradation. Furthermore, the SGPA has good cytocompatibility and hemocompatibility, and can further promote the migration of endothelial cells. The SGPA hydrogel presents good hemostasis capacity in a liver hemorrhage model in vivo. The full-thickness cutaneous wound model demonstrates that the SGPA hydrogel can effectively accelerate the wound repair through down-regulating the inflammatory factors and stimulating the angiogenesis around the wound beds. This work suggests that the multiple metal-organic coordination may be a good strategy to construct the multifunctional bioactive hydrogel for wound repair.

Decreased serum iron concentration and total iron binding capacity are associated with serious Crohn's disease.

This study aimed to investigate whether serum indicators related to iron stores in the body are associated with clinical and endoscopic disease severity. Eighty-four patients with Crohn's disease (CD) and twenty-four healthy volunteers were included. The indicators related to iron stores were detected within one week after endoscopic and CT enterography examinations. Patients were divided into three groups according to the CDAI(Crohn's disease activity index)scores. Serum iron levels were decreased in all groups (p < 0.05), and the values of remission group were higher than those of moderate group (p < 0.001). The total iron binding capacity(TIBC)values of the moderate group were lower than those of the controls and the other groups (p < 0.05). None of the indicators differed significantly among the patients classified by SES-CD (p > 0.05). Underweight, decreased serum iron and TIBC were independent risk factors for moderate clinical disease. Combined detection of decreased serum iron and TIBC was helpful in differentiating severe patients. The sensitivity and specificity were 32.7% and 100%, respectively (AUC = 0.812, p < 0.01). Decreases in serum iron and TIBC were associated with the clinical activity of CD. Combined detection of the two indicators was conducive to screening serious disease.

Bioactive Poly(octanediol-citrate-polyglycol) Accelerates Skin Regeneration through M2 Polarization Immunomodulating and Early Angiogenesis.

The inhibition of inflammation and the promotion of early angiogenesis are paid much attention in skin tissue engineering. Citric acid-based biomaterials are widely used in tissue engineering due to their bioactive structure and biocompatibility, but there are few studies on investigating their role and mechanism in wound repair and skin regeneration. Herein, the potential anti-inflammation mechanism of poly(octanediol-citrate-polyglycol) (POCG) copolymer is reported in regulating skin wound repair. It is found that POCG can modulate macrophages phenotype through downregulating the expression of proinflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis facor-α (Tnf-α), Interleukin-1ß (IL-1ß), and Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and polarizing macrophages to anti-inflammatory (M2) phenotype. POCG can promote endothelial cell vascularization by increasing the expression of angiogenesis factors (vascular endothelial growth factor (Vegf) and cluster of differentiation 31CD31) mediated by the macrophage polarization. The in vivo study shows that POCG can accelerate skin wound repair through suppressing the acute inflammation and inducing early angiogenesis through the polarization modulation. Furthermore, the POCG polymer has good biocompatibility for both immune cells and tissue cells. This study may provide the important theoretical support on the bioactivity of citrate-based biomaterials and expanding their applications in tissue engineering.

Oral Gene Therapy of HFD-Obesity via Nonpathogenic Yeast Microcapsules Mediated shRNA Delivery.

Obesity is a chronic systemic inflammatory disease, which occurs when energy intake exceeds the energy consumption. Therefore, controlling energy intake or increasing physical consumption can effectively control obesity. However, in reality, it is very difficult for the majority of obese patients to lose weight by autonomously controlling diet. In this study, oral shRNA/yeast microcapsules were constructed with non-virus-mediated IL-1ß shRNA interference vectors and non-pathogenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Moreover, high-fat diet induced obese mice were established to assess the weight loss effect of IL-1ß shRNA/yeast microcapsules via the oral route. After IL-1ß shRNA/yeast treatment, body weight and fat weight was reduced. Compared with the control group, higher average food intake but lower energy conversion rate was observed in IL-1ß shRNA/yeast group. In addition, lipid metabolism related cytokines and blood glucose concentration in the circulating blood was improved after IL-1ß shRNA/yeast treatment. Yeast microcapsules mediated IL-1ß shRNA delivery can effectively improve obesity. Noteworthy, this kind of non-diet-controlled weight loss strategy does not need diet control, and shows good biocompatibility. It is good news to obese patients who need to lose weight but cannot control their diet.

A hybrid method for real-time stimulation artefact removal during functional electrical stimulation with time-variant parameters.

Objective. In this study, a hybrid method combining hardware and software architecture is proposed to remove stimulation artefacts (SAs) and extract the volitional surface electromyography (sEMG) in real time during functional electrical stimulations (FES) with time-variant parameters.Approach. First, an sEMG detection front-end (DFE) combining fast recovery, detector and stimulator isolation and blanking is developed and is capable of preventing DFE saturation with a blanking time of 7.6 ms. The fragment between the present stimulus and previous stimulus is set as an SA fragment. Second, an SA database is established to provide six high-similarity templates with the current SA fragment. The SA fragment will be de-artefacted by a 6th-order Gram-Schmidt (GS) algorithm, a template-subtracting method, using the provided templates, and this database-based GS algorithm is called DBGS. The provided templates are previously collected SA fragments with the same or a similar evoking FES intensity to that of the current SA fragment, and the lengths of the templates are longer than that of the current SA fragment. After denoising, the sEMG will be extracted, and the current SA fragment will be added to the SA database. The prototype system based on DBGS was tested on eight able-bodied volunteers and three individuals with stroke to verify its capacity for stimulation removal and sEMG extraction.Results.The average stimulus artefact attenuation factor, SA index and correlation coefficient between clean sEMG and extracted sEMG for 6th-order DBGS were 12.77 ± 0.85 dB, 1.82 ± 0.37 dB and 0.84 ± 0.33 dB, respectively, which were significantly higher than those for empirical mode decomposition combined with notch filters, pulse-triggered GS algorithm, 1st-order and 3rd-order DBGS. The sEMG-torque correlation coefficients were 0.78 ± 0.05 and 0.48 ± 0.11 for able-bodied volunteers and individuals with stroke, respectively.Significance.The proposed hybrid method can extract sEMG during dynamic FES in real time.

Multifunctional Protein-Decorated Bioactive Glass Nanoparticles for Tumor-Specific Therapy and Bioimaging In Vitro and In Vivo.

Multifunctional nanocarriers with a simple structure and biocompatibility for bioimaging, potential tumor targeting, and precise antitumor ability are promising in cancer therapy. Bioactive glass is an important biomaterial and has been used in clinical bone tissue repair due to the high biocompatibility and bioactivity. Herein, we report fetal bovine serum (FBS)-decorated europium-doped bioactive glass nanoparticles (EuBGN@FBS) with excellent biosafety and enhanced tumor targeting for cancer imaging and therapy. EuBGN@FBS showed the controlled photoluminescent properties and pH-responsive anticancer drug release behavior. The FBS decoration significantly enhanced the dispersibility in physiological medium and improved hemocompatibility and cellular uptake of EuBGN. Relative to EuBGN, EuBGN@FBS could also efficiently image the cancer cell and show significantly enhanced targeted tumor imaging and chemotherapy in vivo while retaining negligible side effects. The simple and biocompatible structure with efficient tumor targeting, imaging, and therapy makes EuBGN@FBS highly promising in future cancer therapy.

Thyroid nodule recognition using a joint convolutional neural network with information fusion of ultrasound images and radiofrequency data.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a deep learning-based method with information fusion of US images and RF signals for better classification of thyroid nodules (TNs). METHODS: One hundred sixty-three pairs of US images and RF signals of TNs from a cohort of adult patients were used for analysis. We developed an information fusion-based joint convolutional neural network (IF-JCNN) for the differential diagnosis of malignant and benign TNs. The IF-JCNN contains two branched CNNs for deep feature extraction: one for US images and the other one for RF signals. The extracted features are fused at the backend of IF-JCNN for TN classification. RESULTS: Across 5-fold cross-validation, the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) obtained by using the IF-JCNN with both US images and RF signals as inputs for TN classification were respectively 0.896 (95% CI 0.838-0.938), 0.885 (95% CI 0.804-0.941), 0.910 (95% CI 0.815-0.966), and 0.956 (95% CI 0.926-0.987), which were better than those obtained by using only US images: 0.822 (0.755-0.878; p = 0.0044), 0.792 (0.679-0.868, p = 0.0091), 0.866 (0.760-0.937, p = 0.197), and 0.901 (0.855-0.948, p = .0398), or RF signals: 0.767 (0.694-0.829, p < 0.001), 0.781 (0.685-0.859, p = 0.0037), 0.746 (0.625-0.845, p < 0.001), 0.845 (0.786-0.903, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The proposed IF-JCNN model filled the gap of just using US images in CNNs to characterize TNs, and it may serve as a promising tool for assisting the diagnosis of thyroid cancer. KEY POINTS: • Raw radiofrequency signals before ultrasound imaging of thyroid nodules provide useful information that is not carried by ultrasound images. • The information carried by raw radiofrequency signals and ultrasound images for thyroid nodules is complementary. • The performance of deep convolutional neural network for diagnosing thyroid nodules can be significantly improved by fusing US images and RF signals in the model as compared with just using US images.

Bioactive antiinflammatory antibacterial hemostatic citrate-based dressing with macrophage polarization regulation for accelerating wound healing and hair follicle neogenesis.

The efficient cutaneous wound healing accompanied with the enhanced skin appendage regeneration is still a challenge. The bacterial infection and excessive/prolonged inflammation inhibit wound healing process and result in the scar formation. Herein, we reported an anti-inflammatory polycitrate-polyethyleneimine-Ibuprofen (PCEI) and multifunctional PCEI-based F127-ε-polypeptide-alginic (FEA) dressing (FEA-PCEI) for accelerating wound healing and hair follicle neogenesis. PCEI showed the excellent anti-inflammation function through stimulating macrophage towards anti-inflammatory M2 subtype polarization. The FEA-PCEI dressing showed the temperature-response gelation, injectability, robust antibacterial activity, light-damage-resistant, homeostasis ability, and good cytocompatibility. The optimized dosage of FEA-PCEI dressing could significantly accelerate wound healing with anti-infection ability, reduce the scar formation, and promote the hair follicle neogenesis. This study provided a wound-repairing strategy through regulating the phenotype of immune cells by the designing bioactive multifunctional biomaterials.