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Summary Aims The objective of this study was to analyze the efficacy of polypyrrole/polylactic acid (PPy/PLA) nanofibrous scaffold cotransplanted with bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) in promoting the functional recovery in a rat spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods Female Sprague‐Dawley rats were randomly divided into three groups (n = 18/group): control group, PPy/PLA group, and PPy/PLA/BMSCs group. The SCI was induced in all rats. Consequently, rats in PPy/PLA/BMSCs group were transplanted with 1 × 105 BMSCs after implantation of PPy/PLA, while those in the PPy/PLA group were implanted with PPy/PLA only; no implantation was performed in the control group. Six weeks after surgery, immunofluorescence microscopy, electron microscope, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques were performed to assess the changes in the injured spinal cord tissues. Results Electrophysiology and locomotor function testing suggested that PPy/PLA nanofibrous scaffold cotransplanted with BMSCs could promote the functional recovery of the spinal cord. Six weeks after the operation, lower amount of scar tissue was found in the PPy/PLA group compared with the control group. Abundant neurofilament (NF) and neuron‐specific marker (NeuN) positive staining, and myelin formations were detected in the injured area. In addition, the transplantation of BMSCs not only improved the efficacy of PPy/PLA but also managed to survive well and was differentiated into neural and neuroglial cells. Conclusions The implantation of PPy/PLA nanofibrous scaffold and BMSCs has a great potential to restore the electrical conduction and to promote functional recovery by inhibiting the scar tissue formation, promoting axon regeneration, and bridging the gap lesion.

The nerve fibre circuits around a lesion play a major role in the spontaneous recovery process after spinal cord hemisection in rats. The aim of the present study was to answer the following question: in the re-control process, do all spinal cord nerves below the lesion site participate, or do the spinal cord nerves of only one vertebral segment have a role in repair? First we made a T7 spinal cord hemisection in 50 rats. Eight weeks later, they were divided into three groups based on distinct second operations at T7: ipsilateral hemisection operation, contralateral hemisection, or transection. We then tested recovery of hindlimbs for another eight weeks. The first step was to confirm the lesion had role or not in the spontaneous recovery process. Secondly, we performed T7 spinal cord hemisections in 125 rats. Eight weeks later, we performed a second single hemisection on the ipsilateral side at T8-T12 and then tested hindlimb recovery for another six weeks. In the first part, the Basso, Beattie, Bresnahan (BBB) scores and the electrophysiology tests of both hindlimbs weren't significantly different after the second hemisection of the ipsilateral side. In the second part, the closer the second hemisection was to T12, the more substantial the resulting impairment in BBB score tests and prolonged latency periods. The nerve regeneration from the lesion area after hemisection has no effect on spontaneous recovery of the spinal cord. Repair is carried out by all vertebrae caudal and ipsilateral to the lesion, with T12 being most important.

Artificial extracellular matrices play important roles in the regulation of stem cell behavior. To generate materials for tissue engineering, active functional groups, such as amino, carboxyl, and hydroxyl, are often introduced to change the properties of the biomaterial surface. In this study, we chemically modified coverslips to create surfaces with different amino densities and investigated the adhesion, migration, and differentiation of neural stem cells (NSCs) under serum-free culture conditions. We observed that a higher amino density significantly promoted NSCs attachment, enhanced neuronal differentiation and promoted excitatory synapse formation in vitro. These results indicate that the amino density significantly affected the biological behavior of NSCs. Thus, the density and impact of functional groups in extracellular matrices should be considered in the research and development of materials for tissue engineering

The behaviors of mixed burden in the cohesive zone of oxygen blast furnace were studied by softening and melting tests, and the influence of reducing gas and burden basicity on the softening and melting behaviors of mixed burden was also investigated. The results indicated that the softening range became wide, however, the melting range narrowed sharply in the atmosphere of oxygen blast furnace. The permeability of burden in the oxygen blast furnace was obviously improved comparing with the conventional blast furnace. In addition, the content of sulphur in the dripping iron of oxygen blast furnace was much lower than that of conventional blast furnace, however, the content of carbon increased. An optimum basicity of burden, which could lead to the appearance of the narrower melting range and better permeability of burden, was obtained in the atmosphere of oxygen blast furnace.

Maintaining the balance of a cell’s redox function is key to determining cell fate. In the critical redox system of mammalian cells, glutathione peroxidase (GPX) is the most prominent family of proteins with a multifaceted function that affects almost all cellular processes. A total of eight members of the GPX family are currently found, namely GPX1-GPX8. They have long been used as antioxidant enzymes to play an important role in combating oxidative stress and maintaining redox balance. However, each member of the GPX family has a different mechanism of action and site of action in maintaining redox balance. GPX1-4 and GPX6 use selenocysteine as the active center to catalyze the reduction of H 2 O 2 or organic hydroperoxides to water or corresponding alcohols, thereby reducing their toxicity and maintaining redox balance. In addition to reducing H 2 O 2 and small molecule hydroperoxides, GPX4 is also capable of reducing complex lipid compounds. It is the only enzyme in the GPX family that directly reduces and destroys lipid hydroperoxides. The active sites of GPX5 and GPX7-GPX8 do not contain selenium cysteine (Secys), but instead, have cysteine residues (Cys) as their active sites. GPX5 is mainly expressed in epididymal tissue and plays a role in protecting sperm from oxidative stress. Both enzymes, GPX7 and GPX8, are located in the endoplasmic reticulum and are necessary enzymes involved in the oxidative folding of endoplasmic reticulum proteins, and GPX8 also plays an important role in the regulation of Ca 2+ in the endoplasmic reticulum. With an in-depth understanding of the role of the GPX family members in health and disease development, redox balance has become the functional core of GPX family, in order to further clarify the expression and regulatory mechanism of each member in the redox process, we reviewed GPX family members separately.

Population aging has become a prevalent societal trend in the 21st century, giving rise to intricate challenges for healthcare systems. Taiwan is expected to become a \"super-aging society\" in 2025. In 2020, the Health Promotion Administration, referencing World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on integrated care for older people (ICOPE), began promoting person-centered functional assessments for older adults to prevent and delay disability, reduce reliance on formal healthcare, and promote healthy aging, aging in place, and active aging. Pingtung County faces a healthcare gap between urban and rural areas. To address this, the county's executive team integrated community and healthcare systems into a single Age-Friendly Health Network to help older adults self-detect intrinsic functional decline problems at an early stage and receive early treatment. The implementation of this network is being done in the following four phases: preparation, action, implementation and revision, and promotion. As of August

In recent years, the rapid development of fresh food e-commerce in China has brought about more development opportunities for the cold chain logistics industry but has also presented new challenges. With the development of cloud computing and big data technology, it is increasingly important to study the application of big data and cloud computing technology in cold chain logistics. The purpose of this paper is to study the intelligent algorithm of cold chain logistics distribution optimization based on big data cloud computing analysis. Based on the constituent elements of the cold chain distribution problem and using cloud computing technology to obtain real-time traffic information in the transportation system through a unified access interface, this article analyses the distribution time and cost of refrigerated vehicles, thereby establishing a cold chain distribution vehicle path optimization model. By analysing the parallel programming mode of cloud computing, the parallel design and analysis of a coarse-grained genetic algorithm are used to solve the simulation model of the established optimization model. The experimental results show that the method of optimizing cold chain logistics vehicle routing using cloud computing is effective. When comparing 1, 2, 4, and 8 processors, the execution times are 19.89, 14.52, 8.12, and 6.41, respectively. It can be seen that the more processors there are, the shorter the calculation time.

Because of the decentralized trait of the blockchain and the Internet of vehicles, both are very suitable for the architecture of the other. This study proposes a multi-level blockchain framework to secure information security on the Internet of vehicles. The main motivation of this study is to propose a new transaction block and ensure the identity of traders and the non-repudiation of transactions through the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm ECDSA. The designed multi-level blockchain architecture distributes the operations within the intra_cluster blockchain and the inter_cluster blockchain to improve the efficiency of the entire block. On the cloud computing platform, we exploit the threshold key management protocol, and the system can recover the system key as long as the threshold partial key is collected. This avoids the occurrence of PKI single-point failure. Thus, the proposed architecture ensures the security of OBU-RSU-BS-VM. The proposed multi-level blockchain framework consists of a block, intra-cluster blockchain and inter-cluster blockchain. The roadside unit RSU is responsible for the communication of vehicles in the vicinity, similar to a cluster head on the Internet of vehicles. This study exploits RSU to manage the block, and the base station is responsible for managing the intra-cluster blockchain named intra_clusterBC, and the cloud server at the back end is responsible for the entire system blockchain named inter_clusterBC. Finally, RSU, base stations and cloud servers cooperatively construct the multi-level blockchain framework and improve the security and the efficiency of the operation of the blockchain. Overall, in order to protect the security of the transaction data of the blockchain, we propose a new transaction block structure and adopt the elliptic curve cryptographic signature ECDSA to ensure that the Merkle tree root value is not changed and also make sure the transaction identity and non-repudiation of transaction data. Finally, this study considers information security in a cloud environment, and therefore we propose a secret-sharing and secure-map-reducing architecture based on the identity confirmation scheme. The proposed scheme with decentralization is very suitable for distributed connected vehicles and can also improve the execution efficiency of the blockchain.

Heterogenous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs) are a complex and functionally diverse family of RNA binding proteins with multifarious roles. They are involved, directly or indirectly, in alternative splicing, transcriptional and translational regulation, stress granule formation, cell cycle regulation, and axonal transport. It is unsurprising, given their heavy involvement in maintaining functional integrity of the cell, that their dysfunction has neurological implications. However, compared to their more established roles in cancer, the evidence of hnRNP implication in neurological diseases is still in its infancy. This review aims to consolidate the evidences for hnRNP involvement in neurological diseases, with a focus on spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), multiple sclerosis (MS), congenital myasthenic syndrome (CMS), and fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS). Understanding more about hnRNP involvement in neurological diseases can further elucidate the pathomechanisms involved in these diseases and perhaps guide future therapeutic advances.

Cadmium is a major environmental toxicant that is released into the atmosphere, water and soil in the form of cadmium oxide, cadmium chloride, or cadmium sulfide via industrial activities, such as the manufacturing of batteries and pigments, metal smelting and refining and municipal waste incineration. In the present study, we investigated the effects of cadmium exposure on sperm quality parameters, fertilization capacity and early embryonic development. Our study showed that in vitro incubation of human or mouse sperms with cadmium for a long time (up to 24 hours) could significantly decreased sperm motility in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. Exposure to cadmium in the environment for a short term (30 min) did not affect sperm motility but significantly reduced in vitro fertilization rate. We also evaluated the effects of cadmium at concentrations of 0.625 μg/ml, and 1.25 μg/ml on early embryonic development in vitro and observed that the blastocyst formation rate dramatically decreased with increasing cadmium concentration. This finding emphasizes the hazardous effects of cadmium on sperm quality as well as on natural embryo development and raises greater concerns regarding cadmium pollution.