HO-1 attenuates testicular ischaemia/reperfusion injury by activating the phosphorylated C-jun-miR-221/222-TOX pathway.

Aims: Heme oxygenase (HO-1) affords protection against ischaemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury; however, its effects on testicular I/R injury remain poorly explored. Herein, we aimed to examine the effects of HO-1 on testicular I/R injury and elucidate the underlying mechanism. Methods: Using the TALEN technique, we knocked out the HO-1 gene from rats. In vivo: Thirty hmox+/+ and 30 hmox-/- rats were randomly assigned to six groups: sham-operated (sham), I/R (the left testicle torsion/detorsion) 0 d,I/R 1d, I/R 3d, I/R 7d and I/R 28d. In vitro: GC-1 were suffered from: control,H/R (oxygen-deprivation/reoxygenation),H/R + HO-1 siRNA,H/R + c-Jun siRNA or H/R + HO-1 siRNA + c-jun.We performed immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry experiments to detect HO-1 nuclear translocation. Flow cytometry was used to detect cell apoptosis and analyse the cell cycle. High-resolution miRNA, mRNA sequencing, reverse transcription-quantitative PCR, and western blotting were performed to identify testicular I/R injury-related genes strongly conserved in HO-1 knockout rats. A double luciferase reporter assay was performed to verify the relationship between C-jun and miR-221/222. Main findings: In vivo, HO-1 improved the pathological damage induced by testicular I/R. In GC-1 cells, we confirmed the nuclear translocation of HO-1 and its protective effect against hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) damage. Accordingly, HO-1 protein itself, rather than heme metabolites, might play a key role in testicular I/R. Gene sequencing was performed to screen for miR221/222 and its downstream gene, thymocyte selection-associated high mobility group box (TOX). HO-1 increased c-Jun phosphorylation in the H/R group, knocked down c-Jun in GC-1 cells, and decreased miR-221/222 expression. Inhibition of HO-1 expression decreased the expression of c-Jun and miR-221/222, which was rescued by adding c-Jun. Dual-luciferase reporter assay confirmed the interaction between c-Jun and miR-221/222. Conclusions: HO-1 could exert a protective effect against testicular I/R via the phosphorylated c-Jun-miR-221/222-TOX pathway.

[Measurement of nasal septum area in 128 Chinese patients with nasal septum deviation].

Objective:Establish the anatomical parameters of the nasal septum and the area of each component in patients with nasal septum deviation, for the sake of guiding the scope of surgical resection for correction of nasal septum deviation. Methods:This is a retrospective study of 128 cases of sinus computer tomography images of patients with nasal septum deviation, marked 9 nasal septal anatomical locations, measured the area of the nasal septum and its components, and analyzed the trend of the percentage of the area of the nasal septum cartilage in the total area of the nasal septum with age. Results:The total area of the nasal septum in the 128 patients with nasal septum deviation is: （2951.96±305.91） mm², the area of nasal septal cartilage: （961.89±229.64） mm², the area of the vertical ethmoid plate: （1123.96±214.17） mm², the area of the vomerine: （652.77±108.09） mm². The area of male septum is larger than that of female. As age increases, the nasal septal cartilage gradually decreases, and the percentage of the nasal septal cartilage area in the total area of the nasal septum gradually decreases. Conclusion:Elderly people who undergo nasal septum correction should be carefully considered to grasp the scope of resection, and the influence of gender on the area of nasal septum should also be paid attention.

The value of SPECT/CT imaging of lacrimal glands as a means of assessing the activity of Graves' orbitopathy.

Background: Graves' orbitopathy (GO) is an autoimmune disease with mechanical impairment of orbital muscles and lacrimal gland dysfunction. The frequently used methods of assessing GO activity include Clinical Activity Score (CAS), CT, and MRI. These approaches are mainly associated with orbital muscles; however, there are not many studies that focus on the lacrimal gland inflammation of GO patients. Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the usefulness of 99mTc-DTPA single-photon emission (SPE) CT/CT in evaluating the lacrimal gland inflammation in GO, as compared with other methods. Methods: A retrospective analysis of 48 patients with active GO compared with 33 controls was conducted. All subjects underwent clinical-endocrinological analyses, CAS evaluation, CT scans, and SPECT/CT examination. Lacrimal gland dimensions were determined and analyzed. Results: The lacrimal glands in patients with GO were significantly larger in all measured dimensions (P < 0.001) on CT scans relative to those in controls. Increased lacrimal gland diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA) uptake ratios (P < 0.001) were displayed in active GO patients compared to controls and were also correlated with thyrotropin receptor antibody levels. The cut-off value for discriminating active and inactive disease was calculated to be 1.735, with specificity of 82.6% and sensitivity of 74.2%. SPECT/CT uptake ratios and CAS values were positively correlated in all GO patients. SPECT/CT uptake ratios were also positively correlated with CT measurements including lacrimal gland volume and coronal width in GO patients. Conclusions: These data indicated that lacrimal gland SPECT/CT images can serve as a good tool for assessing the inflammation and disease activity of GO.

Preliminary evidence of the association between DNAm and orbital volumetry in GO.

BACKGROUND: The pathogenesis underlying the alterations of orbital architecture in Graves' orbitopathy (GO) is not yet fully understood. The present study aimed to investigate the association of DNA methylation in peripheral blood and orbital volumetry in Chinese patients with GO. METHODS: A total of 35 GO subjects (70 orbits) were subjected to computed tomography (CT) scan. The total cross-sectional area of the extraocular muscles (orbital muscles, OM), total orbit area (TOA), and the exophthalmometry were measured, and OM/TOA ratio was calculated. Targeted bisulfite sequencing was performed on seven candidate genes. RESULTS: No significant correlation was established between the DNA methylation levels of these genes and exophthalmometry. The MBP methylation level was found to be correlated with OM/TOA ratio (P<0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis on parameters, including age, sex, TRAb, duration of GO, and DNA methylation levels of seven genes with OM/TOA ratio confirmed that MBP and OM/TOA ratio had a significant correlation (P<0.05). The partial least squares analysis showed that the top three genes with the highest loadings were MBP, BOLL, and BECN1, and OM/TOA ratio affected the DNA methylation block than exophthalmometry. CONCLUSIONS: This study provided preliminary evidence that MBP is a potential gene associated with OM enlargement in GO patients according to the combination of DNA methylation sequencing and orbital CT measurement.

Anatomical study of presigmoid-retrolabyrinthine approach based on temporal bone high-resolution CT.

BACKGROUND: The surgical approach of acoustic neuroma includes translabyrinthine, transcranial fossa, suboccipital retrosigmoid sinus, and presigmoid retrolabyrinthine approach. Aims/Objective: To provide the anatomical basis for the surgical selection of presigmoid retrolabyrinthine approach by measuring the anatomical parameters of retrolabyrinthine space of the petrous bone by high-resolution CT. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A retrospective study of 208 high-resolution CT (HRCT) images of 104 patients examined in our hospital were analyzed retrospectively. Forty-nine males and 55 females were included in this study. Lines were drawn on the HRCT to measure the morphological data for pre-operational assessment. RESULT: Morphological data were retracted from HRCT, for preoperational assessment. CONCLUSION AND SIGNIFICANCE: Using the standard postprocessing images of temporal bone HRCT can predict the size of the retrolabyrinthine space and the degree of exposure to the inner auditory canal, providing an important anatomical index for the choice of presigmoid retrolabyrinthine approach.

Investigation of inner ear anatomy in mouse using X-ray phase contrast tomography.

A thorough understanding of inner ear anatomy is important for investigators. However, investigation of the mouse inner ear is difficult due to the limitations of imaging techniques. X-ray phase contrast tomography increases contrast 100-1,000 times compared with conventional X-ray imaging. This study aimed to investigate inner ear anatomy in a fresh post-mortem mouse using X-ray phase contrast tomography and to provide a comprehensive atlas of microstructures with less tissue deformation. All experiments were performed in accordance with our institution's guidelines on the care and use of laboratory animals. A fresh mouse cadaver was scanned immediately after sacrifice using an inline phase contrast tomography system. Slice images were reconstructed using a filtered back-projection (FBP) algorithm. Standardized axial and coronal planes were adjusted with a multi-planar reconstruction method. Some three-dimensional (3D) objects were reconstructed by surface rendering. The characteristic features of microstructures, including otoconia masses of the saccular and utricular maculae, superior and inferior macula cribrosae, single canal, modiolus, and osseous spiral lamina, were described in detail. Spatial positions and relationships of the vestibular structures were exhibited in 3D views. This study investigated mouse inner ear anatomy and provided a standardized presentation of microstructures. In particular, otoconia masses were visualized in their natural status without contrast for the first time. The comprehensive anatomy atlas presented in this study provides an excellent reference for morphology studies of the inner ear.

DesnowNet: Context-Aware Deep Network for Snow Removal.

Existing learning-based atmospheric particle-removal approaches such as those used for rainy and hazy images are designed with strong assumptions regarding spatial frequency, trajectory, and translucency. However, the removal of snow particles is more complicated because they possess additional attributes of particle size and shape, and these attributes may vary within a single image. Currently, hand-crafted features are still the mainstream for snow removal, making significant generalization difficult to achieve. In response, we have designed a multistage network named DesnowNet to in turn deal with the removal of translucent and opaque snow particles. We also differentiate snow attributes of translucency and chromatic aberration for accurate estimation. Moreover, our approach individually estimates residual complements of the snow-free images to recover details obscured by opaque snow. Additionally, a multi-scale design is utilized throughout the entire network to model the diversity of snow. As demonstrated in the qualitative and quantitative experiments, our approach outperforms state-of-the-art learning-based atmospheric phenomena removal methods and one semantic segmentation baseline on the proposed Snow100K dataset. The results indicate our network would benefit applications involving computer vision and graphics.

MicroRNA-193a-3p inhibits cell proliferation in prostate cancer by targeting cyclin D1.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that affect various biological processes by altering the expression of a target gene. An miRNA microarray analysis has previously revealed a significant decrease in miR-193a-3p levels in prostate cancer tissues compared with that in their benign prostate hyperplasia counterparts. However, the role of miR-193a-3p has yet to be elucidated. In the present study, reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was used to evaluate the expression levels of miR-193a-3p in two human prostate cancer cell lines. Forced overexpression of miR-193a-3p was established by transfecting mimics into DU-145 and PC3 cell lines. Cell proliferation and the cell cycle were assessed using a cell viability assay, flow cytometry and a colony formation assay. In addition, the target gene of miR-193a-3p was determined by a luciferase assay, RT-qPCR and western blot analysis. The regulation of the cell cycle by miR-193a-3p was also evaluated by western blotting. The results demonstrated that miR-193a-3p expression levels were lower in prostate cancer cell lines as compared with the RWPE normal prostate epithelium cell line. Subsequent gain-of-function studies revealed that stable miR-193a-3p transfection inhibited cell viability, proliferation and colony formation, and induced G1 phase arrest in prostate cancer cells. A luciferase assay and western blot analysis identified cyclin D1 (CCND1) as a direct target gene of miR-193a-3p. In addition, the forced expression of CCND1 was able to counter the inhibitory effects of miR-193a-3p transfection in the prostate cancer cells. In summary, the results suggest that miR-193a-3p may inhibit the viability, proliferation and survival of prostate cancer cells by regulating the expression profile of CCND1, and that miR-193a-3p may be a novel therapeutic biomarker for prostate cancer.

Clustered-Dot Screen Design for Digital Multitoning.

Digital multitoning is an extension of halftoning for rendering more than two tones at each pixel for higher image quality. Although a lot of effort has been put in generating dispersed dots previously, the blue-noise feature can hardly be achieved for those printers utilizing the electrophotography (EP) process to avoid the physically unstable isolated dots. To overcome this issue, Chandu et al. proposed a screening method for yielding green-noise dot clusters, yet noisy multitone texture was accompanied. This degrades the visual quality and the stability of tone rendering. In this paper, a significantly improved homogeneity of clustered dots can be achieved by the proposed screening method based upon the new inter-iterative clustered-dot direct multi-bit search algorithm. Compared with the former approaches, the inter-iteration design leads to less error by the updated initial multitone patterns. As demonstrated in the experimental results, both of the high homogenous multitone texture and less noisy perception at all absorptance levels are offered in contrast to the former Chandu et al.'s results. The high-quality output proves it as a very competitive candidate for EP printers, e.g., laser printers.

MicroRNA-195-5p, a new regulator of Fra-1, suppresses the migration and invasion of prostate cancer cells.

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that deregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) was a common event in tumor tissues and miRNAs would be treated as ideal tumor biomarkers or therapeutic targets. miR-195-5p (termed as miR-195 for briefly in the following part) was suggested to function as a tumor suppressor in cancer development and progression. However, the roles of miR-195 in human prostate cancer are still elusive. Thus, this study was performed to investigate the biological functions and its molecular mechanisms of miR-195 in human prostate cancer cell lines, discussing whether it has a potential to be a therapeutic way of prostate cancer. METHODS: Two human prostate cancer cell lines were analyzed for the expression of miR-195 by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). A gain-of-function study of miR-195 was conducted by transfecting mimics into DU145 and PC3 cells and cell motility and invasion ability were evaluated by wound healing assay and transwell assay. Tissue microarray, and immunohistochemistry with antibodies against Fra-1 was performed using the peroxidase and DAB methods. The target gene of miR-195 was determined by luciferase assay, quantitative RT-PCR and western blot. The regulation of motility by miR-195 was analyzed by western blot. RESULTS: miR-195 was frequently down-regulated in both prostate cancer cell lines, DU145 and PC3. Overexpression of miR-195 significantly repressed the capability of migration and invasion of prostate cancer cells. In addition, we identified Fra-1, a cell motility regulator, as a novel target of miR-195. Fra-1 was up-regulated in prostate cancer tissues. We also observed that inhibition of miR-195 or restoration of Fra-1 in miR-195-over-expressed prostate cancer cells partially reversed the suppressive effects of miR-195. Furthermore, we demonstrated miR-195 could inhibit prostate cancer cell motility by regulated the expression of c-Met, MMP1, MMP9. CONCLUSIONS: miR-195 can repress the migration and invasion of prostate cancer cells via regulating Fra-1. Our results indicate that miR-195 could be a tumor suppressor and may have a potential to be a diagnostics or therapeutic target in prostate cancer.

Dot-Diffused Halftoning With Improved Homogeneity.

Compared with the error diffusion, dot diffusion provides an additional pixel-level parallelism for digital halftoning. However, even though its periodic and blocking artifacts had been eased by the previous works, it was still far from satisfactory in terms of the blue noise spectrum perspective. In this paper, we strengthen the relation among the pixel locations of the same processing order by an iterative halftoning method, and the results demonstrate a significant improvement. Moreover, a new approach of deriving the averaged power spectrum density is proposed to avoid the regular sampling of the well-known Bartlett's procedure which inaccurately presents the halftone periodicity of certain halftoning techniques with parallelism. As a result, the proposed dot diffusion is substantially superior to the state-of-the-art parallel halftoning methods in terms of visual quality and artifact-free property, and competitive runtime to the theoretical fastest ordered dithering is offered simultaneously.

Tone-Replacement Error Diffusion for Multitoning.

Error diffusion is an efficient halftone method for mainly being applied on printers. The promising high image quality and processing efficiency endorse it as a popular and competitive candidate in halftoning and multitoning applications. The multitoning is an extension of halftoning, adopting more than two-tone levels for the improvement of the similarity between an original image and the converted image. Yet, the banding effect, indicating the areas with discontinuous tone level, disturbs the visual perception, and thus seriously degrades image quality. To solve the banding effect, the tone-replacement strategy is proposed in this paper. As documented in the experimental results, excellent tone-similarity as that of the original image and promising reconstructed dot-distribution can be provided simultaneously. Comparing with the former banding-free methods, the apparent improvements/features suggest that the proposed method can be a very competitive candidate for multitoning applications.

Efficient halftoning based on multiple look-up tables.

Look-up table (LUT) halftoning is an efficient way to construct halftone images and approximately simulate the dot distribution of the learned halftone image set. In this paper, a general mechanism named multiple look-up table (MLUT) halftoning is proposed to generate the halftones of direct binary search (DBS), whereas the high efficient characteristic of the LUT is still preserved. In the MLUT, the standard deviation is adopted as an important feature to classify various tables. In addition, the proposed quick standard deviation evaluation is employed to yield an extremely low computational complexity in calculating the standard deviation. In the parameter optimization, the autocorrelation is adopted because it can fully characterize the periodicity of dot distribution. Experimental results demonstrate that the dot distribution generated by the proposed method approximates to that of the DBS, which enables the proposed scheme as a very competitive candidate in the copying and printing industry.

Rapid Genotyping of MSTN Gene Polymorphism Using High-resolution Melting for Association Study in Rabbits.

The myostatin (MSTN) gene, as a negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth, has been proposed to be associated with production traits in farm animals. In the present study, a T/C variant at -125 bp (relative to ATG start codon) of 5'regulatory region of rabbit MSTN was identified by direct sequencing. Two hundred and twenty two rabbits, which were randomly sampled from 3 breeds (Ira rabbits, Champagne rabbits and Tianfu black rabbits), were genotyped by high-resolution melting (HRM). Comparing the genotyping results of 47 samples with direct sequencing, the HRM showed high sensitivity (0.96) and high specificity (0.98). In the three rabbit breeds, the allele C was the predominant allele. The polymorphic site showed high heterozygosity (He = 0.48) and high effective number of alleles (Ne = 1.91). The genetic diversity was reasonably informative (0.25

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms of NLRP12 Gene and Association with Non-specific Digestive Disorder in Rabbit.

The NLRP12 (NLR family, pyrin domain containing 12) serves as a suppressor factor in the inflammatory response and protects the host against inflammation-induced damage. In the present study, we aimed to study the polymorphisms of NLRP12 gene and its association with susceptibility to non-specific digestive disorder (NSDD) in rabbits. We re-sequenced the entire coding region of the rabbit NLRP12 gene and detected a total of 19 SNPs containing 14 synonymous and five non-synonymous variations. Among them, the coding SNP (c.1682A>G), which would carry a potential functional implication, was subsequently subjected to genotyping for case-control association study (272 cases and 267 controls). The results revealed that allele A was significantly protective against NSDD with an odds ratio value of 0.884 (95% confidence interval, 0.788 to 0.993; p = 0.038). We also experimentally induced NSDD in growing rabbits by feeding a fibre-deficient diet and subsequently investigated NLRP12 mRNA expression. The mRNA expression of NLRP12 in healthy status was significantly higher than that in severe NSDD (p = 0.0016). The highest expression was observed in individuals carrying the protective genotype AA (p = 0.0108). These results suggested that NLRP12 was significantly associated with the NSDD in rabbits. However, the precise molecular mechanism of NLRP12 involving in the development of rabbit NSDD requires further research.

New class tiling design for dot-diffused halftoning.

In this paper, a new class tiling designed dot diffusion along with the optimized class matrix and diffused matrix are proposed. The result of this method presents a nearly periodic-free halftone when compared to the former schemes. Formerly, the class matrix of the dot diffusion is duplicated and orthogonally tiled to fulfill the entire image for further thresholding and quantized-error diffusion, which accompanies subsequent periodic artifacts. In our observation, this artifact can be solved by manipulating the class tiling with comprising rotation, transpose, and alternatively shifting of the class matrices. As documented in the experimental results, the proposed dot diffusion has been compared with the former halftoning methods with parallelism in terms of image quality, processing efficiency, periodicity, and memory consumption; the proposed dot diffusion exhibits as a very competitive candidate in the printing/display market.

High capacity data hiding for error-diffused block truncation coding.

Block truncation coding (BTC) is an efficient compression technique with extremely low computational complexity. However, the blocking and false contour effects are two major deficiencies in BTC which cause severe perceptual artifacts. The former scheme, error-diffused BTC (EDBTC), can significantly improve the above issues through the visual low-pass compensation on the bitmap, which thus widens its possible application market, yet the corresponding security issue may limit its value. In this paper, a method namely complementary hiding EDBTC is developed to cope the above issue. This paper is managed by firstly discussing when a single watermark is embedded, and then multiple watermarks are employed to test the limitation of the proposed scheme. Herein, an adaptive external bias factor is employed to control the watermark embedding, and this factor also affects the image quality and robustness simultaneously. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method only requires an extremely small external bias factor to carry watermarks, which enables a high capacity scenario without significantly damaging image quality.

Oriented modulation for watermarking in direct binary search halftone images.

In this paper, a halftoning-based watermarking method is presented. This method enables high pixel-depth watermark embedding, while maintaining high image quality. This technique is capable of embedding watermarks with pixel depths up to 3 bits without causing prominent degradation to the image quality. To achieve high image quality, the parallel oriented high-efficient direct binary search (DBS) halftoning is selected to be integrated with the proposed orientation modulation (OM) method. The OM method utilizes different halftone texture orientations to carry different watermark data. In the decoder, the least-mean-square-trained filters are applied for feature extraction from watermarked images in the frequency domain, and the naïve Bayes classifier is used to analyze the extracted features and ultimately to decode the watermark data. Experimental results show that the DBS-based OM encoding method maintains a high degree of image quality and realizes the processing efficiency and robustness to be adapted in printing applications.

Cyclin-dependent kinase 4 is a novel target in micoRNA-195-mediated cell cycle arrest in bladder cancer cells.

miRNAs are a class of small-noncoding RNAs capable of negatively regulating gene expression. Here, we found that miR-195 is down-regulated in human bladder cancer tissue versus normal adjacent tissue. To better characterize the role of miR-195 in bladder cancer, we conducted gain of function analysis by transfecting bladder cancer cell line T24 with chemically synthesized miR-195 mimic. We identified CDK4, an early G1 cell cycle regulator, as a novel target of miR-195. Selective over-expression of miR-195 could induce G1-phase arrest in T24 cells, and subsequently inhibit T24 cell growth. These findings indicate that miR-195 could be a potential tumor suppressor in bladder cancer.