Publications by authors named "Weihua He"
Purpose: Spontaneous abortion (SA) remains a clinical challenge in early pregnancy. It has been reported that endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) is implicated in pregnancy-related complications. However, the precise mechanistic role of ERS in SA pathogenesis remains elusive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEfficient interfacial energy conversion and rapid charge transfer are crucial for application-oriented microbial electrochemical systems (MES) and depend on affordable high-performance anodes. Herein, hierarchically porous 3D anodes with controlled millimeter-scale macropores (1-2 mm) were fabricated via carbonization of phenolic foam embedded with expanded polystyrene (EPS) sacrificial templates. Optimizing EPS loading (4 wt%) and pore-sizes yielded anode L-4M, exhibiting appropriate hydrophilicity (contact angle: 60.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The simultaneous presence of multiple veterinary drug residues in a single sample poses a significant challenge for food safety analysis. Compared with traditional single-target detection, multiplex detection can not only provide richer sample information to raise the detection efficiency and reduce the possibility of false positives and omissions, but also decrease sample volume, shorten detection time, and lower costs. The luminance of aggregation-induced emission fluorescent microspheres (AIEFMs) can be enhanced by loading more fluorophores.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDirect interspecies electron transfer (DIET) enhances anaerobic digestion by facilitating electron exchange between electroactive bacteria and methanogenic archaea. While Geobacter species are recognized for donating electrons to methanogens via DIET, they are rarely detected in mixed microbial communities. This study examined various non-electrode biological carriers (zeolite, carbon cloth, activated carbon and biochar) to promote Geobacter cultivation under anaerobic conditions and identify pivotal factors influencing their symbiosis with methanogens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImaging flow cytometry allows image-activated cell sorting (IACS) with enhanced feature dimensions in cellular morphology, structure, and composition. However, existing IACS frameworks suffer from the challenges of 3D information loss and processing latency dilemma in real-time sorting operation. Herein, we establish a neuromorphic-enabled video-activated cell sorter (NEVACS) framework, designed to achieve high-dimensional spatiotemporal characterization content alongside high-throughput sorting of particles in wide field of view.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvent-Assisted Recurrent Network for Arbitrary-Temporal-Scale Blurry Image Unfolding.
IEEE Trans Neural Netw Learn Syst
October 2024
Article Synopsis
- Recovering clear images from motion-blurred photos is hard, and existing methods are limited to a fixed number of frames after training.
- This study introduces a new framework that uses event camera technology to recover sharp frames at any time interval.
- The proposed method, which incorporates using a bi-directional recurrent network to process events and blurry image features, shows improved performance in generating sharp sequences compared to current techniques.
Event-Assisted Blurriness Representation Learning for Blurry Image Unfolding.
IEEE Trans Image Process
October 2024
Article Synopsis
- - The study focuses on improving blurry image deblurring by using event cameras, which are bio-inspired visual sensors, to recover sharp frames from blurry images.
- - It critiques existing methods that overlook the importance of blur modeling and proposes a new approach that uses an event-assisted blurriness encoder to implicitly model blur in images.
- - The method integrates blurriness information into a base image unfolding network using novel modulation and aggregation techniques, demonstrating superior performance in experiments compared to current state-of-the-art methods on various datasets.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers in AI are currently focused on creating larger and deeper neural networks, referred to as the "big model with external complexity" approach.
- The text argues for a different approach called "small model with internal complexity," which aims to enhance neuron properties for more efficient AI models.
- An example provided is the Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) network, which shows that a network with complex internal structures can perform similarly to a larger and simpler network like the leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) model.
To date, dozens of pilot-scale microbial fuel cell (MFC) devices have been successfully developed worldwide for treating various types of wastewater. The availability and configurations of separators are determining factors for the economic feasibility, efficiency, sustainability, and operability of these devices. Thus, the concomitant advances between the separators and pilot-scale MFC configurations deserve further clarification.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are brain-inspired models that can process information in a way that mimics how our brain works, potentially offering a low-power alternative to traditional artificial neural networks (ANNs).
- Current SNN models struggle with performance and memory usage in pixel-level semantic segmentation tasks, which has led to the development of the multi-scale and full spike segmentation network (MFS-Seg).
- The MFS-Seg uses an efficient fully-spike residual block that tackles representation challenges and reduces memory and energy consumption, achieving comparable results to mainstream networks like UNet while using significantly fewer parameters.
Article Synopsis
- * This study investigates how T-2 and HT-2 affect porcine intestinal epithelial cells, focusing on cell viability, inflammation, and protein expression related to cell junctions.
- * Findings reveal that both toxins decrease cell viability and tight junction protein expression, with combined exposure having a more severe impact, suggesting that co-contamination poses significant risks to intestinal health in pigs.
Article Synopsis
- * The study presents a new immunochromatographic assay (ICA) that enhances sensitivity by using a turn-on signal output instead of the traditional turn-off mode, significantly lowering the limit of detection (LOD) for AFM1.
- * A novel quenching probe made from gold (Au) and polydopamine (PDA) combined with a highly efficient fluorescence microsphere improves the overall detection capabilities, achieving a 53.4-fold increase in sensitivity for AFM1 detection at levels as low as 0.9 pg/m
Article Synopsis
- Porous anodes enhance microbial electrochemical systems by providing a larger surface area for electroactive bacteria, leading to improved performance, especially with larger pore sizes.* -
- The study developed multilayer anodes with varying pore diameters to analyze how pore size and depth influence the performance and biofilm detection, revealing that larger pores yield higher power densities.* -
- Findings showed that electricigens can colonize deeper into larger pores, with the biofilm thickness and current output affected by pore depth, while Geobacter sp. was the dominant bacteria, contributing significantly to current production in outer biofilm layers.*
Article Synopsis
- Intrinsic biophysical characteristics like mechanical and electrical properties serve as important label-free biomarkers for characterizing single cells, but relying solely on one type of property is insufficient for accurate identification.
- This research proposes a new impedance-based multimodal electrical-mechanical flow cytometry framework that measures various properties of single cells, such as Young's modulus and cytoplasm conductivity, in real-time.
- The framework demonstrated high classification accuracy (93.4% for different cancer cell types and 95.1% for cytoskeleton-altered cells), suggesting it enhances the understanding of cell differences without the need for labels.
Article Synopsis
- Lateral flow assays (LFAs) are commonly used for screening but have limitations in detection speed and sensitivity due to their traditional design.
- This study presents a new smartphone-integrated LFA (sLFA) using a chrysanthemum-like Au@polydopamine (AuNC@PDA) that can analyze up to 64 samples in under 2 minutes.
- The new sLFA shows a significantly improved sensitivity for detecting enrofloxacin (ENR) in milk, with detection limits 5 to 6 times better than conventional methods.
Graphite-phase carbon nitride (g-CN) has shown great potential for antibiotic wastewater treatment due to its unique electronic structure and corresponding to visible light. In this study, a series of Bi/Ce/g-CN photocatalysts with different doping amount were developed by direct calcination method for Rhodamine B and sulfamethoxazole photocatalytic degradation. The experiment result shows that the photocatalytic performance of Bi/Ce/g-CN catalysts were better than that of single component samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study addresses the issue of limited electron donors in the denitrification process of oligotrophic groundwater, proposing a hybrid system combining a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) with a hydrogen-based membrane biofilm reactor (MBfR) for more efficient treatment.
- This hybrid system effectively prevents pollution from organic waste while maximizing hydrogen use for denitrification reactions, leading to improved performance metrics like increased hydrogen proportion and current density.
- The experimental results show that this MCA-MBfR system achieved a 97.8% nitrate reduction in actual groundwater samples, with certain bacteria, including Thauera and Pannonibacter, playing significant roles in the denitrification process.
Article Synopsis
- Natural biomass, such as cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose, is identified as a cost-effective and abundant resource for creating efficient anodes in microbial electrochemical systems (MES).
- A sustainable method involving freeze-drying and carbonizing these materials yields a strong, cork-like electrode structure and achieves a record power density of 4780 ± 260 mW m for unmodified lignocellulose-based anodes.
- The resulting CLX material promotes the growth of electroactive biofilms and supports a high abundance of Geobacter, making it a promising candidate for optimal electrode performance and controllability.
Article Synopsis
- Recent advances in attention-based Transformers have improved semantic segmentation in computer vision, but low-light conditions still pose challenges.
- Traditional segmentation methods focus on frame-based cameras, which limit their effectiveness in applications like autonomous driving that require fast responses.
- The proposed EvSegFormer utilizes a posterior attention module to enhance performance in event-based segmentation by effectively leveraging event data, achieving state-of-the-art results in relevant datasets.
Article Synopsis
- The Migrating Electric Field-Assisted Electrocoagulation (MEAEC) system utilizes waste flour-derived sponge biochar (SBC) as an efficient adsorption electrode for phosphorus removal from wastewater.
- The SBC electrode achieved an impressive phosphate removal level (0.12 mg/L) in just 200 seconds, demonstrating low energy consumption (0.0058 kWh/m) that is significantly lower than traditional methods.
- The system not only enhanced phosphate removal efficiency but also produced phosphorus flocs with fewer metal impurities, making it a cost-effective solution for treating low phosphorus wastewater.
Trophoblast immune cell interactions are central events in the immune microenvironment at the maternal-fetal interface. Their abnormalities are potential causes of various pregnancy complications, including pre-eclampsia and recurrent spontaneous abortion. Matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) is highly homologous, zinc(II)-containing metalloproteinase involved in altered uterine hemodynamics, closely associated with uterine vascular remodeling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) are gaining attention in biosensor research, particularly with a new strategy using polyethyleneimine (PEI) to enhance the luminescence of TCBPE.
- A one-pot method synthesized copolymer dots (TCBPE-PEI) with a quantum yield of 39.7% and high stability, utilizing the restriction of intramolecular motions to improve fluorescence.
- The TCBPE-PEI showed excellent performance as a fluorescence-quenching sensor for detecting copper (Cu), with a detection range of 10-250 nM and a low limit of 1.1 nM, proving its potential for practical applications.
Article Synopsis
- Microbial electrochemical systems (MES) are innovative wastewater treatment technologies that convert organic pollutants into usable energy and require efficient anodes for their effectiveness.
- A novel 3D anode with millimeter-scale pores (3D-MPA) was created using a low-cost phenolic resin and PMMA template, enhancing microbial colonization and overall efficiency.
- The 3D-MPA-900 variant demonstrated the best performance due to its optimal surface structure, leading to increased power density and current density, making it a strong candidate for future commercial MES applications.*
Article Synopsis
- Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) face challenges like low power density and energy storage, but researchers developed a new carbon material (HPC-A) to improve performance.
- The HPC-A-CC anode significantly boosted power density to 2043.6 mW·m and increased total charge storage by over 34 times compared to a standard carboncloth anode.
- The improved design features a hierarchical porous structure that enhances bacteria's ability to transfer electrons, leading to better electricity generation and consistent biofilm viability.
Deoxynivalenol is one the of most common mycotoxins in cereals and grains and causes a serious health threat to poultry and farm animals. Our previous study found that DON decreased the production performance of laying hens. It has been reported that DON could exert significant toxic effects on the intestinal barrier and microbiota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF