The Age-Sensitive Efficacy of Calorie Restriction on Mitochondrial Biogenesis and mtDNA Damage in Rat Liver

Calorie restriction (CR) is the most efficacious treatment to delay the onset of age-related changes such as mitochondrial dysfunction. However, the sensitivity of mitochondrial markers to CR and the age-related boundaries of CR efficacy are not fully elucidated. We used liver samples from ad libitum-fed (AL) rats divided in: 18-month-old (AL-18), 28-month-old (AL-28), and 32-month-old (AL-32) groups, and from CR-treated (CR) 28-month-old (CR-28) and 32-month-old (CR-32) counterparts to assay the effect of CR on several mitochondrial markers. The age-related decreases in citrate synthase activity, in TFAM, MFN2, and DRP1 protein amounts and in the mtDNA content in the AL-28 group were prevented in CR-28 counterparts. Accordingly, CR reduced oxidative mtDNA damage assessed through the incidence of oxidized purines at specific mtDNA regions in CR-28 animals. These findings support the anti-aging effect of CR up to 28 months. Conversely, the protein amounts of LonP1, Cyt c, OGG1, and APE1 and the 4.8 Kb mtDNA deletion content were not affected in CR-28 rats. The absence of significant differences between the AL-32 values and the CR-32 counterparts suggests an age-related boundary of CR efficacy at this age. However, this only partially curtails the CR benefits in counteracting the generalized aging decline and the related mitochondrial involvement.     

WavNet — Visual saliency detection using Discrete Wavelet Convolutional Neural Network

In the recent advancements in image and video analysis, the detection of salient regions in the image becomes the initial step. This plays a crucial role in deciding the performance of such algorithms. In this work, a Multi-Resolution Feature Extraction (MRFE) technique that makes use of Discrete Wavelet Convolutional Neural Network (DWCNN) for generating features is employed. An Enhanced Feature Extraction (EFE) module extracts additional features from the high level features of the DWCNN, which are used to frame both channel as well as spatial attention models for yielding contextual attention maps. A new hybrid loss function is also proposed, which is a combination of Balanced Cross Entropy (BCE) loss and Edge based Structural Similarity (ESSIM) loss that effectively identifies and segments the salient regions with clear boundaries. The method is tested exhaustively with five different benchmark datasets and is proved superior to the existing state-of-the-art methods with a minimum Mean Absolute error (MAE) of 0.03 and F-measure of 0.956.     

Vulnerable objects detection for autonomous driving: A review

Object detection performed by Autonomous Vehicles (AV)s is a crucial operation that comes ahead of various autonomous driving tasks, such as object tracking, trajectories estimation, and collision avoidance. Dynamic road elements (pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles) impose a greater challenge due to their continuously changing location and behaviour. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art object detection technologies focusing on both the sensory systems and algorithms used. It begins with a brief introduction on the autonomous driving operations and challenges. Then, different sensory systems employed on existing AVs are elaborated while illustrating their advantages, limitations and applications. Also, sensory systems employed by different research are reviewed. Moreover, due to the significant role Deep Neural Networks (DNN)s are playing in object detection tasks, different DNN-based networks are also highlighted. Afterwards, previous research on dynamic objects detection performed by AVs are reviewed in tabular forms. Finally, a conclusion summarizes the outcomes of the review and suggests future work towards the development of vehicles with higher automation levels.     

Inhibition of RANKL-Induced Osteoclastogenesis by Novel Mutant RANKL

Background: Recently, it was reported that leucine-rich repeat-containing G-protein-coupled receptor 4 (LGR4, also called GPR48) is another receptor for RANKL and was shown to compete with RANK to bind RANKL and suppress canonical RANK signaling during osteoclast differentiation. The critical role of the protein triad RANK–RANKL in osteoclastogenesis has made their binding an important target for the development of drugs against osteoporosis. In this study, point-mutations were introduced in the RANKL protein based on the crystal structure of the RANKL complex and its counterpart receptor RANK, and we investigated whether LGR4 signaling in the absence of the RANK signal could lead to the inhibition of osteoclastogenesis.; Methods: The effects of point-mutated RANKL (mRANKL-MT) on osteoclastogenesis were assessed by tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP), resorption pit formation, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), western blot, NFATc1 nuclear translocation, micro-CT and histomorphological assay in wild type RANKL (mRANKL-WT)-induced in vitro and in vivo experimental mice model. Results: As a proof of concept, treatment with the mutant RANKL led to the stimulation of GSK-3β phosphorylation, as well as the inhibition of NFATc1 translocation, mRNA expression of TRAP and OSCAR, TRAP activity, and bone resorption, in RANKL-induced mouse models; and Conclusions: The results of our study demonstrate that the mutant RANKL can be used as a therapeutic agent for osteoporosis by inhibiting RANKL-induced osteoclastogenesis via comparative inhibition of RANKL. Moreover, the mutant RANKL was found to lack the toxic side effects of most osteoporosis treatments.     

食品安全国家标准中维生素的测定方法及进展

人体所必需的营养素除了蛋白质、脂类、糖类等能量物质外,维生素也是不可或缺的营养物质,是评价其营养质量的关键指标。检测食品中的维生素含量,是有效保证其质量与安全的必要条件。因此,对现有国家标准食品中维生素的检测方法进行综述,总结各方法的前处理及检出限等,为增强检测工作效率,以及食品检测方法的研究和发展提供参考。     

Targeted editing of intronic-splicing silencer enhancement of SMN2 Exon 7 inclusion by CRISPR/Case 9

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive hereditary neuromuscular disease. Exon 7 and 8 of survival of motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene or only exon 7 homology deletion leads to the failure to produce a full-length SMN gene. The copy number of SMN2 gene with high homology of SMN1 affects the degree of disease and was the target gene for targeting therapy, in which splicing silencer in intron 7 was the key to suppress the inclusion of exon 7. In this study, we projected to use CRISPR/Case 9 for the targeted editing of intronic-splicing silencer (ISS) sequence to promote the inclusion of SMN2 exon 7 and increase the production of SMN2 full-length (FL) gene expression. It happens that there was a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) at one end of the ISS sequence according to the design of sgRNA. The recombinant vector of sgRNA HSMN2 CRISPR/Case 9 was constructed and transfected into HEK293 cells. Sequencing results showed that the ISS sequence could be edited accurately and targeting in the predicted direction, in which deleting small fragments, inserting small amounts and mutation. Quantitative analysis of RT-PCR products by restriction enzyme of DdeI digestion showed that the FL of SMN2 increased by 8% (P < 0.05). In the primary cultured chondrocytes of SMA mice, in which sgRNA HSMN2 CRISPR/Case9 recombinant vector transfection could increase the SMN2 FL gene by 23% (P < 0.05) and significantly improve SMN protein levels (P < 0.05). CRISPR/Case 9 is an effective tool for gene editing and therapy of hereditary diseases, but it is rarely reported in the treatment of SMA diseases. This study shows that CRISPR/Case 9 was first used for the precision target of ISS sequence editing, which can effectively promote the production of SMN2 FL gene expressions, in which there was an important clinical reference value.     

基于卷积神经网络的安全防御模式研究

云计算、大数据、5G通信等技术的快速发展，有力的促进了计算机网络在多个领域的普及和使用，人们已经进入到了“互联网+”时代，实现了工作、生活和学习的数字化、智能化和共享化。计算机网络在为人们提供各种便利服务的同时也面临着许多的安全威胁，比如木马、病毒等，不法分子攻击网络数据中心，破坏用户服务终端及服务器，为人们带来严重的威胁。网络安全学者或企业机构也提出了许多安全防御技术，比如入侵检测技术、深度包过滤技术、防火墙技术、数据加密技术等，一定程度上提高了网络安全防御的能力，但是随着互联网数据流量的增多，需要引入更加先进的人工智能技术，以便能够快速的采集、分析网络数据流，确定数据流中是否存在病毒或木马，以便及时的对其进行查杀，进一步提高网络安全防御的主动性、积极性     

纳米级超声造影剂的理论研究进展

为了克服超声造影剂中微米级气泡尺寸较大的局限性,大量研究人员对超声应用的替代造影剂(纳米级造影剂)进行了研究。随着生物纳米技术的飞速发展,纳米级超声造影剂在诊断与治疗领域有着广阔的发展前景。与超声造影剂中的微米级气泡相比,纳米级造影剂粒径较小,渗透能力极强,可以通过血管内皮间隙,进而可以实现血管外病变部位的显影。文中详细论述了超声造影剂在超声作用下的行为以及2种主要的纳米级造影剂:纳米气泡和纳米液滴造影剂,对其理论研究进展进行了总结,并提出了目前仍存在的一些问题及其未来的研究方向。     

CuO-SiO2气凝胶@TiO2纳米纤维无牺牲剂光催化还原CO2

采用溶胶-凝胶法制备CuO-SiO2复合气凝胶,通过在气凝胶孔道内填充TiCl4,然后将其气相水解,得到了在CuO-SiO2气凝胶表面生长了高结晶度的TiO2纳米纤维(CuO-SiO2@TiO2),纤维直径～16 nm.通过XPS、UPS、UV-Vis DRS、荧光光谱(PL)等表征了材料的结构及光电性能.结果表明,制备的CuO-SiO2@TiO2对可见光有明显吸收,且荧光强度较商用TiO2(P25)大幅降低,光生电子-空穴对更加稳定.再在纳米纤维上负载CuO,所得CuO-SiO2@TiO2/CuO在可见光区的荧光强度进一步增强.以300 W氙灯为光源,分别以CuO-SiO2@TiO2及CuO-SiO2@TiO2/CuO为催化剂,无牺牲剂条件下光催化还原CO2,4 h后甲醇产率分别为1304.0及1589.0μmol/g-cat,转换频率(TOF)分别为0.038及0.046 h–1.循环实验表明,纳米纤维具有较好的光催化稳定性,经过4次光催化循环实验后,CuO-SiO2@TiO2/CuO的保留率～94％,甲醇产率可达1472.0μmol/g-cat,TOF为0.042 h–1.     

Transmission line detection in aerial images: An instance segmentation approach based on multitask neural networks

Camera-based transmission line detection (TLD) is a fundamental and crucial task for automatically patrolling powerlines by aircraft. Motivated by instance segmentation, a TLD algorithm is proposed in this paper with a novel deep neural network, i.e., CableNet. The network structure is designed based on fully convolutional networks (FCNs) with two major improvements, considering the specific appearance characteristics of transmission lines. First, overlaying dilated convolutional layers and spatial convolutional layers are configured to better represent continuous long and thin cable shapes. Second, two branches of outputs are arranged to generate multidimensional feature maps for instance segmentation. Thus, cable pixels can be detected and assigned cable IDs simultaneously. Multiple experiments are conducted on aerial images, and the results show that the proposed algorithm obtains reliable detection performance and is superior to traditional TLD methods. Meanwhile, segmented pixels can be accurately identified as cable instances, contributing to line fitting for further applications.