Anti-EMT and anti-fibrosis effects of protocatechuic aldehyde in renal proximal tubular cells and the unilateral ureteral obstruction animal model.

Context: Protocatechuic aldehyde (PCA) is a natural product that has various benefits for fibrosis.

Objective: This study evaluated the effects of PCA on renal fibrosis.

Materials And Methods: Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) was induced by 20 ng/mL transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), followed by treatment with 1 and 5 μM PCA, in the rat renal proximal tubular cell line NRK-52E.

PMMA Application in Piezo Actuation Jet for Dissipating Heat of Electronic Devices.

The present study utilizes an acrylic (PMMA) plate with circular piezoelectric ceramics (PC) as an actuator to design and investigate five different types of piezo actuation jets (PAJs) with operating conditions. The results show that the heat transfer coefficient of a device of PAJ is 200% greater than that of a traditional rotary fan when PAJ is placed at the proper distance of 10 to 20 mm from the heat source, avoiding the suck back of surrounding fluids. The cooling effect of these five PAJs was calculated by employing the thermal analysis method and the convection thermal resistance of the optimal PAJ can be reduced by about 36%, while the voltage frequency, wind speed, and noise were all positively correlated.

Evaluation of the Therapeutic Effects of Protocatechuic Aldehyde in Diabetic Nephropathy.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most severe chronic kidney diseases in diabetes and is the main cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Protocatechuic aldehyde (PCA) is a natural product with a variety of effects on pulmonary fibrosis. In this study, we examined the effects of PCA in C57BL/KS db/db male mice.

To cut or not to cut? Assessing the modular structure of brain networks.

A wealth of methods has been developed to identify natural divisions of brain networks into groups or modules, with one of the most prominent being modularity. Compared with the popularity of methods to detect community structure, only a few methods exist to statistically control for spurious modules, relying almost exclusively on resampling techniques. It is well known that even random networks can exhibit high modularity because of incidental concentration of edges, even though they have no underlying organizational structure.

Frontal information flow and connectivity in psychopathy.

Despite accumulating evidence of structural deficits in individuals with psychopathy, especially in frontal regions, our understanding of systems-level disturbances in cortical networks remains limited. We applied novel graph theory-based methods to assess information flow and connectivity based on cortical thickness measures in 55 individuals with psychopathy and 47 normal controls. Compared with controls, the psychopathy group showed significantly altered interregional connectivity patterns.

Modularity-based graph partitioning using conditional expected models.

Modularity-based partitioning methods divide networks into modules by comparing their structure against random networks conditioned to have the same number of nodes, edges, and degree distribution. We propose a novel way to measure modularity and divide graphs, based on conditional probabilities of the edge strength of random networks. We provide closed-form solutions for the expected strength of an edge when it is conditioned on the degrees of the two neighboring nodes, or alternatively on the degrees of all nodes comprising the network.