Hypoxic bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell exosomes promote angiogenesis and enhance endometrial injury repair through the miR-424-5p-mediated DLL4/Notch signaling pathway.

Background: Currently, bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) have been reported to promote endometrial regeneration in rat models of mechanically injury-induced uterine adhesions (IUAs), but the therapeutic effects and mechanisms of hypoxic BMSC-derived exosomes on IUAs have not been elucidated. Objective: To investigate the potential mechanism by which the BMSCS-derived exosomal miR-424-5p regulates IUA angiogenesis through the DLL4/Notch signaling pathway under hypoxic conditions and promotes endometrial injury repair. Methods: The morphology of the exosomes was observed via transmission electron microscopy, and the expression of exosome markers (CD9, CD63, CD81, and HSP70) was detected via flow cytometry and Western blotting. The expression of angiogenesis-related genes (Ang1, Flk1, Vash1, and TSP1) was detected via RT‒qPCR, and the expression of DLL4/Notch signaling pathway-related proteins (DLL4, Notch1, and Notch2) was detected via Western blotting. Cell proliferation was detected by a CCK-8 assay, and angiogenesis was assessed via an angiogenesis assay. The expression of CD3 was detected by immunofluorescence. The endometrial lesions of IUA rats were observed via HE staining, and the expression of CD3 and VEGFA was detected via immunohistochemistry. Results: Compared with those in exosomes from normoxic conditions, miR-424-5p was more highly expressed in the exosomes from hypoxic BMSCs. Compared with those in normoxic BMSC-derived exosomes, the proliferation and angiogenesis of HUVECs were significantly enhanced after treatment with hypoxic BMSC-derived exosomes, and these effects were weakened after inhibition of miR-424-5p. miR-424-5p can target and negatively regulate the expression of DLL4, promote the expression of the proangiogenic genes Ang1 and Flk1, and inhibit the expression of the antiangiogenic genes Vash1 and TSP1. The effect of miR-424-5p can be reversed by overexpression of DLL4. In IUA rats, treatment with hypoxic BMSC exosomes and the miR-424-5p mimic promoted angiogenesis and improved endometrial damage. Conclusion: The hypoxic BMSC-derived exosomal miR-424-5p promoted angiogenesis and improved endometrial injury repair by regulating the DLL4/Notch signaling pathway, which provides a new idea for the treatment of IUAs.

Perspectives on Development of Optoelectronic Materials in Artificial Intelligence Age.

Optoelectronic devices, such as light-emitting diodes, have been demonstrated as one of the most demanded forthcoming display and lighting technologies because of their low cost, low power consumption, high brightness, and high contrast. The improvement of device performance relies on advances in precisely designing novelty functional materials, including light-emitting materials, hosts, hole/electron transport materials, and yet which is a time-consuming, laborious and resource-intensive task. Recently, machine learning (ML) has shown great prospects to accelerate material discovery and property enhancement. This review will summarize the workflow of ML in optoelectronic materials discovery, including data collection, feature engineering, model selection, model evaluation and model application. We highlight multiple recent applications of machine-learned potentials in various optoelectronic functional materials, ranging from semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) or perovskite QDs, organic molecules to carbon-based nanomaterials. We furthermore discuss the current challenges to fully realize the potential of ML-assisted materials design for optoelectronics applications. It is anticipated that this review will provide critical insights to inspire new exciting discoveries on ML-guided of high-performance optoelectronic devices with a combined effort from different disciplines.

PtCuFe alloy nanochains: Synthesis and composition-performance relationship in methanol oxidation and hydrogen evolution reactions.

The controllable synthesis of 1-dimensional (1D) multi-metal Pt-based alloys, with enhanced electro-chemical properties remains a challenge, despite the wide application of Pt-based catalysts in fuel cells and in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we fabricate PtCuFe alloy nanochains (NCs) that have a tunable composition by flexibly adjusting the molar ratios of the metal precursors. It was found that Cu2+ is key in the formation of 1D NCs, as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy characterizations. In addition, the alloyed Fe can further increase the content of the metallic state of Cu in the PtCuFe NCs. The as-prepared PtCuFe NCs exhibited higher catalytic activity and stability than those of the Pt nanoparticles (NPs), PtFe NPs, and PtCu NCs, for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and HER. Additionally, the composition-performance relationship of PtCuxFey NCs toward the MOR and HER were investigated. The hybrid density functional theory calculation and analysis showed that the 1D PtCuFe NCs have a lower lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) than those of the 2- and 3-dimensional PtCuFe, verifying that the 1D PtCuFe NCs exhibit the highest activity for the MOR. This work has established a new method for the controllable synthesis of multi-metal Pt-based NCs/alloy catalysts and their subsequent applications in other electro-catalytic reactions.

Early visual function outcomes of topography-guided FS-LASIK and SMILE in treatment of myopia and myopic astigmatism.

AIM: To compare the quality outcomes of vision at early phase after topography-guided femtosecond laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (FS-LASIK-CV) and small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) in treatment of myopia and myopic astigmatism. METHODS: Retrospective comparative analysis of 49 patients that underwent FS-LASIK (n=23) or SMILE (n=26) procedure for myopia and myopic astigmatism between April and September in 2019. Pre- and postoperative uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), spherical equivalent refraction (SEQ), cylindrical refraction, contrast sensitivity function (CSF), and corneal higher-order aberrations (HOAs) were evaluated. Independent t-test was used for inter-group comparison, while repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze changes at different time points. RESULTS: In both groups, 100% of the eyes obtained a UCVA of 20/20 or better at 1wk, 1, and 3mo postoperatively. At 1d and 3mo postoperatively, UCVA was better in FS-LASIK-CV group than in SMILE group. At 1wk postoperatively, SEQ was lower in SMILE group than in FS-LASIK-CV group (P=0.006). At 3mo postoperatively, the SEQ reached target refraction in both groups. The residual astigmatism was reduced in both groups without intergroup difference (P>0.05). At 3mo postoperatively, the spherical aberration and coma under 6 mm pupil size were higher than preoperative levels in both groups (P<0.05). However, the increase in the corneal HOAs in the FS-LASIK-CV group was less than the SMILE group (P<0.05). At 3mo postoperatively, the logCS were better than preoperative levels under scotopic conditions without glare and scotopic conditions with glare in both groups (P<0.05). At 1 and 3mo postoperatively, under scotopic conditions without glare and scotopic conditions with glare, FS-LASIK-CV group showed more improvement in logCS at two spatial frequencies (12.0 c/d and 18.0 c/d; P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Both FS-LASIK-CV and SMILE demonstrate to be safe, effective, and predictable in treatment of myopia and myopic astigmatism. Early postoperative improvement in UCVA and CSF at high spatial frequency under scotopic conditions were better after FS-LASIK-CV than SMILE.

Clinical and laboratory characteristics of lymphoid neoplasms in serous effusions: a single centre experience in China.

BACKGROUND: Lymphoid neoplasms in serous effusions are uncommon, and the details of lymphoid neoplasms in serous effusions from China are still unclear. METHODS: Between January 2004 and December 2019, all patients with lymphoid neoplasms in pleural effusions, ascites, and pericardial effusions in our hospital, were reviewed. RESULTS: A total of 65 patients with lymphoid neoplasms were collected during this period. The top three neoplasms were diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) (n = 20, 30.7%), myeloma (n = 13, 20.0%), and T-lymphoblastic lymphoma (n = 7, 10.8%). In pleural effusions involving DLBCL, the cytomorphology of DLBCL cells was diverse; most pleural effusions were present during the tumor course (92.9%); bilateral pleural effusions were predominant (57.2%); and the median survival time was only 1.23 months after the effusion. In pleural effusions involving myeloma, 90.9% of cases (10/11) had a high ratio (> 1.0) of immature to mature plasma cells; paraprotein types of IgA (36.4%) and light chain λ (36.4%) were the most frequently found; bilateral pleural effusions were easily found (n = 10, 90.9%); and the median survival time was only 1.4 months after the effusion. CONCLUSION: In pleural effusions involving DLBCL, most of our patients with effusions are present during the tumor course, and bilateral pleural effusions are predominant. In pleural effusions involving myeloma, the paraprotein types of IgA and light chain λ are the most frequently found, and it has a high ratio of immature to mature plasma cells in pleural effusions.

Improved quantitative analysis of spectra using a new method of obtaining derivative spectra based on a singular perturbation technique.

Spectroscopy is often applied when a rapid quantitative analysis is required, but one challenge is the translation of raw spectra into a final analysis. Derivative spectra are often used as a preliminary preprocessing step to resolve overlapping signals, enhance signal properties, and suppress unwanted spectral features that arise due to non-ideal instrument and sample properties. In this study, to improve quantitative analysis of near-infrared spectra, derivatives of noisy raw spectral data need to be estimated with high accuracy. A new spectral estimator based on singular perturbation technique, called the singular perturbation spectra estimator (SPSE), is presented, and the stability analysis of the estimator is given. Theoretical analysis and simulation experimental results confirm that the derivatives can be estimated with high accuracy using this estimator. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the estimator for processing noisy infrared spectra is evaluated using the analysis of beer spectra. The derivative spectra of the beer and the marzipan are used to build the calibration model using partial least squares (PLS) modeling. The results show that the PLS based on the new estimator can achieve better performance compared with the Savitzky-Golay algorithm and can serve as an alternative choice for quantitative analytical applications.