Analytical Ultracentrifugation-Calibrated Anion-Exchange Chromatography for Sensitive and Intact Determination of Osteopontin in Infant Formula and Dairy Products.

Osteopontin is a crucial protein ingredient that has been applied in fortified dairy products and infant formula. It has great significance to infant gut health and brain development. However, current techniques including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry are still facing the bottleneck of low sensitivity and indirect quantification. Moreover, the unavailable certified commercial OPN standard hinders its accurate quantification. Herein, a novel method of anion-exchange chromatography was established to determine OPN concentration in several dairy matrices. The polarity-reversed capillary isoelectric focusing was utilized to measure the exact isoelectric point (pI) to support method development for OPN separation. Analytical ultracentrifugation was used to calibrate the purity of intact OPN to develop an in-house reference standard. The method showed the merits of limits of detection to 0.04 mg/100 g, relative standard deviation of reproducibility <5% for 13 out of 14 tested matrices, and an average recovery rate of 101.3%. This method has shown the potential to be adopted as an international standard method for the quantification of intact OPN in infant formula and dairy products.

Expression and Clinical Significance of lncRNA NEAT1 in Patients with Spinal Tuberculosis.

Background: Spinal tuberculosis (STB) often leads to irreversible neurological injury, resulting in serious social and economic problems. With the emergence of drug resistance, the management becomes even more challenging, given the treatment courses are generally longer for skeletal than pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). The development and validation of nonsputum biomarkers for diagnosis and tailoring of treatment duration to enable personalized and evidence-based management of such diseases to improve treatment outcomes is being called for globally. Studies have demonstrated that lncRNA NEAT1 was highly expressed in pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) and was related to its progression and recovery. However, the expression and clinical significance of lncRNA NEAT1 in STB remains unclear. Methods: The relative expression of lncRNA NEAT1 was quantified by relative real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR). The prognostic value was assessed by receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient and chi-square test were used to analyze the correlation between the lncRNA NEAT1 expression and the clinical characteristics. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to analyze independent predictors of STB recurrence. Results: Compared with normal healthy individuals, the expression level of lncRNA NEAT1 in peripheral blood and granulomatous tissues of STB patients was significantly increased. The results of the in vitro Mycobacterium tuberculosis- (Mtb-) infected cell model showed that the expression level of lncRNA NEAT1 was significantly upregulated in macrophages infected with Mtb, and the difference was statistically significant compared with Mtb-uninfected group. The expression level of lncRNA NEAT1 in granulomatous tissue of STB was significantly higher than that in peripheral blood. The expression of lncRNA NEAT1 was related to segments of the lesions, paraspinal abscesses, anti-TB treatment, drug resistance, interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-reactive protein (CRP), and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Multivariate analysis results showed that relatively high expression of lncRNA NEAT1_1, the shorter transcript of the NEAT1 gene, was an independent prognostic factor of STB outcome. Conclusion: LncRNA NEAT1 was highly expressed in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and granulomatous tissue from patients with STB, as well as in Mtb-infected THP-1 cell lines. LncRNA NEAT1 expression was significantly associated with clinical characteristics (paraspinal abscesses, segments of the lesions and anti-TB treatment, IL-6, CRP, and ESR) of patients in STB. Increased expression of lncRNA NEAT1_1 predicted good prognosis of STB and might become a prognostic biomarker for STB.

AIM2 inhibits the proliferation, invasion and migration, and promotes the apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells by inactivating the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway.

Osteosarcoma is a primary bone tumor that mainly occurs in children and adolescents. Absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2) has been demonstrated to be involved in regulating the occurrence and development of cancer, exerting oncogenic and pro­cancer effects; however, its role in osteosarcoma is poorly understood. The present study aimed to explore the function and molecular mechanism of AIM2 in the progression of osteosarcoma. In the present study, AIM2 expression was predicted using the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia database and examined in several osteosarcoma cell lines using reverse transcription­quantitative PCR and western blotting. Following AIM2 overexpression, cell proliferation and apoptosis were examined using Cell Counting Kit­8, colony formation and TUNEL staining assays. The expression levels of proteins related to apoptosis, epithelial­mesenchymal transition (EMT) and the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway were determined by western blotting. Additionally, cell invasion and migration were assessed using Transwell and wound healing assays. After addition of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway inhibitor LY294002 or activator 740Y­P, cell function analysis was performed. The results demonstrated that AIM2 was expressed at low levels in osteosarcoma cell lines. AIM2 overexpression inhibited proliferation, invasion, migration and EMT, and promoted apoptosis in osteosarcoma cells. Furthermore, the levels of phosphorylated (p)­PI3K, p­AKT and p­mTOR were markedly downregulated following AIM2 overexpression. Furthermore, LY294002 treatment had the same effects as AIM2 upregulation on osteosarcoma cell proliferation, apoptosis, invasion, migration and EMT. By contrast, 740Y­P reversed the effects of AIM2 overexpression on the behavior of osteosarcoma cells. Overall, the findings of the present study demonstrated that AIM2 may inhibit the progression of osteosarcoma by inactivating the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway, and suggested that AIM2 may be a promising marker for the treatment of osteosarcoma.

Timely daily activity recognition from headmost sensor events.

Smart homes are designed to promote safe and comfortable living for inhabitants without any manual intervention. The performance of approaches for daily activity recognition is therefore crucial, but current real-time approaches have to wait until a daily activity ends before performing recognition. We present an approach for timely daily activity recognition from an incomplete stream of sensor events, by which the recognition process can start as soon as a daily activity begins. Activity features are generated from several headmost sensor events rather than from all sensor events that a daily activity activated. A public dataset was utilized to evaluate the presented method. Experimental findings show its effectiveness for timely daily activity recognition in terms of precision, recall, average saved time, and saved time proportion.

Parameters Identification of Fluxgate Magnetic Core Adopting the Biogeography-Based Optimization Algorithm.

The main part of the magnetic fluxgate sensor is the magnetic core, the hysteresis characteristic of which affects the performance of the sensor. When the fluxgate sensors are modelled for design purposes, an accurate model of hysteresis characteristic of the cores is necessary to achieve good agreement between modelled and experimental data. The Jiles-Atherton model is simple and can reflect the hysteresis properties of the magnetic material precisely, which makes it widely used in hysteresis modelling and simulation of ferromagnetic materials. However, in practice, it is difficult to determine the parameters accurately owing to the sensitivity of the parameters. In this paper, the Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO) algorithm is applied to identify the Jiles-Atherton model parameters. To enhance the performances of the BBO algorithm such as global search capability, search accuracy and convergence rate, an improved Biogeography-Based Optimization (IBBO) algorithm is put forward by using Arnold map and mutation strategy of Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm. Simulation results show that IBBO algorithm is superior to Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, Differential Evolution algorithm and BBO algorithm in identification accuracy and convergence rate. The IBBO algorithm is applied to identify Jiles-Atherton model parameters of selected permalloy. The simulation hysteresis loop is in high agreement with experimental data. Using permalloy as core of fluxgate probe, the simulation output is consistent with experimental output. The IBBO algorithm can identify the parameters of Jiles-Atherton model accurately, which provides a basis for the precise analysis and design of instruments and equipment with magnetic core.