Pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic role of long non-coding RNA RMRP in pediatric asthma through targeting microRNA-206/CCL2 axis.

Asthma is an inflammatory pulmonary illness that plagues infants and young children. We carried out this investigation to examine the role of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) RNA component of mitochondrial RNA processing endoribonuclease (RMRP) in an asthmatic mouse model induced by ovalbumin (OVA) and human airway smooth muscle cells (ASMCs). Eight-week-old mice were sensitized with OVA to simulate pediatric asthma. The expression patterns of RMRP, microRNA-206 (miR-206) and C-C motif ligand 2 (CCL2) in pulmonary tissues were evaluated by qPCR. In addition, the concentrations of interleukin (IL)-4, IL-5 and IL-13 cytokines in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were detected by ELISA. The expression of RMRP and CCL2 was elevated, while miR-206 was reduced in OVA-induced mice. Our findings indicated that administration of RMRP overexpression in ASMCs increased the levels of biomarkers in asthma. RMRP functioned as a sponge for miR-206 to upregulate CCL2 expression. Blockade of the TGF-ß/Smad2 signaling pathway in ASMCs overexpressing RMRP suppressed the inflammatory cytokines and cell viability, while enhancing apoptosis. The RMRP/miR-206/CCL2 regulatory axis is implicated in the occurrence of pediatric asthma.

Effects of inulin on performance, egg quality, gut microflora and serum and yolk cholesterol in laying hens.

1. The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of inulin on laying hens. A total of 360 Brown Nick laying hens were divided randomly into 6 groups of 60 with 6 replicates of 10 hens and fed on diets containing 0 (control), 0·1, 0·5, 1·0, 1·5 or 2·0% inulin during the 4-week trial. 2. Dietary supplementation of inulin reduced cholesterol concentration (mg/g yolk) and content (mg/egg) in eggs. Cholesterol content in eggs decreased linearly with increasing levels of dietary inulin level. 3. Supplementation of inulin in diets decreased coliform bacteria counts and pH in the caecum. The lowest coliform bacteria counts (6·30 ± 0·03 log10 cfu/g) and pH (6·47 ± 0·01) were obtained in the 2·0% inulin group, the two indices decreasing by 21·6% and 3·0% respectively, compared with the control group. Coliform bacteria count and pH were changed linearly in accordance with increasing levels of dietary inulin level. Caecal Bifidobacteria counts were increased in the 2·0%-inulin group. 4. Inulin supplementation of layer diets did not appear to have any adverse effects on laying rate, egg weight, feed intake, feed conversion efficiency, cracked-egg rate, eggshell thickness or Haugh unit compared with the control laying hens. 5. Therefore, dietary supplementation with inulin may lead to the development of low-cholesterol chicken eggs as demanded by health-conscious consumers.

Simple method for direct determination of bending strains by use of digital holography.

A computer-based technique is described for direct determination of bending strains in beam and plate structures. First a displacement-related phase-change map is constructed by digital holography and computer-vision techniques. Subsequently the computer generates an exact replica of the phase-change map, then overlays the two identical maps and, finally, rotates one of the maps through 180 degrees relative to the other in their planes about a point of interest. The local curvatures and the local twist of the bent surface at the point of interest are determined from the conic sections that are reconstructed from the algebraic sum of the phase changes at the vicinity of this point, thus permitting further calculation for determination of the local bending strains. When the need arises, bending moments and stresses may be determined concurrently. As the optical setup is simple, with computer-based data acquisition and processing, the entire system is user friendly, and rapid measurement is achieved.

Beam-splitting cube for fringe-projection, holographic, and shearographic interferometry.

We describe a simple method in which the techniques of fringe-projection, holographic, and shearographic interferometry may be readily realized with a commercial beam-splitting cube, a laser source, and a beam expander. With the use of a computer algorithm, moiré fringes may be derived digitally from the fringes that are projected onto a reference surface and onto an object surface. Successful use of the beam-splitting cube for these optical methods is attributed to the refraction of the two split beams that exit from the two adjacent faces of the cube. By careful orientation of the cube, the two refracted light beams will converge and interfere, resulting in the formation of Young's interference fringes for the fringe-projection method. When the hypotenuse of the beam-splitting cube is placed nearly normal to an illuminated object, both the image and the mirror image of the object will be formed behind the cube where a camera is placed. This optical setup thus forms the basis for double-exposure holography when these two images are fully overlapped and for shearography when the images are slightly laterally displaced.

Generation of carrier fringes in holography and shearography.

Double-exposure holography and double-exposure shearography are often used together with the carrier fringe technique, which requires additional shifting of the light source in a prescribed manner between exposures. In the holographic carrier fringe technique, difficulty in prescribing a suitable movement of the light source may be alleviated through visualization of the moiré fringes that are reconstructed by slight displacement of two overlaid families of ellipsoids in a holodiagram. Because shearography is the first differential of holography, it is often impractical to perform two successive optical differentiations on the ellipsoids to visualize the shearographic carrier fringes. A simple method of discerning holographic and shearographic carrier fringes is described. The method is based on the hyperboloids in a holodiagram that represent Young's (interference) fringes produced by the interference of two point sources. The hyperboloids are analogous to holographic carrier fringes, whereas the moiré patterns reconstructed from two overlaid hyperboloids are analogous to shearographic carrier fringes. Use of this method for explaining the formation of deformation fringes in plate bending, as well as the effect of light-source movement on the deformation fringes, is also illustrated.

Scanning moiré and phase shifting with time delay and integration imaging.

Scanning moiré is generated by undersampling of a phase-modulated grating pattern. In projection profilometry the scanning moiré pattern represents equal height and depth contours on a test object. By use of time delay and integration (TDI) imaging, it is possible to generate an on-line scanning moiré pattern from the complete periphery of a rotating cylindrical object. For automated phase and profile unwrapping from scanning moiré fringes, phase-shifting interferometry techniques are most desirable. However, lack of spatial information in the undersampled scanning moiré fringes introduces serious errors in phase unwrapping. We report a method that uses oversupply of data to balance the effect of undersampling. This oversupply is achieved with a TDI feature that permits programmable image magnification in the scanning direction.

Multiple-image shearography: a direct method to determine curvatures.

We present a modified method of shearography, known herein as multiple-image shearography, whereby the curvatures of an object can be measured directly from the resulting fringes. It employs an image-shearing camera that produces three sheared images simultaneously to interfere with each other in the image plane. When film is doubly exposed before and after an object is deformed, three sets of fringes are observed of which one set would depict the second-order derivatives of surface displacement.The theory of the multiple-image shearography technique and its application to curvature measurements in plate bending are presented.

Whole-field determination of surface roughness by speckle correlation.

A whole-field method of double-exposure speckle photography is employed to determine metal surface roughness by correlation between two speckle patterns. A movable rectangular aperture that is mounted before an image lens is shifted between the exposures, which results in a decrease in the contrast of the reconstructed Young's fringes with increasing roughness. The technique permits evaluation of the roughness of particular points on a surface as well as the average roughness of an entire surface. Four sets of random surfaces that were prepared by different machine-finishing processes and with roughnesses ranging from 0.6 to 13 µm have been tested. Different methods have been carried out to process the test data, and a practical method for the evaluation of surface roughness is proposed.

Analysis of shearogram reconstruction.

The high-pass Fourier filtering technique with an opaque stopper is commonly used for the reconstruction of shearograms. We believe that no analysis of this technique as applied to the shearogram reconstruction has been described. We present here a theoretical analysis of this reconstruction system taking into account the stopper that blocks the low-frequency region in the Fourier transform plane. The results show that the light-intensity distribution after reconstruction is different from that of the original shearogram. High fringe visibility is obtained with high-pass filtering.

[Synthesis and cardiovascular activities of peptidyl dopamine derivatives].

Amino acids and small peptides with different steric configurations and lipophilicities were appended to dopamine. Eighteen compounds have been synthesized. The attachment of D-amino acids or N-methyl amino acids onto the dopamine molecule caused a marked decrease in cardiovascular activity by intravenous injection, while the introduction of lipophilic amino acids caused a marked increase in myocardial contractility and blood pressure in anesthetized dogs. The durations of action were also prolonged.