Application of artificial intelligence system for screening multiple fundus diseases in Chinese primary healthcare settings: a real-world, multicentre and cross-sectional study of 4795 cases.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: This study evaluates the performance of the Airdoc retinal artificial intelligence system (ARAS) for detecting multiple fundus diseases in real-world scenarios in primary healthcare settings and investigates the fundus disease spectrum based on ARAS. METHODS: This real-world, multicentre, cross-sectional study was conducted in Shanghai and Xinjiang, China. Six primary healthcare settings were included in this study. Colour fundus photographs were taken and graded by ARAS and retinal specialists. The performance of ARAS is described by its accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values. The spectrum of fundus diseases in primary healthcare settings has also been investigated. RESULTS: A total of 4795 participants were included. The median age was 57.0 (IQR 39.0-66.0) years, and 3175 (66.2%) participants were female. The accuracy, specificity and negative predictive value of ARAS for detecting normal fundus and 14 retinal abnormalities were high, whereas the sensitivity and positive predictive value varied in detecting different abnormalities. The proportion of retinal drusen, pathological myopia and glaucomatous optic neuropathy was significantly higher in Shanghai than in Xinjiang. Moreover, the percentages of referable diabetic retinopathy, retinal vein occlusion and macular oedema in middle-aged and elderly people in Xinjiang were significantly higher than in Shanghai. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated the dependability of ARAS for detecting multiple retinal diseases in primary healthcare settings. Implementing the AI-assisted fundus disease screening system in primary healthcare settings might be beneficial in reducing regional disparities in medical resources. However, the ARAS algorithm must be improved to achieve better performance. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04592068.

[Retracted] MicroRNA­326 inhibits cell proliferation and invasion, activating apoptosis in hepatocellular carcinoma by directly targeting LIM and SH3 protein 1.

Following the publication of the above paper, it was drawn to the Editors' attention by a concerned reader that various panels showing data from flow cytometric experiments in Figs. 2E, 5E and 6E, and the cell migration and invasion assay data shown in Fig. 2D and 6D, were strikingly similar to data appearing in different form in other articles by different authors. Owing to the fact that the contentious data in the above article were already under consideration for publication, or had already been published, elsewhere when it was submitted to Oncology Reports, the Editor has decided that this paper should be retracted from the Journal. After having been in contact with the authors, they agreed with the decision to retract the paper. The Editor apologizes to the readership for any inconvenience caused. [Oncology Reports 38: 1569­1578, 2017; DOI: 10.3892/or.2017.5810].

An Ultrasonic Reverse Time Migration Imaging Method Based on Higher-Order Singular Value Decomposition.

An ultrasonic reverse time migration imaging method, based on high-order singular value decomposition, is proposed in the study to solve the problems of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and excessive artifacts in defect ultrasonic detection imaging results of materials with high noise levels. In this method, based on the 3D structural properties of the ultrasonic full-matrix capture data, higher-order singular value decomposition is directly performed with the 3D data. The method overcomes the difficulty in selecting the number of singular values in the original singular value decomposition noise-reduction algorithm and realizes the one-step noise reduction processing of all the signals. Subsequently, the reverse time migration imaging is performed in the frequency domain, and high-quality acoustic images are obtained. The effects of the number of array elements, the center frequency of the excitation signal, and the number of defects on the denoising effect of the algorithm are investigated. It was experimentally demonstrated that the method could suppress the interference of noise signals and significantly improve the imaging SNR compared with total focusing method and the reverse time migration.

Production of Functional Hepatobiliary Organoids from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells.

The research on human hepatobiliary development and disorders has been constrained by minimal access to human fetal tissue, and low accuracy of animal models. To overcome this problem, we have established a system for the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) into functional hepatobiliary organoids (HBOs). We have previously reported that our 45-d approach closely mimics key stages of hepatobiliary development, starting with the differentiation of hiPSC into endoderm and a small part of mesoderm, and subsequently into hepatoblast-like cells, followed by the parallel generation of hepatocyte-like cells and cholangiocyte-like cells, formation of immature HBO expressing early hepatic and biliary markers, and mature HBO displaying hepatobiliary functionality. In this study, we present an updated version of our previous protocol, which only needs 35 days to achieve maturation in vitro. Furthermore, a hepatobiliary culture medium is developed to functionally maintain the HBOs for more than 1.5 months. The capacity of this approach for producing large amounts of functional HBOs and enabling long-term culture in vitro holds promise for applications on developmental research, disease modeling, as well as screening of therapeutic agents.

Fault diagnosis of rolling bearings with recurrent neural network-based autoencoders.

As the rolling bearings being the key part of rotary machine, its healthy condition is quite important for safety production. Fault diagnosis of rolling bearing has been research focus for the sake of improving the economic efficiency and guaranteeing the operation security. However, the collected signals are mixed with ambient noise during the operation of rotary machine, which brings great challenge to the exact diagnosis results. Using signals collected from multiple sensors can avoid the loss of local information and extract more helpful characteristics. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) is a type of artificial neural network which can deal with multiple time sequence data. The capacity of RNN has been proved outstanding for catching time relevance about time sequence data. This paper proposed a novel method for bearing fault diagnosis with RNN in the form of an autoencoder. In this approach, multiple vibration value of the rolling bearings of the next period are predicted from the previous period by means of Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU)-based denoising autoencoder. These GRU-based non-linear predictive denoising autoencoders (GRU-NP-DAEs) are trained with strong generalization ability for each different fault pattern. Then for the given input data, the reconstruction errors between the next period data and the output data generated by different GRU-NP-DAEs are used to detect anomalous conditions and classify fault type. Classic rotating machinery datasets have been employed to testify the effectiveness of the proposed diagnosis method and its preponderance over some state-of-the-art methods. The experiment results indicate that the proposed method achieves satisfactory performance with strong robustness and high classification accuracy.

MicroRNA-326 inhibits cell proliferation and invasion, activating apoptosis in hepatocellular carcinoma by directly targeting LIM and SH3 protein 1.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth-most common cancer and third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Increasing evidence indicates that dysregulation of microRNAs is often observed in HCC, and has been extensively investigated in terms of cancer formation, progression, diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis. Recently, microRNA-326 (miR-326) has been demonstrated to play important roles in multiple types of human cancer. However, the expression pattern, clinical significance, roles and regulatory mechanisms of miR-326 in HCC have yet to be elucidated. In this study, miR-326 was frequently downregulated in HCC tissues and cell lines. Low miR-326 expression was significantly associated with the TNM stage, differentiation and lymph node metastasis of HCC patients. Further functional assays demonstrated that the recovered miR-326 expression inhibited HCC cell proliferation and invasion and activated cell apoptosis in vitro. In addition, LIM and SH3 protein 1 (LASP1) was identified as a direct target gene of miR-326 in HCC. Furthermore, LASP1 was upregulated in HCC tissues and cell lines. The expression level of LASP1 mRNA was inversely correlated with that of miR-326 in HCC tissues. Moreover, LASP1 silencing elicited effects similar to miR-326 overexpression on HCC cells, and LASP1 upregulation markedly reversed the effects of miR-326 overexpression on HCC cells. These results revealed that miR-326 suppressed the progression of HCC by directly targeting LASP1. Therefore, miR-326 may be used as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of patients with HCC.

A distributed model predictive control based load frequency control scheme for multi-area interconnected power system using discrete-time Laguerre functions.

This paper proposes a distributed model predictive control based load frequency control (MPC-LFC) scheme to improve control performances in the frequency regulation of power system. In order to reduce the computational burden in the rolling optimization with a sufficiently large prediction horizon, the orthonormal Laguerre functions are utilized to approximate the predicted control trajectory. The closed-loop stability of the proposed MPC scheme is achieved by adding a terminal equality constraint to the online quadratic optimization and taking the cost function as the Lyapunov function. Furthermore, the treatments of some typical constraints in load frequency control have been studied based on the specific Laguerre-based formulations. Simulations have been conducted in two different interconnected power systems to validate the effectiveness of the proposed distributed MPC-LFC as well as its superiority over the comparative methods.

A novel AKT inhibitor, AZD5363, inhibits phosphorylation of AKT downstream molecules, and activates phosphorylation of mTOR and SMG-1 dependent on the liver cancer cell type.

Due to frequent phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway dysregulation, AKT is typically accepted as a promising anticancer therapeutic target. mTOR, in particular, represents a suitable therapeutic target for hepatocellular carcinoma, whilst suppressor with morphogenetic effect on genitalia family member-1 (SMG-1) is believed to serve a potential tumor suppressor role in human cancer. Despite SMG-1 and mTOR belonging to the same PI3K-related kinase family, the interactions between them are not yet fully understood. In the present study, a novel pyrrolopyrimidine-derived compound, AZD5363, was observed to suppress proliferation in liver cancer Hep-G2 and Huh-7 cells by inhibiting the phosphorylation of downstream molecules in the AKT signal pathway, in a dose- and time-dependent manner. AZD5363 activated the phosphorylation of mTOR, dependent on the liver cancer cell type, as it may have differing effects in various liver cancer cell lines. Additionally, AZD5363 also activated SMG-1 within the same liver cancer cells types, which subsequently activated the phosphorylation of mTOR. In conclusion, the present study indicates that AZD5363 inhibited phosphorylation of AKT downstream molecules, and activated phosphorylation of mTOR and SMG-1, dependent on the liver cancer type.

Development and characterization of 25 EST-SSR markers in Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica (Pinaceae).

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: A set of novel expressed sequence tag (EST) microsatellite markers was developed in Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica to promote further genetic studies in this species. • METHODS AND RESULTS: One hundred seventy-five EST-simple sequence repeat (SSR) primers were designed and synthesized for 31,653 isotigs based on P. tabuliformis EST sequences. The primer pairs were used to identify 25 polymorphic loci in 48 individuals. The number of alleles ranged from two to eight with observed and expected heterozygosity values of 0.0435 to 0.8125 and 0.0430 to 0.7820, respectively. • CONCLUSIONS: These new polymorphic EST-SSR markers will be useful for assessing genetic diversity, molecular breeding and genetic improvement, and conservation of P. sylvestris var. mongolica.

Isolation and expression profiles of gibberellin metabolism genes in developing male and female cones of Pinus tabuliformis.

Gibberellins (GAs) are important in the floral regulatory networks of angiosperm plants. Several lines of evidence suggest that GAs also play a pivotal role in conifer male and female cone development. To gain new insights into the GA metabolism pathway in conifer trees and the role of GA metabolism in male and female cone development, we identified GA metabolism genes in Pinus tabuliformis. These included one PtCPS gene, one PtKS gene, one PtKO gene, TWO PtKAO genes, one PtGA20ox gene, two PtGA3ox genes and 12 PtGA2ox genes. According to phylogenetic analysis, the GA biosynthesis pathway evolved after the divergence of mosses from ferns, but the GA-deactivating gene family underwent divided expansion after divergence of the angiosperms from gymnosperms. However, the active sites of all GA metabolism enzymes were conserved during the evolution of land plants. During male and female cone development of P. tabuliformis, the expression of most of the PtGA2ox genes, especially PtGA2ox10, was higher than GA biosynthesis genes. However, the expression of PtKAO1 in cones peaked at a very early developmental stage. The expression pattern of GA metabolism genes indicated that GAs play different roles at the early and late stages of cone development.

1-Benzyl-idene-4-ethyl-thio-semicarbazide.

The title compound, C(10)H(13)N(3)S, was prepared by the reaction of 4-ethyl-thio-semicarbazide and benzaldehyde. The dihedral angle between the benzene ring and the thio-urea unit is 8.96 (7)° and an intra-molecular N-H⋯N hydrogen bond generates an S(5) ring. In the crystal, inversion dimers linked by pairs of N-H⋯S hydrogen bonds generate R(2) (2)(8) loops.