Expression and significance of cathepsin C and cathepsin D during pregnancy and Preeclampsia.

Background: Cathepsin C (Cat C) is involved in the inflammatory-immune system and can be degraded by cathepsin D (Cat D). Preeclampsia (PE) and the inflammation-immunity relationship is currently a hot research topic, but there are still few studies. The aim was to investigate the expression and significance of Cat C and D in the serum of nonpregnant women, patients in various stages of pregnancy and patients with PE, and in the placenta of patients with normal pregnancy and PE.

Use of Artificial Intelligence Methods for Predicting the Strength of Recycled Aggregate Concrete and the Influence of Raw Ingredients.

Cracking is one of the main problems in concrete structures and is affected by various parameters. The step-by-step laboratory method, which includes casting specimens, curing for a certain period, and testing, remains a source of worry in terms of cost and time. Novel machine learning methods for anticipating the behavior of raw materials on the ultimate output of concrete are being introduced to address the difficulties outlined above such as the excessive consumption of time and money.

Single-shot phase retrieval based on beam splitting.

A kind of beam-splitting-based single-shot phase retrieval is proposed, where the transmitted field of a sample to be observed is diffracted into many replicas by a Dammann grating and then incident on a weakly scattering phase plate with a known structure, and the exiting beams propagate roughly along their original directions and form a diffraction pattern array on the detector. All sub-diffraction patterns isolated with each other were recorded with a single measurement, and the complex amplitude of the radiation incident on the grating and accordingly transmitted from the sample can be iteratively reconstructed from the recorded diffraction pattern array. Since the weakly scattering plate is accurately measured in advance, fast convergence and high accuracy can be achieved with a small number of sub-diffraction patterns.

Ptycholographic iterative engine with self-positioned scanning illumination.

A special optical alignment is adopted and corresponding reconstruction algorithm is developed to reduce the reconstruction error induced by the hysteresis or backlash error of the translation stage in Ptychographical Iterative Engine (PIE) imaging with weak scattering specimen. In this suggested method, the positions of the scanning probe are determined directly from the recorded diffraction patterns rather than from the readout of the stage meter. This method not only remarkably improves the reconstruction quality, but also completely lowers the dependency of PIE on the device accuracy and accordingly enhances its feasibility for many applications with weak scattering specimen.