Automatic measurement of lower limb alignment in portable devices based on deep learning for knee osteoarthritis.

Background: For knee osteoarthritis patients, analyzing alignment of lower limbs is essential for therapy, which is currently measured from standing long-leg radiographs of anteroposterior X-ray (LLR) manually. To address the time wasting, poor reproducibility and inconvenience of use caused by existing methods, we present an automated measurement model in portable devices for assessing knee alignment from LLRs.

Method: We created a model and trained it with 837 conforming LLRs, and tested it using 204 LLRs without duplicates in a portable device.

Inhibiting specificity protein 1 attenuated sevoflurane-induced mitochondrial stress and promoted autophagy in hippocampal neurons through PI3K/Akt/mTOR and α7-nAChR signaling.

Sevoflurane, a commonly used anesthetic in surgery, is considered as an inducer of neurodegenerative diseases and postoperative complications including postoperative cognitive dysfunction. Evidence showed that specificity protein 1 (SP1) participated in the regulation of various cellular processes. Also, SP1 was found to modulate sevoflurane-induced hippocampal inflammatory injury both in vitro and in vivo.

Transcriptome Analysis of Two Different Developmental Stages of Seeds.

is a herbaceous flower in the family with both hypocotyl and epicotyl dormant seeds. We used high-throughput transcriptome sequencing on two different developmental stages of seeds to identify seed dormancy and germination-related genes. We performed de novo assembly and annotated a total of 123,577 unigenes, which encoded 24,688 putative proteins with 47 GO categories.

β-arrestin1 is critical for the full activation of NLRP3 and NLRC4 inflammasomes.

Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes that trigger the activation of caspase-1 and the maturation of IL-1β, which are critical for inflammation and control of pathogen infection. Although the function of inflammasomes in immune response and disease development is well studied, the molecular mechanism by which inflammasomes are activated and assembled remains largely unknown. In this study, we found that β-arrestin1, a key regulator of the G protein-coupled receptor signaling pathway, was required for nucleotide-binding domain and leucine-rich repeat containing (NLR) family pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) and NLR family CARD domain-containing protein 4 (NLRC4) inflammasome-mediated IL-1β production and caspase-1 activation, but it had no effect on absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2) inflammasome activation.

Preparation of the Branch Bark Ethanol Extract in Mulberry Morus alba, Its Antioxidation, and Antihyperglycemic Activity In Vivo.

The biological activities of the branch bark ethanol extract (BBEE) in the mulberry Morus alba L. were investigated. The determination of active component showed that the flavonoids, phenols, and saccharides are the major components of the ethanol extract.

Differential IL-10 production by DCs determines the distinct adjuvant effects of LPS and PTX in EAE induction.

Pertussis toxin (PTX) is used as an adjuvant to induce EAE in mice as a model of MS. Although LPS and PTX are similar in their ability to mature dendritic cells (DCs) and in their adjuvant properties, here we demonstrate that LPS does not induce EAE development. We also demonstrate that DCs treated with PTX (PTX-DCs) are able to induce EAE, whereas DCs treated with LPS (LPS-DCs) fail to induce EAE.

Negative regulation of Nmi on virus-triggered type I IFN production by targeting IRF7.

Viral infection causes host cells to produce type I IFNs, which play a critical role in viral clearance. IFN regulatory factor (IRF) 7 is the master regulator of type I IFN-dependent immune responses. In this article, we report that N-Myc and STATs interactor (Nmi), a Sendai virus-inducible protein, interacted with IRF7 and inhibited virus-triggered type I IFN production.

Nitric oxide suppresses NLRP3 inflammasome activation and protects against LPS-induced septic shock.

Inflammasomes are multi-protein complexes that trigger the activation of caspase-1 and the maturation of interleukin-1β (IL-1β), yet the regulation of these complexes remains poorly characterized. Here we show that nitric oxide (NO) inhibited the NLRP3-mediated ASC pyroptosome formation, caspase-1 activation and IL-1β secretion in myeloid cells from both mice and humans. Meanwhile, endogenous NO derived from iNOS (inducible form of NO synthase) also negatively regulated NLRP3 inflammasome activation.

Quantitative evaluation of the effect of the hepatitis B vaccine based on the HBsAg- and anti-HBs-positive rates in the Chinese population over the last 33 years.

Objective: The purpose of the study was to quantitatively evaluate the effect of the hepatitis B vaccine based on 33 years of data published on the HBsAg- and anti-HBs-positive rates.

Methods: All data were obtained from studies in published Chinese scientific journals from 1977 to 2009. The HBsAg- or anti-HBs-positive rate over a certain observation period was presented.

Mechanism of fluorescent cocoon sex identification for silkworms Bombyx mori.

By using silkworms, Bombyx mori, fluorescent cocoon sex identification (FCSI) as an experimental material, direct fluorescence spectrometry of the cocoon surface indicates that the fluorescent color of silkworm cocoons is made up of two peaks of yellow and blue-purple fluorescence emission. The fluorescent difference between male and female cocoons is attributed to the differential absorption of yellow fluorescent substances by the midgut tissue of 5th instar female silkworms. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) and fluorescent spectra indicate that blue-purple fluorescent substances are composed of at least five blue-purple fluorescent pigments, and yellow fluorescent substances are made up of at least three.