Aggregation and proliferation of B cells and T cells in MALTs upon Cryptocaryon irritans infection in large yellow croaker Larimichthys crocea.

Mucosal immunity in mucosa-associated lymphoid tissues (MALTs) plays crucial roles in resisting infection by pathogens, including parasites, bacteria and viruses. However, the mucosal immune response in the MALTs of large yellow croaker (Larimichthys crocea) upon parasitic infection remains largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of B cells and T cells in the MALTs of large yellow croaker following Cryptocaryon irritans infection. Upon C. irritans infection, the total IgM and IgT antibody levels were significantly increased in the skin mucus and gill mucus. Notably, parasite-specific IgM antibody level was increased in the serum, skin and gill mucus following parasitic infection, while the level of parasite-specific IgT antibody was exclusively increased in MALTs. Moreover, parasitic infection induced both local and systemic aggregation and proliferation of IgM+ B cells, suggesting that the increased levels of IgM in mucus may be derived from both systemic and mucosal immune tissues. In addition, we observed significant aggregation and proliferation of T cells in the gill, head kidney and spleen, suggesting that T cells may also be involved in the systemic and mucosal immune responses upon parasitic infection. Overall, our findings provided further insights into the role of immunoglobulins against pathogenic infection, and the simultaneous aggregation and proliferation of both B cells and T cells at mucosal surfaces suggested potential interactions between these two major lymphocyte populations during parasitic infection.

Preparation, characterization and drug release properties of pH sensitive Zingiber officinale polysaccharide hydrogel beads.

The aim of this study was to prepare a drug carrier that could deliver oral insulin to the intestine. A hydrogel beads composed of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), Zingiber offtcinale polysaccharide (ZOP) and chitosan (CS) were prepared by ionic gel method as insulin carrier. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and thermogravimetric (TGA) showed that the hydrogel was formed by metal ion coordination between ZOP and CMC and Fe3+, and CS was coated on the surface of the hydrogel ball in the form of non covalent bond. The results showed that the swelling process of hydrogel spheres has significant pH sensitivity. In addition, the hydrogel beads successfully coated insulin, and the drug loading rate (DL) of (ZOP/CMC-Fe3+)@CS could reach 69.43 ± 7.32 mg/g, and the entrapment efficiency (EE) could reach 66.94 ± 7.43 %. In vitro release experiments, the release rate of (CMC/ZOP-Fe3+)@CS in simulated gastric fluid (SGF) for 2 h was <20 %, and the cumulative release rate of insulin after 9 h in simulated intestinal fluid (SIF) reached over 90 %. The results showed that the hydrogel beads prepared in this work could be used as a potential carrier for delivering oral insulin.

Research on the classification of early-stage brain edema by combining intrinsic optical signal imaging and laser speckle contrast imaging.

The early detection and pathological classification of brain edema are very important for symptomatic treatment. The dual-optical imaging system (DOIS) consists of intrinsic optical signal imaging (IOSI) and laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI), which can acquire cerebral hemodynamic parameters of mice in real-time, including changes of oxygenated hemoglobin concentration ( Δ C HbO 2 ), deoxyhemoglobin concentration (ΔCHbR) and relative cerebral blood flow (rCBF) within the field of view. The slope sum of Δ C HbO 2 , ΔCHbR and rCBF was proposed to classify vasogenic edema (VE) and cytotoxic edema (CE). The slope sum values in the VE and CE group remain statistically different and the classification results provide higher accuracy of more than 93% for early brain edema detection. In conclusion, the differences of hemodynamic parameters between VE and CE in the early stage were revealed and the method helps in the classification of early brain edema.

What do brain endocasts tell us? A comparative analysis of the accuracy of sulcal identification by experts and perspectives in palaeoanthropology.

Palaeoneurology is a complex field as the object of study, the brain, does not fossilize. Studies rely therefore on the (brain) endocranial cast (often named endocast), the only available and reliable proxy for brain shape, size and details of surface. However, researchers debate whether or not specific marks found on endocasts correspond reliably to particular sulci and/or gyri of the brain that were imprinted in the braincase. The aim of this study is to measure the accuracy of sulcal identification through an experiment that reproduces the conditions that palaeoneurologists face when working with hominin endocasts. We asked 14 experts to manually identify well-known foldings in a proxy endocast that was obtained from an MRI of an actual in vivo Homo sapiens head. We observe clear differences in the results when comparing the non-corrected labels (the original labels proposed by each expert) with the corrected labels. This result illustrates that trying to reconstruct a sulcus following the very general known shape/position in the literature or from a mean specimen may induce a bias when looking at an endocast and trying to follow the marks observed there. We also observe that the identification of sulci appears to be better in the lower part of the endocast compared to the upper part. The results concerning specific anatomical traits have implications for highly debated topics in palaeoanthropology. Endocranial description of fossil specimens should in the future consider the variation in position and shape of sulci in addition to using models of mean brain shape. Moreover, it is clear from this study that researchers can perceive sulcal imprints with reasonably high accuracy, but their correct identification and labelling remains a challenge, particularly when dealing with extinct species for which we lack direct knowledge of the brain.

Unsupervised Joint Domain Adaptation for Decoding Brain Cognitive States From tfMRI Images.

Recent advances in large model and neuroscience have enabled exploration of the mechanism of brain activity by using neuroimaging data. Brain decoding is one of the most promising researches to further understand the human cognitive function. However, current methods excessively depends on high-quality labeled data, which brings enormous expense of collection and annotation of neural images by experts. Besides, the performance of cross-individual decoding suffers from inconsistency in data distribution caused by individual variation and different collection equipments. To address mentioned above issues, a Join Domain Adapative Decoding (JDAD) framework is proposed for unsupervised decoding specific brain cognitive state related to behavioral task. Based on the volumetric feature extraction from task-based functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (tfMRI) data, a novel objective loss function is designed by the combination of joint distribution regularizer, which aims to restrict the distance of both the conditional and marginal probability distribution of labeled and unlabeled samples. Experimental results on the public Human Connectome Project (HCP) S1200 dataset show that JDAD achieves superior performance than other prevalent methods, especially for fine-grained task with 11.5%-21.6% improvements of decoding accuracy. The learned 3D features are visualized by Grad-CAM to build a combination with brain functional regions, which provides a novel path to learn the function of brain cortex regions related to specific cognitive task in group level.

AMSF: attention-based multi-view slice fusion for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an irreversible neurodegenerative disease with a high prevalence in the elderly population over 65 years of age. Intervention in the early stages of AD is of great significance to alleviate the symptoms. Recent advances in deep learning have shown extreme advantages in computer-aided diagnosis of AD. However, most studies only focus on extracting features from slices in specific directions or whole brain images, ignoring the complementarity between features from different angles. To overcome the above problem, attention-based multi-view slice fusion (AMSF) is proposed for accurate early diagnosis of AD. It adopts the fusion of three-dimensional (3D) global features with multi-view 2D slice features by using an attention mechanism to guide the fusion of slice features for each view, to generate a comprehensive representation of the MRI images for classification. The experiments on the public dataset demonstrate that AMSF achieves 94.3% accuracy with 1.6-7.1% higher than other previous promising methods. It indicates that the better solution for AD early diagnosis depends not only on the large scale of the dataset but also on the organic combination of feature construction strategy and deep neural networks.

Boosting Oxygen Evolution Performance of Nickel-Iron Layered Double Hydroxides by Controlling Oxygen Vacancies and Structural Disorder via n-Butyllithium Treatment.

Nickel-iron-based layered double hydroxides (NiFe-LDHs) are promising catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) because of their high activity, availability, and low cost. Defect engineering, particularly the formation of oxygen vacancies, can improve the catalytic activity of NiFe-LDHs. However, the controllable introduction of uniform oxygen vacancies remains challenging. Herein, an n-butyllithium treatment method is developed to tune oxygen vacancy defects and change the degree of amorphization in NiFe-LDHs via deep reduction, followed by partial oxidization at low temperatures. Interestingly, the Ni in the NiFe-LDHs is selectively reduced to the alloy state by n-butyllithium, whereas Fe is not. The different structural transformations of Ni and Fe during the treatment successfully produce an oxygen-defect-rich amorphous/crystalline electrocatalyst. Under optimal conditions, the treated NiFe-LDHs exhibit high OER activity with an overpotential of 223 mV at 10 mA cm-2 (68 mV lower than that of a commercial IrO2 electrocatalyst) and long-term stability. Notably, the n-butyllithium treatment can be applied to other electrocatalysts, such as CoFe-LDHs and IrO2 (treated IrO2 with an overpotential of 197 mV at 10 mA cm-2). This n-butyllithium reduction/partial oxidization treatment constitutes a novel top-down strategy for the controllable modification of metal oxide structures, with various energy-related applications.

Multinomial machine learning identifies independent biomarkers by integrated metabolic analysis of acute coronary syndrome.

A multi-class classification model for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) remains to be constructed based on multi-fluid metabolomics. Major confounders may exert spurious effects on the relationship between metabolism and ACS. The study aims to identify an independent biomarker panel for the multiclassification of HC, UA, and AMI by integrating serum and urinary metabolomics. We performed a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based metabolomics study on 300 serum and urine samples from 44 patients with unstable angina (UA), 77 with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and 29 healthy controls (HC). Multinomial machine learning approaches, including multinomial adaptive least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression and random forest (RF), and assessment of the confounders were applied to integrate a multi-class classification biomarker panel for HC, UA and AMI. Different metabolic landscapes were portrayed during the transition from HC to UA and then to AMI. Glycerophospholipid metabolism and arginine biosynthesis were predominant during the progression from HC to UA and then to AMI. The multiclass metabolic diagnostic model (MDM) dependent on ACS, including 2-ketobutyric acid, LysoPC(18:2(9Z,12Z)), argininosuccinic acid, and cyclic GMP, demarcated HC, UA, and AMI, providing a C-index of 0.84 (HC vs. UA), 0.98 (HC vs. AMI), and 0.89 (UA vs. AMI). The diagnostic value of MDM largely derives from the contribution of 2-ketobutyric acid, and LysoPC(18:2(9Z,12Z)) in serum. Higher 2-ketobutyric acid and cyclic GMP levels were positively correlated with ACS risk and atherosclerosis plaque burden, while LysoPC(18:2(9Z,12Z)) and argininosuccinic acid showed the reverse relationship. An independent multiclass biomarker panel for HC, UA, and AMI was constructed using the multinomial machine learning methods based on serum and urinary metabolite signatures.

Parallel neural pathways control sodium consumption and taste valence.

The hedonic value of salt fundamentally changes depending on the internal state. High concentrations of salt induce innate aversion under sated states, whereas such aversive stimuli transform into appetitive ones under sodium depletion. Neural mechanisms underlying this state-dependent salt valence switch are poorly understood. Using transcriptomics state-to-cell-type mapping and neural manipulations, we show that positive and negative valences of salt are controlled by anatomically distinct neural circuits in the mammalian brain. The hindbrain interoceptive circuit regulates sodium-specific appetitive drive , whereas behavioral tolerance of aversive salts is encoded by a dedicated class of neurons in the forebrain lamina terminalis (LT) expressing prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) receptor, Ptger3. We show that these LT neurons regulate salt tolerance by selectively modulating aversive taste sensitivity, partly through a PGE2-Ptger3 axis. These results reveal the bimodal regulation of appetitive and tolerance signals toward salt, which together dictate the amount of sodium consumption under different internal states.

Early urinary candidate biomarkers and clinical outcomes of intervention in a rat model of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic autoimmune demyelinating disease of the central nervous system and is difficult to diagnose in early stages. Without homeostatic control, urine was reported to have the ability to accumulate early changes in the body. We expect that urinary proteome can reflect early changes in the nervous system. The early urinary proteome changes in a most employed multiple sclerosis rat model (experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis) were analysed to explore early urinary candidate biomarkers, and early treatment of methylprednisolone was used to evaluate the therapeutic effect. Twenty-five urinary proteins were altered at day 7 when there were no clinical symptoms and obvious histological changes. Fourteen were reported to be differently expressed in the serum/cerebrospinal fluid/brain tissues of multiple sclerosis patients or animals such as angiotensinogen and matrix metallopeptidase 8. Functional analysis showed that the dysregulated proteins were associated with asparagine degradation, neuroinflammation and lipid metabolism. After the early treatment of methylprednisolone, the incidence of encephalomyelitis in the intervention group was only 1/13. This study demonstrates that urine may be a good source of biomarkers for the early detection of multiple sclerosis. These findings may provide important information for early diagnosis and intervention of multiple sclerosis in the future.

A functional group-guided approach to aptamers for small molecules.

Aptameric receptors are important biosensor components, yet our ability to identify them depends on the target structures. We analyzed the contributions of individual functional groups on small molecules to binding within 27 target-aptamer pairs, identifying potential hindrances to receptor isolation-for example, negative cooperativity between sterically hindered functional groups. To increase the probability of aptamer isolation for important targets, such as leucine and voriconazole, for which multiple previous selection attempts failed, we designed tailored strategies focused on overcoming individual structural barriers to successful selections. This approach enables us to move beyond standardized protocols into functional group-guided searches, relying on sequences common to receptors for targets and their analogs to serve as anchors in regions of vast oligonucleotide spaces wherein useful reagents are likely to be found.

Three-dimensional geometric morphometric study of the Xuchang 2 cranium.

Results of traditional metric and nonmetric assessments suggest that the Xuchang hominin shares features with Neanderthals. To comprehensively compare the nuchal morphology of XC 2 to those of the genus Homo, we conduct a three-dimensional geometric morphometric study with 35 cranial landmarks and surface semilandmarks of XC 2, Homo erectus, Middle Pleistocene humans, Neanderthals, and early and recent modern humans. Results reveal that the centroid size of XC 2 is larger than that of early and recent modern humans and can only be compared to that of Middle Pleistocene humans and H. erectus. Early and recent modern humans share a nuchal morphology distinct from archaic hominins (Ngandong H. erectus, Middle Pleistocene humans, and Neanderthals), except for SM 3, Sangiran 17, and Asian and African H. erectus. Although Ngandong specimens differ from the other H. erectus, it is unclear whether this represents a temporal or spatial trend in the process of evolution of this species. The nuchal morphological resemblance between Middle Pleistocene humans and Neanderthals may be attributed to similar cranial architecture and cerebellar shape. The great nuchal morphological variation shared by recent modern humans may indicate a particular developmental pattern. In conclusion, the nuchal morphology of different human groups is highly variable and may be caused by different factors including brain globularization and developmental plasticity. XC 2 shares similar nuchal morphology with Middle Pleistocene humans and Neanderthals, but these results are insufficient to fully resolve the taxonomic status of XC 2.

Structural characterization of a heteropolysaccharide from the fruit of Crataegus pinnatifida and its bioactivity on the gut microbiota of immunocompromised mice.

Crataegus pinnatifida is a common food in China, Europe and North America. In order to confirm polysaccharide was the material basis for C. pinnatifida to exert immune regulation. A polysaccharide (CPP) with a molecular weight of 13.58 kDa was isolated from C. pinnatifida. The structure of CPP was determined to be a backbone composed of â†’ 3,5)-α-l-Araf-(1→, with two branches consisting of â†’ 4)-α-d-Galp-(1 â†’ and â†’ 5)-α-l-Araf-(1→, with α-l-Araf and α-d-Manp as the terminal unit. CPP (10 âˆ¼ 500 µg/mL) could promote the secretion of nitric oxide, interleukin-2, interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-α in vitro. CPP could significantly restore the body weight of immunosuppressive mice and improve the immune organ index and interleukin-2, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α secretion. In addition, CPP increased the abundance of Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobia and decreased the abundance of Proteobacteria at the phylum level. So CPP can regulate the gut microbiota and play an important role in immune regulation.

Structural Characterization, Rheological Properties, Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Polysaccharides from Zingiber officinale.

The structural characteristics, rheological properties, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of Zingiber officinale polysaccharides (ZOP) and ZOP-1 were studied. The total soluble sugar contents of ZOP and ZOP-1 were 78.6 ± 0.6 and 79.4 ± 0.4%, respectively. Compared with ZOP, ZOP-1 had a larger molecular weight and a more uniform distribution. There were also some differences in the monosaccharide composition between ZOP and ZOP-1. The main monosaccharide of ZOP and ZOP-1 was glucose (Glc) and galactose (Gal), respectively. Ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) and fourier transform infrared spectra (FT-IR) results showed that the two polysaccharides had the characteristic absorption peaks of polysaccharides and did not contain nucleic acid and protein. They had good thermal stability, trihelix structure and amorphous sheet structure. ZOP and ZOP-1 had obvious differences in microstructure. The surface of ZOP was smooth and the broken structure was compact and stable with angular shape, while the surface of ZOP-1 was uneven with spiral accumulation and not closely arranged. Moreover, ZOP and ZOP-1 were polysaccharides molecular polymers which were entangled by van der waals' force (VDW) between polysaccharides molecules and hydrogen bond association between sugar chains, and both contain α pyranose. At different concentrations, temperature, pH and salt ion concentrations, both ZOP and ZOP-1 had the properties of non-Newtonian fluids, showed shear dilution phenomenon, which had the potential as a texture modifier or thickener in food or biomedicine. Compared with ZOP, ZOP-1 showed superior antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities in vitro.

Insights into the enhanced effect of biochar on cadmium removal in vertical flow constructed wetlands.

Biochar has been increasingly applied in constructed wetlands (CWs) to remediate heavy metal (HM)-polluted water. Nevertheless, only few studies have elucidated the enhanced mechanism and potential synergies related to the HM removal from biochar-based CWs (BC-CWs) for HMs removal. This study used cadmium (Cd) as the target HM and added biochar into CWs to monitor physicochemical parameters, plant' physiological responses, substrate accumulation, and microbial metabolites and taxa. In comparison with the biochar-free CW (as CWC), a maximum Cd2+ removal of 99.7% was achieved in the BC-CWs, associated with stable physicochemical parameters. Biochar preferentially adsorbed the available Cd2+ and significantly accumulated Fe/Mn oxides-bond and the exchangeable Cd fraction. Moreover, biochar alleviated the lipid peroxidation (decreased by 36.4%) of plants, resulting in improved growth. In addition, extracellular polymeric substances were increased by 376.9-396.8 mg/L in BC-CWs than compared to CWC, and N and C cycling was enhanced through interspecific positive connectivity. In summary, this study explored comprehensively the performance and mechanism of BC-CWs in the treatment of Cd2+-polluted water, suggesting a promising approach to promote the plant-microbe-substrate synergies under HM toxicity.

Application of measurable surgical guides in immediate implant placement and immediate restoration.

This article reports a case of using immediate implant placement and immediate restoration combined with measurable implant surgical guides to restore compromised maxillary incisors caused by dental trauma. Target restoration was designed in the exoCAD software preoperatively, intraoral measurements were obtained in three directions, and the correct position of virtual implants was determined in BlueSky Plan 4. Afterward, measurable implant guides were designed and fabricated by 3D printing. Under the guidance of the measurable implant surgical guides and intraoperative measurement, the entry point was determined, the axial direction was verified when drilling to half the depth, and the 3D position was verified when drilling to total depth. Implants were inserted followed by verification once again. The temporary restoration, which was designed based on the target restoration and emergence profile of the original teeth and milled preoperatively, was connected to the implant immediately after surgery. Postoperative accuracy analysis showed that the mean linear deviations between the actual implant position and the pre-planned position were (0.57±0.17) mm at the entry point and (0.82±0.27) mm at the apex, and the mean angular deviation was (1.86±0.89) °, demonstrating that precise implant placement and immediate restoration were implemented.

Dual-modal in vivo assessment for electrophysical and hemodynamic characteristics of cerebral edema induced by lipopolysaccharide.

The pathological features of cerebral edema are complicated. The intracranial pressure (ICP) is regarded as the most important indicator for monitoring cerebral edema. Recently, multi-parameter has been used to explore the types and pathogenesis of cerebral edema and design effective treatment strategies. This research focused on investigating the characteristic of the cerebral edema induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in rats by using simultaneous electrophysical and hemodynamic parameters. The results showed that neurophysiologic parameters (firing rate (FR) and the power spectrum of local field potential (LFP power)) and hemodynamic parameters (relative concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin (ΔCHbO2), relative concentration of deoxyhemoglobin ΔCHbR) and relative cerebral blood flow (rCBF)) were linearly correlated, and the Pearson's correlation coefficient was changed by pathological progression of cerebral edema induced by LPS. Furtherly, the treatment after two agents were observed successfully through these multi-parameters. Our findings revealed the relationship between neural activity and hemodynamic response during the progression of cerebral edema and provided a multi-parameter solution for cerebral edema functional monitoring and anti-edema drug efficacy evaluation.