Publications by authors named "Ai H"

Evidence is accumulating that pattern recognition receptor (PRR) C-type lectins (CTL) play essential roles in recognition of pathogens. TcCTL14 (accession no. TC00871) contains the most domains among all CTL of Tribolium castaneum.

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This paper investigates the long-run effects of PM exposure in utero on the mental health of adolescents. Using nationally representative survey data from China, we instrument the PM exposure with wind speed to tackle the possible endogeneity problem. Our results show that mothers' PM exposure during their pregnancy negatively affects the mental health of their children aged between 10 and 15 years.

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Methylmercury (MeHg) is a notorious neurotoxin, and its production and degradation in the environment are mainly driven by microorganisms. A variety of microbial MeHg producers carrying the gene pair and degraders carrying the gene have been separately reported in recent studies. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the simultaneous investigation of the diversities of microbial MeHg producers and degraders in a given habitat, and no studies have been performed to explore to what extent these two contrasting microbial groups correlate with MeHg accumulation in the habitat of interest.

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For effective utilization of corncob residue to realize green circular production, using composting to obtain a high-quality and low-cost biomass fertilizer has become a very important transformation avenue. In this paper, two novel phosphorus/potassium-degradation bacterial strains were isolated from tobacco straw and identified as Bacillus aerophilus SD-1/Bacillus altitudinis SD-3 (abbreviated as SD-1/SD-3). These identified two novel bacteria SD-1/SD-3 show that the soluble phosphorus content of SD-1/SD-3 reached 360.

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Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are considered to play critical roles in intercellular communications during normal and pathological processes since they are enriched with miRNAs and other signal molecules. In bone remodeling, osteoclasts generate large amounts of sEVs. However, there is very few research studying whether and how osteoclast-derived sEVs (OC-sEVs) affect surrounding cells.

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Disturbed endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response driven by the excessive lipid accumulation in the liver is a characteristic feature in the pathogenesis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Restoring metabolic homeostasis by targeting ER stress is a potentially therapeutic strategy for NAFLD. Here we aim to identify novel proteins or pathways involved in regulating ER stress response and therapeutic targets for alleviating NAFLD.

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Diagnosis of sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastasis and its status are key parameters for predicting overall disease prognosis. In this work, Pluronic F127 stabilized ICG/tetra(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin-Mn(III) (TCPP(Mn)) nanoparticles (F127-ICG/Mn NPs) as fluorescent/magnetic resonance (FL/MR) dual-modality probes were prepared. The application of F127-ICG/Mn NPs in SLN imaging was mainly evaluated from two perspectives: the difference between the normal LN and the metastatic SLN and the difference between micrometastasis and macrometastasis.

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Purpose: To explore values of intra- and peritumoral CT-based radiomics for predicting recurrence in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) patients.

Methods: This study enrolled 110 HGSOC patients from our hospital between Aug 2017 and Apr 2021. All patients underwent contrast-enhanced CT scans before treatment.

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Smartphone technology has been recently applied for biomedical image acquisition and data analysis due to its high-quality imaging capability, and flexibility to customize multi-purpose apps. In this work, we developed and characterized a smartphone-microfluidic fluorescence imaging system for studying the physiology of pancreatic islets. We further evaluated the system capability by performing real-time fluorescence imaging on mouse islets labeled with either chemical fluorescence dyes or genetically encoded fluorescent protein indicators (GEFPIs).

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Background: Oral ulcer (OU) is a common oral mucosal disease manifested with obvious pain. In some studies, the efficacy of acupuncture in OU has been confirmed, but systematic reviews and meta-analyses for them are lacking. Our aim is to evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of OU.

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Purpose: This study aimed to propose a novel deep-learning method for automatic sleep apneic event detection and thus to estimate the apnea hypopnea index (AHI) and identify obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in an event-by-event manner solely based on sleep sounds obtained by a noncontact audio recorder.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of participants with habitual snoring or heavy breathing sounds during sleep to train and test a deep convolutional neural network named OSAnet for the detection of OSA based on sleep sounds. Polysomnography (PSG) was conducted, and sleep sounds were recorded simultaneously in a regular room without noise attenuation.

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Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the most prevalent microvascular complications caused by diabetes mellitus. Previous studies demonstrate that microvascular endothelial inflammation caused by chronic hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia plays a key role in the pathogenesis of DR. However, the detailed mechanisms on how endothelial inflammation contributes to DR are not fully understood.

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Background: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a modifiable risk factor for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), with high prevalence but low diagnostic rates. Therefore, it is particularly important to develop strategies for better screening for OSA in newly admitted ACS patients.

Methods: From March 2017 to October 2019, consecutive eligible patients with ACS underwent cardiorespiratory polygraphy during hospitalization.

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Background: Anhedonia is a key symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric diseases. The neural basis of anhedonia has been widely examined, yet the interindividual variability in neuroimaging biomarkers underlying individual-specific symptom severity is not well understood.

Methods: To establish an individualized prediction model of anhedonia, we applied connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) to whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity profiles of MDD patients.

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Influenza viruses are deadly respiratory pathogens of special importance due to their long history of global pandemics. During influenza virus infections, the host responds by producing interferons, which activate interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) inside target cells. One of these ISGs is inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS).

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Nanoparticle based imaging agents (NIAs) have been intensively explored in bench studies. Unfortunately, only a few cases have made their ways to clinical translation. In this review, clinical trials of NIAs were investigated for understanding possible barriers behind that.

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Pimarane Diterpenes from Fungi.

Pharmaceuticals (Basel)

October 2022

Pimarane diterpenes are a kind of tricyclic diterpene, generally isolated from plant and fungi. In nature, fungi distribute widely and there are nearly two to three million species. They provide many secondary metabolites, including pimarane diterpenes, with novel skeletons and bioactivities.

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Grain contaminated by cadmium (Cd) has become a serious food security problem, and it is necessary to determine and evaluate the toxic effect and defense mechanism of long-term heavy metal pollution in grain. In order to evaluate the effects of long-term heavy metal Cd stress on the stored grain pests, were fed with an artificial diet supplemented with different concentrations of Cd (0, 5, 10, 20 mg/kg). The development, fecundity and detoxification enzymes of were analyzed and observed.

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Sugar plays an important role in regulating the flowering of plants. However, studies of genes related to flowering regulation by the sugar pathway of Brassicaceae plants are scarce. In this study, we performed a comprehensive comparative genomics analysis of the flowering genes in the sugar pathway from seven members of the Brassicaceae, including: , , , , , , and .

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Purpose: To evaluate the potential of subregional radiomics as a novel tumor marker in predicting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status and response to EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy in NSCLC patients with brain metastasis (BM).

Materials And Methods: We included 230 patients from center 1, and 80 patients were included from center 2 to form a primary and external validation cohort, respectively. Patients underwent contrast-enhanced T1-weighted and T2-weighted MRI scans before treatment.

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Background: This study aimed to observe the correlation between renal cortical blood perfusion (CBP) parameters and BP response in patients with severe renal artery stenosis (RAS) who underwent stenting.

Methods: This was a single-center retrospective cohort study. A total of 164 patients with unilateral severe RAS after successful percutaneous transluminal renal artery stenting in Beijing Hospital from October 2017 to December 2020 were included.

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Background: Few studies have evaluated whether acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients with relatively low blood pressure benefit from early ACEI/ARB use in the era of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Objectives: This study evaluated the associations of ACEI/ARB use within 24 h of admission with in-hospital outcomes among AMI patients with SBP < 100 mmHg and undergoing PCI.

Methods: This study was based on the Improving Care for Cardiovascular Disease in China-ACS project, a collaborative registry and quality improvement project of the American Heart Association and the Chinese Society of Cardiology.

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Aiming at the common problems, such as noise pollution, low contrast, and color distortion in underwater images, and the characteristics of holothurian recognition, such as morphological ambiguity, high similarity with the background, and coexistence of special ecological scenes, this paper proposes an underwater holothurian target-detection algorithm (FA-CenterNet), based on improved CenterNet and scene feature fusion. First, to reduce the model's occupancy of embedded device resources, we use EfficientNet-B3 as the backbone network to reduce the model's Params and FLOPs. At the same time, EfficientNet-B3 increases the depth and width of the model, which improves the accuracy of the model.

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