Identification and expression analysis of lncRNAs in rice roots (Oryza sativa L.) under elevated CO concentration and/or cadmium stress.

The gradual rise of CO is one of the global climate changes, Cd stress is also a major abiotic stress factor that affects rice (Oryza sativa L.). The rice seedlings were treated under two CO concentrations and two CdCl concentrations for 7 days (treatments names: 400 ± 20 μmol mol CO and 0 μmol L CdCl concentrations, AC; 400 ± 20 μmol mol CO and 150 μmol L CdCl concentrations, Cd; 800 ± 20 μmol mol CO and 0 μmol L CdCl concentrations, EC; 800 ± 20 μmol mol CO and 150 μmol L CdCl concentrations, EC + Cd).

Fully automatic AI segmentation of oral surgery-related tissues based on cone beam computed tomography images.

Accurate segmentation of oral surgery-related tissues from cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images can significantly accelerate treatment planning and improve surgical accuracy. In this paper, we propose a fully automated tissue segmentation system for dental implant surgery. Specifically, we propose an image preprocessing method based on data distribution histograms, which can adaptively process CBCT images with different parameters.

Pure cellulose nanofiber separator with high ionic conductivity and cycling stability for lithium-ion batteries.

Conventional polyolefin separators are constrained by poor electrolyte wettability, inferior thermal stability, and low ionic conductivity, which seriously restrict their application in high-performance lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Herein, cellulose nanofiber (CNF) as the matrix and tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) as the dispersion medium were used to prepare the pure CNF separators for LIBs by a facile filtration method. The effects of the drying temperature on the pore structure, electrolyte wettability, mechanical properties, thermal stability, and ionic conductivity of the separators were comprehensively investigated.

Effects of Cavity Thickness and Mold Surface Roughness on the Polymer Flow during Micro Injection Molding.

In micro injection molding, the cavity thickness and surface roughness are the main effects factors of polymer flow in the die designing and affect the quality of molded products significantly. In this study, the effects of cavity thickness and roughness of cavity surface were investigated mainly on polymer flow during molding and on the roughness of molded products. The parts were molded in the cavities with the thickness from 0.

Autonomous aspirating robot for removing saliva blood mixed liquid in oral surgery.

Saliva blood mixed liquid (SBML) appears in oral surgery, such as scaling and root planning, and it affects surgical vision and causes discomfort to the patient. However, removing SBML, i.e.

A self-supported sodium alginate composite hydrogel membrane and its performance in filtering heavy metal ions.

A novel self-supported polysaccharide based hydrogel membrane was prepared by adding cellulose nanofiber (CNF) and micron-sized biochar (BC) into sodium alginate (SA) hydrogel with in-situ free water evaporation ("cooking") process and ionic crosslinking, in which the polyethylene glycol (PEG) was used as a pore-forming agent. Herein, CNF can not only enhance the mechanical property of the matrix, but also assist the homogeneous dispersion of BC. As a result, the prepared membrane had a maximum tensile strength of up to 5.

Tissue Recognition Based on Electrical Impedance Classified by Support Vector Machine in Spinal Operation Area.

Objective: One of the major difficulties in spinal surgery is the injury of important tissues caused by tissue misclassification, which is the source of surgical complications. Accurate recognization of the tissues is the key to increase safety and effect as well as to reduce the complications of spinal surgery. The study aimed at tissue recognition in the spinal operation area based on electrical impedance and the boundaries of electrical impedance between cortical bone, cancellous bone, spinal cord, muscle, and nucleus pulposus.

High efficiency blue light-emitting devices based on quantum dots with core-shell structure design and surface modification.

Blue quantum dot (QD) light emitting diode (QLED) developments are far lagging behind the red and green ones as it becomes difficult to balance charge injection and photo stability than the latter. Here, we introduced a combination of a low band energy shell with better surfactants, which largely meet both abovementioned requirements. Our simulation pinpoints that it is the exposed Se on the QD surface, which causes non-radiative relaxations.

A 4arm-PEG macromolecule crosslinked chitosan hydrogels as antibacterial wound dressing.

In order to develop better wound dressings, a novel chitosan hydrogel (Cn-Nm gel) was designed and fabricated by using aldehyde-4-arm polyethylene glycol (4r-PEG-CHO) to crosslink the chitosan dissolved in alkaline solution, amino-4-arm polyethylene glycol (4r-PEG-NH) was chosen as the additive simultaneously. The special dissolution technique and macromolecular crosslinking structure endows the Cn-Nm gels with better performance than that of gels prepared by acid dissolving method with micromolecule crosslinker. First, Cn-Nm gels own strong toughness with 500 kPa tensile strength and 1000% elongation, about 400% swelling ratio and fast water absorption rate.

Reducing the Burn Marks on Injection-Molded Parts by External Gas-Assisted Injection Molding.

A burn mark is a sort of serious surface defect on injection-molded parts. In some cases, it can be difficult to reduce the burn marks by traditional methods. In this study, external gas-assisted injection molding (EGAIM) was introduced to reduce the burn marks, as EGAIM has been reported to reduce the holding pressure.

Spine-transformers: Vertebra labeling and segmentation in arbitrary field-of-view spine CTs via 3D transformers.

In this paper, we address the problem of fully automatic labeling and segmentation of 3D vertebrae in arbitrary Field-Of-View (FOV) CT images. We propose a deep learning-based two-stage solution to tackle these two problems. More specifically, in the first stage, the challenging vertebra labeling problem is solved via a novel transformers-based 3D object detector that views automatic detection of vertebrae in arbitrary FOV CT scans as a one-to-one set prediction problem.

Stereotactic technology for 3D bioprinting: from the perspective of robot mechanism.

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting has been widely applied in the field of biomedical engineering because of its rapidly individualized fabrication and precisely geometric designability. The emerging demand for bioprinted tissues/organs with bio-inspired anisotropic property is stimulating new bioprinting strategies. Stereotactic bioprinting is regarded as a preferable strategy for this purpose, which can perform bioprinting at the target position from any desired orientation in 3D space.

Applications of 3D bioprinting in tissue engineering: advantages, deficiencies, improvements, and future perspectives.

Over the past decade, 3D bioprinting technology has progressed tremendously in the field of tissue engineering in its ability to fabricate individualized biological constructs with precise geometric designability, which offers us the capability to bridge the divergence between engineered tissue constructs and natural tissues. In this work, we first review the current widely used 3D bioprinting approaches, cells, and materials. Next, the updated applications of this technique in tissue engineering, including bone tissue, cartilage tissue, vascular grafts, skin, neural tissue, heart tissue, liver tissue and lung tissue, are briefly introduced.

Warpage Prediction of RHCM Crystalline Parts Based on Multi-Layers.

Warpage is a typical defect for injection-molded parts, especially for crystalline parts molded by rapid heat cycle molding (RHCM). In this paper, a prediction method is proposed for predicting the warpage of crystalline parts molded by the RHCM process. Multi-layer models were established to predict warpage with the same thicknesses as the skin-core structures in the molded parts.

Biopsy Needle System With a Steerable Concentric Tube and Online Monitoring of Electrical Resistivity and Insertion Forces.

Objective: Biopsies are the gold standard for clinical diagnosis. However, a discrepancy between the biopsy sample and target tissue because of misplacement of the biopsy spoon can lead to errors in the diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Thus, correctly determining whether the needle tip is in the tumor is crucial for accurate biopsy results.

A novel fluoroscopy-based robot system for pedicle screw fixation surgery.

Background: Robot-assisted pedicle screw insertion has gained popularity in the spinal surgery field. Due to high cost, these spinal robots are not extensively applied in clinical surgeries. Developing an effective robot system with low cost and high clinical acceptability is one of the future trends.

Tailoring ordered microporous structure of cellulose-based membranes through molecular hydrophobicity design.

Ordered porous polymer membranes can be facilely prepared by breath figures. Previous studies have confirmed that the solidifying of polymer is crucial for the formation of ordered porous structures, which directly depends on the hydrophobicity of polymer. However, it is still unknown how strong hydrophobicity is required.

Hot-electron dynamics in quantum dots manipulated by spin-exchange Auger interactions.

The ability to effectively manipulate non-equilibrium 'hot' carriers could enable novel schemes for highly efficient energy harvesting and interconversion. In the case of semiconductor materials, realization of such hot-carrier schemes is complicated by extremely fast intraband cooling (picosecond to subpicosecond time scales) due to processes such as phonon emission. Here we show that using magnetically doped colloidal semiconductor quantum dots we can achieve extremely fast rates of spin-exchange processes that allow for 'uphill' energy transfer with an energy-gain rate that greatly exceeds the intraband cooling rate.

Preparation and characterization of reinforced starch-based composites with compatibilizer by simple extrusion.

Because of the poor performance of starch-based composites, we prepared the starch-based composites with good mechanical properties by a simple two-step melt-blending extrusion. Glycerol and nano-SiO were firstly introduced into starch to prepare the TPS/nano-SiO composite by the first extrusion, and poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) and the compatibilizers were then incorporated to obtain the improved composites by the second extrusion. The mechanical properties, thermal properties, morphology, and structure of the composites were characterized.

POSS Hybrid Robust Biomass IPN Hydrogels with Temperature Responsiveness.

In order to improve the performance of traditional sodium alginate (SA) hydrogels cross-linked by Ca ions to meet greater application demand, a strategy was designed to structure novel SA-based gels (named OP-PN gels) to achieve both stimulus responsiveness and improved mechanical strength. In this strategy, the SA chains are co-cross-linked by CaCl₂ and cationic octa-ammonium polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (Oa-POSS) particles as the first network, and an organically cross-linked poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPA) network is introduced into the gels as the second network. Several main results are obtained from the synthesis and characterization of the gels.

Multi-object Model-Based Multi-atlas Segmentation Constrained Grid Cut for Automatic Segmentation of Lumbar Vertebrae from CT Images.

In this chapter, we present a multi-object model-based multi-atlas segmentation constrained grid cut method for automatic segmentation of lumbar vertebrae from a given lumbar spinal CT image. More specifically, our automatic lumbar vertebrae segmentation method consists of two steps: affine atlas-target registration-based label fusion and bone-sheetness assisted multi-label grid cut which has the inherent advantage of automatic separation of the five lumbar vertebrae from each other. We evaluate our method on 21 clinical lumbar spinal CT images with the associated manual segmentation and conduct a leave-one-out study.

Epithelioid angiosarcoma of the liver: report of two cases and review of the literature.

Angiosarcoma is a malignant tumor of endothelial origin. Epithelioid angiosarcoma is a subtype of angiosarcoma, in which the malignant endothelial cells have a predominantly epithelioid appearance. So far, few cases of primary hepatic epithelioid andiosarcoma (PHEA) have been described.