Correlations between geomagnetic field and global occurrence of cardiovascular diseases: evidence from 204 territories in different latitude.

Background: The correlation between stable geomagnetic fields and unstable geomagnetic activities with mortality, incidence, and prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remains ambiguous.

Method: To investigate the correlations between geomagnetic field (GMF) intensity and geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) and CVDs events in global, long-period scale, global and 204 countries and territories were included on the base of 2019 Global Burden of Disease study (GBD 2019). Data of GMF intensity, GMD frequency, CVDs events, weather and health economic indicators from 1996 to 2019 of included locations were collected.

Electromagnetic field and cardiovascular diseases: A state-of-the-art review of diagnostic, therapeutic, and predictive values.

Despite encouraging advances in early diagnosis and treatment, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remained a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Increasing evidence has shown that the electromagnetic field (EMF) influences many biological processes, which has attracted much attention for its potential therapeutic and diagnostic modalities in multiple diseases, such as musculoskeletal disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Nonionizing EMF has been studied as a therapeutic or diagnostic tool in CVDs.

Toward Quantized Model Parallelism for Graph-Augmented MLPs Based on Gradient-Free ADMM Framework.

While graph neural networks (GNNs) are popular in the deep learning community, they suffer from several challenges including over-smoothing, over-squashing, and gradient vanishing. Recently, a series of models have attempted to relieve these issues by first augmenting the node features and then imposing node-wise functions based on multilayer perceptron (MLP), which are widely referred to as graph-augmented MLP (GA-MLP) models. However, while GA-MLP models enjoy deeper architectures for better accuracy, their efficiency largely deteriorates.

Adeno-associated virus-mediated expression of activated factor V (FVa) for hemophilia phenotypic correction.

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy has been successfully applied in hemophilia patients excluding patients with inhibitors. During the coagulation pathway, activated factor V (FVa) functions downstream as a cofactor of activated factor X (FXa) to amplify thrombin generation. We hypothesize that the expression of FVa via gene therapy can improve hemostasis of both factor IX and FVIII deficiencies, regardless of clotting factor inhibitor.

Transannular patch repair of tetralogy of Fallot with or without monocusp valve reconstruction: a meta-analysis.

Background: Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) is one of the most common cyanotic congenital heart diseases. Pulmonary regurgitation is the most common and severe comorbidity after transannular patch (TAP) repair of TOF patients. It has not been confirmed whether a TAP repair with monocusp valve reconstruction would benefit TOF patients in perioperative period compared to those without monocusp valve reconstruction.

Customized blood-brain barrier shuttle peptide to increase AAV9 vector crossing the BBB and augment transduction in the brain.

Recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors have been widely used as favored delivery vehicles for the treatment of inherited diseases in clinical trials, including neurological diseases. However, the noninvasive systemic delivery of rAAV to the central nervous system is severely hampered by the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Several approaches have been exploited to enhance AAV vector brain transduction after systemic administration, including genetic modification of AAV capsids and physical methods.

Dexamethasone Transiently Enhances Transgene Expression in the Liver When Administered at Late-Phase Post Long-Term Adeno-Associated Virus Transduction.

Glucocorticoids have anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive functions and have commonly been used for preventing liver toxicity after the systemic application of a high dose of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector for gene therapy. Clinical studies have reported that glucocorticoids have rescued factor IX (FIX) expression in patients with hemophilia B who showed a reduced FIX expression at 6 to 10 weeks post-AAV vector administration. In this study, we explored whether glucocorticoids could affect transgene expression in AAV targeted livers in animal models.

Variational Progressive-Transfer Network for Soft Sensing of Multirate Industrial Processes.

Deep-learning-based soft sensors have been extensively developed for predicting key quality or performance variables in industrial processes. However, most approaches assume that data are uniformly sampled while the multiple variables are often acquired at different rates in practical processes. This article designed a progressive transfer strategy, based on which a variational progressive-transfer network (VPTN) method is proposed for the soft sensor development of industrial multirate processes.

A Deep Probabilistic Transfer Learning Framework for Soft Sensor Modeling With Missing Data.

Soft sensors have been extensively developed and applied in the process industry. One of the main challenges of the data-driven soft sensors is the lack of labeled data and the need to absorb the knowledge from a related source operating condition to enhance the soft sensing performance on the target application. This article introduces deep transfer learning to soft sensor modeling and proposes a deep probabilistic transfer regression (DPTR) framework.

Multisource-Refined Transfer Network for Industrial Fault Diagnosis Under Domain and Category Inconsistencies.

Unsupervised cross-domain fault diagnosis has been actively researched in recent years. It learns transferable features that reduce distribution inconsistency between source and target domains without target supervision. Most of the existing cross-domain fault diagnosis approaches are developed based on the consistency assumption of the source and target fault category sets.

Giant Ferroelectric Resistance Switching Controlled by a Modulatory Terminal for Low-Power Neuromorphic In-Memory Computing.

Ferroelectrics have been demonstrated as excellent building blocks for high-performance nonvolatile memories, including memristors, which play critical roles in the hardware implementation of artificial synapses and in-memory computing. Here, it is reported that the emerging van der Waals ferroelectric α-In Se can be used to successfully implement heterosynaptic plasticity (a fundamental but rarely emulated synaptic form) and achieve a resistance-switching ratio of heterosynaptic memristors above 10 , which is two orders of magnitude larger than that in other similar devices. The polarization change of ferroelectric α-In Se channel is responsible for the resistance switching at various paired terminals.

Data-Driven Designs of Fault Detection Systems via Neural Network-Aided Learning.

With the aid of neural networks, this article develops two data-driven designs of fault detection (FD) for dynamic systems. The first neural network is constructed for generating residual signals in the so-called finite impulse response (FIR) filter-based form, and the second one is designed for recursively generating residual signals. By theoretical analysis, we show that two proposed neural networks via self-organizing learning can find their optimal architectures, respectively, corresponding to FIR filter and recursive observer for FD purposes.

A Single-Side Neural Network-Aided Canonical Correlation Analysis With Applications to Fault Diagnosis.

Recently, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) has been explored to address the fault detection (FD) problem for industrial systems. However, most of the CCA-based FD methods assume both Gaussianity of measurement signals and linear relationships among variables. These assumptions may be improper in some practical scenarios so that direct applications of these CCA-based FD strategies are arguably not optimal.

Bound Protein- and Peptide-Based Strategies for Adeno-Associated Virus Vector-Mediated Gene Therapy: Where Do We Stand Now?

Recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors have become one of the most promising and efficacious delivery vehicles for human gene therapy; however, low infectivity remains a major ongoing obstacle in the clinical application of rAAV vectors. Multiple strategies, including rAAV capsid modification and the application of pharmacological reagents, have been explored to enhance rAAV vector gene delivery. Recently, a new strategy using native proteins or various peptides has shown promise for increasing rAAV transduction locally or globally.

Membrane fusion FerA domains enhance adeno-associated virus vector transduction.

The recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vector has been successfully employed in clinical trials for patients with blindness and bleeding diseases as well as neuromuscular disorders. To date, it remains a major challenge to achieve higher transduction efficiency with a lower dose of rAAV vector. Our previous studies have demonstrated that serum proteins are able to directly interact with AAV virions for transduction enhancement.

Multiclass Oblique Random Forests With Dual-Incremental Learning Capacity.

Oblique random forests (ObRFs) have attracted increasing attention recently. Their popularity is mainly driven by learning oblique hyperplanes instead of expensively searching for axis-aligned hyperplanes in the standard random forest. However, most existing methods are trained in an off-line mode, which assumes that the training data are given as a batch.

Chimeric Capsid Proteins Impact Transduction Efficiency of Haploid Adeno-Associated Virus Vectors.

Our previous studies have demonstrated that haploid AAV vectors made from capsids of two different serotypes induced high transduction and prevented serotype-specific antibody binding. In this study, we explored the transduction efficiency of several haploid viruses, which were made from the VP1/VP2 of one serotype and VP3 of another compatible serotype. After systemic injection of 2 × 10 vg of AAV vectors into mice, the haploid AAV vectors, composed of VP1/VP2 from serotypes 8 or 9, and VP3 from AAV2, displayed a two to seven-fold increase in liver transduction compared with those of parental AAV2 vectors.

Optimization of Dexamethasone Administration for Maintaining Global Transduction Efficacy of Adeno-Associated Virus Serotype 9.

Glucocorticoids have been commonly used in clinic for their anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects, and it has been proposed that they be used to prevent liver toxicity when systemic administration of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors is needed in patients with central nervous system diseases and muscular disorders. Glucocorticoids also enable modulation of vascular permeability. First, this study investigated the impact of dexamethasone on AAV vascular permeability after systemic injection.

Cryoprecipitate augments the global transduction of the adeno-associated virus serotype 9 after a systemic administration.

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have been successfully used for transgene delivery in clinical trials. A systemic administration of AAV vectors has been proposed in order to achieve global transduction, which requires that the AAV vector is capable of crossing the blood vessels. It has been demonstrated that serum proteins are able to directly interact with AAV virions to enhance liver transduction.

Nab Escaping AAV Mutants Isolated from Mouse Muscles.

Neutralizing antibodies (Nabs) are a major challenge in clinical trials of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector gene therapy, because Nabs are able to inhibit AAV transduction in patients. We have successfully isolated several novel Nab-escaped AAV chimeric capsids in mice by administrating a mixture of AAV shuffled library and patient serum. These AAV chimeric capsid mutants enhanced Nab evasion from patient serum with a high muscle transduction efficacy.

Double-stranded RNA innate immune response activation from long-term adeno-associated virus vector transduction.

Data from clinical trials for hemophilia B using adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have demonstrated decreased transgenic coagulation factor IX (hFIX) expression 6-10 weeks after administration of a high vector dose. While it is likely that capsid-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes eliminate vector-transduced hepatocytes, thereby resulting in decreased hFIX, this observation is not intuitively consistent with restored hFIX levels following prednisone application. Although the innate immune response is immediately activated following AAV vector infection via TLR pathways, no studies exist regarding the role of the innate immune response at later time points after AAV vector transduction.

Blood-brain barrier shuttle peptides enhance AAV transduction in the brain after systemic administration.

The adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector has been used in preclinical and clinical trials of gene therapy for central nervous system (CNS) diseases. One of the biggest challenges of effectively delivering AAV to the brain is to surmount the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Herein, we identified several potential BBB shuttle peptides that significantly enhanced AAV8 transduction in the brain after a systemic administration, the best of which was the THR peptide.

Application of polyploid adeno-associated virus vectors for transduction enhancement and neutralizing antibody evasion.

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have been used successfully in clinical trials for patients with hemophilia or blindness, but pre-existing neutralizing antibodies (Nab) are common in the general population and exclude many patients from clinical trials. Exploration of effective strategies to enhance AAV transduction and escape from Nab activity is still imperative. Previous studies have shown the compatibility of capsids from AAV serotypes and homology of recognition sites of AAV Nab located on different capsid subunits from one virion.

Differential Inhibition of Macrophage Activation by Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus and Pichinde Virus Is Mediated by the Z Protein N-Terminal Domain.

Several arenavirus pathogens, such as Lassa and Junin viruses, inhibit macrophage activation, the molecular mechanism of which is unclear. We show that lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) can also inhibit macrophage activation, in contrast to Pichinde and Tacaribe viruses, which are not known to naturally cause human diseases. Using a recombinant Pichinde virus system, we show that the LCMV Z N-terminal domain (NTD) mediates the inhibition of macrophage activation and immune functions.