Publications by authors named "Ni Qin"

Purpose: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has shown feasibility in evaluating cognitive function and brain functional connectivity (FC). Therefore, this fNIRS study aimed to develop a screening method for subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) based on resting-state prefrontal FC and neuropsychological tests via machine learning.

Methods: Functional connectivity data measured by fNIRS were collected from 55 normal controls (NCs), 80 SCD individuals, and 111 MCI individuals.

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A cell's global physical state is characterized by its volume and dry mass. The ratio of cell mass to volume is the cell mass density (CMD), which is also a measure of macromolecular crowding and concentrations of all proteins. Using the Fluorescence eXclusion method (FXm) and Quantitative Phase Microscopy (QPM), we investigate CMD dynamics after exposure to sudden media osmolarity change.

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The timing of amniotomy after the Foley balloon catheter removal is crucial for successful labor induction. This study aimed to assess the effects of the Bishop score on the timing of amniotomy in patients undergoing labor induction after the Foley balloon catheter removal. This was a retrospective cohort study based on electronic medical records.

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Article Synopsis
  • Mammalian cells adapt to environmental changes by adjusting water and ion fluxes, which affects cell volume, and this process is influenced by actomyosin activity.
  • Elevated actomyosin activity leads to an increase in cell volume in normal-like cells through its interaction with the sodium-hydrogen exchanger isoform 1 (NHE1), resulting in a secondary volume increase after an initial decrease during hypotonic stress.
  • This process involves mechanical deformation of the nucleus, causing changes in gene expression and growth inhibition, and is often absent in cancer cells or those with less active actomyosin, indicating that actomyosin serves more as a sensor of environmental conditions rather than just a force generator.
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Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the use of machine learning methodologies in the diagnosis of endometriosis (EM).

Methods: This study included a total of 106 patients with EM and 203 patients with non-EM conditions (like simple cysts and simple uterine fibroids), all admitted to the Shunyi Women's and Children's Hospital of Beijing Children's Hospital between January 2017 and September 2022. All participants were free of comorbidities and their diagnoses were confirmed via postoperative pathology.

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The development of piezoelectrics with high catalytic activity to address environmental pollution and energy shortage has long been pursued. In this work, for the first time, a "three-birds-with-one-stone" strategy is proposed to design high-activity piezocatalysts. Interestingly, we achieved ultrathin, highly exposed polar facets and ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transitions in BaSrTiO nanosheets simultaneously.

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An influx of water molecules can help immune cells called neutrophils to move to where they are needed in the body.

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Article Synopsis
  • Mammalian cells can quickly adjust to changes in osmotic and hydrostatic pressure by altering their volume through water and ion movement, but the role of the cytoskeleton in this process is not fully understood.
  • Researchers identified a mechanism where the cytoskeleton activates ion transporters, specifically through the actomyosin network, to regulate cell volume after hypotonic stress.
  • Unlike normal cells, certain cancer cell lines do not exhibit this secondary volume increase, indicating a significant difference in how volume regulation and mechanotransduction occurs in healthy versus cancerous cells.
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Piezocatalytic technology with controllable generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is emerging in wastewater treatment. This study employed the synergetic regulation of functional surface and phase interface modification to effectively accelerate redox reaction in piezocatalytic process. We anchored the conductive polydopamine (PDA) onto BiWO (BWO) using template method, in which a small amount of Bi precipitation to induce partial phase transition of BWO from tetragonal to orthorhombic (t/o) in virtue of simple calcination.

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Stress fibers are actomyosin bundles that regulate cellular mechanosensation and force transduction. Interacting with the extracellular matrix through focal adhesion complexes, stress fibers are highly dynamic structures regulated by myosin motors and crosslinking proteins. Under external mechanical stimuli such as tensile forces, the stress fiber remodels its architecture to adapt to external cues, displaying properties of viscoelastic materials.

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Background: Immunoregulation plays pivotal roles during chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Studies have shown that Interleukin (IL)-35 is an important molecule associated with inadequate immune response against HBV. However, the mechanisms involved in the up-regulation of IL-35 expression during persistent HBV infection remain unknown.

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The piezo-/photocatalytic effects of ZnO have been in the limelight because of their great potential in environmental remediation and energy conversion. However, the poor recyclability of the suspended catalysts can cause inevitable secondary pollution, which is one of the major issues that limit the practical application of these materials. To address this problem, a magnetically retrievable FeO@SiO@ZnO nanocomposite was designed and successfully synthesized by multi-step reactions.

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Objective: is a common multidrug-resistant pathogen that jeopardizes the health of hospitalized patients. We aimed to study the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of carbapenem-resistant (CRKP) isolates from a hospital in Beijing.

Methods: Twenty-four CRKP clinical isolates were collected within a half-year to investigate antimicrobial resistance and genomic characteristics.

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In most eukaryotic cells, actin filaments assemble into a shell-like actin cortex under the plasma membrane, controlling cellular morphology, mechanics, and signaling. The actin cortex is highly polymorphic, adopting diverse forms such as the ring-like structures found in podosomes, axonal rings, and immune synapses. The biophysical principles that underlie the formation of actin rings and cortices remain unknown.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cells in different environments can behave unexpectedly, as the study finds that they migrate faster in high viscosity conditions, which usually would slow them down.
  • The research highlights that both actin dynamics and ion channel activity play key roles in this increased cell speed.
  • It further indicates that the interaction between cytoplasmic actin and water dynamics, influenced by ion channels and calcium activity, is crucial for this phenomenon.
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Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) belongs to the subfamily Gammaherpesvirinae and was the first human tumor virus to be discovered. The global rate of EBV infection in adults exceeds 90%. EBV can participate in the regulation of multiple genes and signal pathways through its latency genes.

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Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization in many different contexts, including during directed cell migration and over the course of the cell cycle, when cortical actin can transition between different configurations such as open patched meshworks, homogeneous distributions, and aligned bundles. Several types of myosin motor proteins, characterized by different kinetic parameters, have been involved in this reorganization of actin filaments.

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Point defects in piezoelectric semiconductors play a significant role in regulating the piezocatalytic performance. However, the role of metal vacancies in piezocatalysis has been less explored than that of oxygen vacancies. Herein, BiWO (BWO) nanosheets with tunable Bi defects were synthesized using an ion exchange method.

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Piezocatalysis is one of the green and promising catalytic technologies for the degradation of organic pollutants. Surface modifications such as exposed facet engineering and surface decoration of nanoparticles (NPs) are simple but useful enhancement strategies for a catalytic system. However, the synergistic effect and mechanism of facet engineering and dual-cocatalyst decoration on piezocatalytic activity are still ambiguous and more investigations are expected.

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Existing wearable systems that use G-sensors to identify daily activities have been widely applied for medical, sports and military applications, while body temperature as an obvious physical characteristic that has rarely been considered in the system design and relative applications of HAR. In the context of the normalization of COVID-19, the prevention and control of the epidemic has become a top priority. Temperature monitoring plays an important role in the preliminary screening of the population for fever.

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To reveal the impact of dietary fiber (DF) on the bile acid (BA) profiles of fish, yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) were fed a diet containing 300 g kg dextrin (CON diet, control) or pectin (a type of soluble DF, PEC diet) for 7 days, and then the BA profiles were analyzed by UHPLC-MS/MS. A total of 26 individuals of BAs were detected in the fish body, with 8, 10, 14, and 22 individuals of BAs detected in the liver, serum, bile, and hindgut digesta, respectively. The conjugated BAs (CBAs) of fish were dominated by taurine CBAs (TCBAs).

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Hepatitis B virus (HBV) can hijack the host bile acids (BAs) metabolic pathway during infection in cell and animal models. Additionally, microbiome was known to play critical role in the enterohepatic cycle of BAs. However, the impact of HBV infection and associated gut microbiota on the BA metabolism in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients is unknown.

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It is of great significance to understand the role of carrier in piezocatalysis of composites by studying the separation mode of carriers under dynamic polarization field. Herein, the separation and migration pathways of carriers under piezoelectric field are investigated by synthesizing heterojunctions with BiWO (BWO) nanosheets grown vertically on g-CN (CN) coated ZnO nanorods and directly on ZnO. Compared with the photocatalysis, the piezocatalytic efficiency of Rhodamine B (RhB) by BWO/ZnO is significantly increased to 0.

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β- and γ-cytoplasmic actins are ubiquitously expressed in every cell type and are nearly identical at the amino acid level but play vastly different roles in vivo. Their essential roles in embryogenesis and mesenchymal cell migration critically depend on the nucleotide sequences of their genes, rather than their amino acid sequences; however, it is unclear which gene elements underlie this effect. Here we address the specific role of the coding sequence in β- and γ-cytoplasmic actins' intracellular functions, using stable polyclonal populations of immortalized mouse embryonic fibroblasts with exogenously expressed actin isoforms and their 'codon-switched' variants.

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Developing new techniques that can synthesize one-dimensional piezoelectric materials on a large scale is of great significance for boosting piezocatalytic applications. In this work, we proposed a high-efficiency template hydrothermal method for large-scale synthesis of piezoelectric NaBiTiO (NBT) nanowires. By ion-exchange with Bi, NaTiO template nanowires can be easily and entirely transformed to NBT.

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