[Research progress of the effect of "gut-immune" axis on bone homeostasis].

Bone homeostasis is based on the dynamic balance of bone formation and bone resorption. An imbalance in bone homeostasis is a major contributor to many skeletal diseases, including osteoporosis. Changes in the composition and diversity of the gut microbiota (GM) are supposed to have a significant impact on bone homeostasis and are closely correlated with changes in bone mass and bone microarchitecture. The "gut-immune" axis, which is formed by the interaction between the host intestinal immune system and GM, is essential for maintaining bone homeostasis, as well as regulating the body's immunological response and maintaining immune homeostasis throughout the intestine and body. The article reviews recent advances in the study of GM, the immune system, and their synergistic impact on bone homeostasis.

State-dependent alterations of implicit emotional dominance during binocular rivalry in subthreshold depression.

Binocular rivalry, a visual perception phenomenon where two or more percepts alternate every few seconds when distinct stimuli are presented to the two eyes, has been reported as a biomarker in several psychiatric disorders. It is unclear whether abnormalities of binocular rivalry in depression could occur when emotional rivaling stimuli are used, and if so, whether an emotional binocular rivalry test could provide a trait-dependent or state-dependent biomarker. In the current study, 34 individuals with subthreshold depression and 31 non-depressed individuals performed a binocular rivalry task associated with implicit emotional processing. Participants were required to report their perceived orientations of the rival gratings in the foreground and to neglect emotional face stimuli in the background. The participants were retested after an approximately 4-month time interval. Compared to the non-depressed group, the subthreshold depression group showed significantly longer perceptual dominance durations of the grating with emotional faces as the background (i.e., implicit emotional dominance) at the initial assessment. However, the abnormality was not found at the follow-up assessment. More importantly, we found smaller changes in depressive severity at the follow-up assessment for individuals displaying longer emotional dominance at the initial assessment than for individuals with weaker emotional dominance. The current emotional binocular rivalry test may provide an objective, state-dependent biomarker for distinguishing individuals with subthreshold depression from non-depressed individuals.

A High-Efficient Reinforcement Learning Approach for Dexterous Manipulation.

Robotic hands have the potential to perform complex tasks in unstructured environments owing to their bionic design, inspired by the most agile biological hand. However, the modeling, planning and control of dexterous hands remain unresolved, open challenges, resulting in the simple movements and relatively clumsy motions of current robotic end effectors. This paper proposed a dynamic model based on generative adversarial architecture to learn the state mode of the dexterous hand, reducing the model's prediction error in long spans. An adaptive trajectory planning kernel was also developed to generate High-Value Area Trajectory (HVAT) data according to the control task and dynamic model, with adaptive trajectory adjustment achieved by changing the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) coefficient and the linear searching coefficient. Furthermore, an improved Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) algorithm is designed by combining maximum entropy value iteration and HVAT value iteration. An experimental platform and simulation program were built to verify the proposed method with two manipulating tasks. The experimental results indicate that the proposed dexterous hand reinforcement learning algorithm has better training efficiency and requires fewer training samples to achieve quite satisfactory learning and control performance.

A 12-Connected [Y4((µ3-OH)4]8+ Cluster-Based Luminescent Metal-Organic Framework for Selective Turn-on Detection of F- in H2O.

Fluoride ion (F-) is one of the most hazardous elements in potable water. Over intake of F- can give rise to dental fluorosis, kidney failure, or DNA damage. As a result, developing affordable, equipment-free and credible approaches for F- detection is an important task. In this work, a new three dimensional rare earth cluster-based metal-organic framework assembled from lanthanide Y(III) ion, and a linear multifunctional ligand 3-nitro-4,4'-biphenyldicarboxylic acid, formulated as {[Y(µ3-OH)]4[Y(µ3-OH)(µ2-H2O)0.25(H2O)0.5]4[µ4-nba]8}n (1), where H2nba = 3-nitro-4,4'-biphenyldicarboxylic acid, has been hydrothermally synthesized and characterized through infrared spectroscopy (IR), elemental and thermal analysis (EA), power X-ray diffraction (PXRD), and single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) analyses. X-ray diffraction structural analysis revealed that 1 crystallizes in tetragonal system with P4¯21m space group, and features a 3D framework with 1D square 18.07(3)2 Å2 channels running along the [0,0,1] or c-axis direction. The structure of 1 is built up of unusual eight-membered rings formed by two types of {Y4O4} clusters connected to each other via 12 µ4-nba2- and 4 µ3-OH- ligands. Three crystallographic independent Y3+ ions display two coordinated configurations with a seven-coordinated distorted monocapped trigonal-prism (YO7) and an eight-coordinated approximately bicapped trigonal-prism (YO8). 1 is further stabilized through O-H⋯O, O-H⋯N, C-H⋯O, and π⋯π interactions. Topologically, MOF 1 can be simplified as a 12-connected 2-nodal Au4Ho topology with a Schläfli symbol {420·628·818}{43}4 or a 6-connected uninodal pcu topology with a Schläfli symbol {412·63}. The fluorescent sensing application of 1 was investigated to cations and anions in H2O. 1 exhibits good luminescence probing turn-on recognition ability toward F- and with a limit detection concentration of F- down to 14.2 µM in aqueous solution (Kec = 11403 M-1, R2 = 0.99289, σ = 0.0539). The findings here provide a feasible detection platform of LnMOFs for highly sensitive discrimination of F- in aqueous media.

Spontaneous recovery of adaptation aftereffects of natural facial categories.

Adaptation to a natural face attribute such as a happy face can bias the perception of a subsequent face in this dimension such as a neutral face. Such face adaptation aftereffects have been widely found in many natural facial categories. However, how temporally tuned mechanisms could control the temporal dynamics of natural face adaptation aftereffects remains unknown. To address the question, we used a deadaptation paradigm to examine whether the spontaneous recovery of natural facial aftereffects would emerge in four natural facial categories including variable categories (emotional expressions in Experiment 1 and eye gaze in Experiment 2) and invariable categories (facial gender in Experiment 3 and facial identity in Experiment 4). In the deadaptation paradigm, participants adapted to a face with an extreme attribute (such as a 100% angry face in Experiment 1) for a relatively long duration, and then deadapted to a face with an opposite extreme attribute (such as a 100% happy face in Experiment 1) for a relatively short duration. The time courses of face adaptation aftereffects were measured using a top-up manner. Deadaptation only masked the effects of initial longer-lasting adaptation, and the spontaneous recovery of adaptation aftereffects was observed at the post-test stage for all four natural facial categories. These results likely indicate that the temporal dynamics of adaptation aftereffects of natural facial categories may be controlled by multiple temporally tuned mechanisms.

Working Memory Load Effects on the Tilt Aftereffect.

Prolonged exposure to an oriented stimulus causes a subsequent test stimulus to be perceived as tilted in the opposite direction, a phenomenon referred to as the tilt aftereffect (TAE). Previous studies have demonstrated that high-level cognitive functions such as attention can modulate the TAE, which is generally well-known as a low-level perceptual process. However, it is unclear whether working memory load, another high-level cognitive function, could modulate the TAE. To address this issue, here we developed a new paradigm by combining a working memory load task with a TAE task. Participants firstly remembered a stream of digits (Experiment 1) or four color-shape conjunctions (Experiment 2) under high/low load conditions, and then recognized the probe stimuli (digits or a color-shape conjunction), which were presented at the center of an adapting grating. After the recognition task (i.e., the adaptation stage), participants performed an orientation judgment task to measure their TAEs. The result of Experiment 1, where the load stimuli were digits, showed that the magnitude of the TAEs were reduced under the condition of the high working memory load compared to that of the low working memory load. However, we failed to replicate the finding in Experiment 2, where the load stimuli were color-shape conjunctions. Together, our two experiments provided mixed evidence regarding the working memory load effects on the TAE and further replications are needed in future work.

Hydrogenation of Citral to Citronellal Catalyzed by Waste Fluid Catalytic Cracking Catalyst Supported Nickel.

In this paper, a waste fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) catalyst is used as a carrier to prepare a supported non-noble metal nickel catalyst (Ni/wFCC), which is applied to the selective hydrogenation of citral to citronellal. X-ray powder diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy were used to analyze the structural characteristics of the Ni-loaded sample. The catalyst after loading Ni still maintained a good zeolite structure, and the surface impurities were reduced. The effect of reaction conditions on the Ni/wFCC-catalyzed hydrogenation of citral to citronellal was investigated, and the optimal reaction conditions were obtained as follows: a Ni loading of 20 wt %, a catalyst amount of 5.6%, a hydrogenation temperature of 180 °C, a hydrogenation time of 90 min, and a hydrogenation pressure of 3.0 MPa. Under these conditions, the conversion of citral and selectivity of citronellal were 98.5 and 86.6%, respectively, indicating that the Ni/wFCC catalyst had strong catalytic activity and selectivity. This research provided new ideas for the recycling of waste FCC catalysts and industrial synthesis of citronellal.

Analysis of clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of 95 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a retrospective analysis.

BACKGROUND: Since December 2019, 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia emerged in Wuhan city and rapidly spread throughout China and even the world. We sought to analyse the clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of some cases with 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia . METHODS: In this retrospective study, we extracted the data on 95 patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan Xinzhou District People's Hospital from January 16th to February 25th, 2020. Cases were confirmed by real-time RT-PCR and abnormal radiologic findings. Outcomes were followed up until March 2th, 2020. RESULTS: Higher temperature, blood leukocyte count, neutrophil count, neutrophil percentage, C-reactive protein level, D-dimer level, alanine aminotransferase activity, aspartate aminotransferase activity, α - hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase activity, lactate dehydrogenase activity and creatine kinase activity were related to severe 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia and composite endpoint, and so were lower lymphocyte count, lymphocyte percentage and total protein level. Age below 40 or above 60 years old, male, higher Creatinine level, and lower platelet count also seemed related to severe 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia and composite endpoint, however the P values were greater than 0.05, which mean under the same condition studies of larger samples are needed in the future. CONCLUSION: Multiple factors were related to severe 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia and composite endpoint, and more related studies are needed in the future.

Clinical and Prognostic Significance of ANCCA in Squamous Cell Lung Carcinoma Patients.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: AAA+ nuclear coregulatory cancer associated (ANCCA) has been demonstrated as playing important roles in diverse biological processes including tumorigenesis. However, the clinical and prognostic significance of ANCCA in squamous cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) patients is still unknown. The aim of this study is to identify the role of ANCCA in SCLC patients. METHODS: ANCCA mRNA and protein expressions were detected in SCLC tissues and cell lines by real-time PCR and Western blot. We examined the ANCCA protein expression in 152 SCLC samples by immunohistochemistry and analyzed the association between the expression of ANCCA protein and clinicopathological characteristics of SCLC patients. RESULTS: ANCCA mRNA and protein expression are increased in SCLC tissues and cell lines. Moreover, ANCCA protein overexpression was associated with differentiated degree, clinical stage, lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis. In uni- and multivariate analyses, ANCCA protein overexpression was an independent poor prognostic factor for SCLC patients. CONCLUSIONS: ANCCA act as a potential biomarker for therapeutic strategy and prognostic prediction for SCLC.