Cepharanthine Ameliorates Pulmonary Fibrosis by Inhibiting the NF-κB/NLRP3 Pathway, Fibroblast-to-Myofibroblast Transition and Inflammation.

Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is one of the sequelae of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), and currently, lung transplantation is the only viable treatment option. Hence, other effective treatments are urgently required. We investigated the therapeutic effects of an approved botanical drug, cepharanthine (CEP), in a cell culture model of transforming growth factor-ß1 (TGF-ß1) and bleomycin (BLM)-induced pulmonary fibrosis rat models both in vitro and in vivo. In this study, CEP and pirfenidone (PFD) suppressed BLM-induced lung tissue inflammation, proliferation of blue collagen fibers, and damage to lung structures in vivo. Furthermore, we also found increased collagen deposition marked by α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and Collagen Type I Alpha 1 (COL1A1), which was significantly alleviated by the addition of PFD and CEP. Moreover, we elucidated the underlying mechanism of CEP against PF in vitro. Various assays confirmed that CEP reduced the viability and migration and promoted apoptosis of myofibroblasts. The expression levels of myofibroblast markers, including COL1A1, vimentin, α-SMA, and Matrix Metallopeptidase 2 (MMP2), were also suppressed by CEP. Simultaneously, CEP significantly suppressed the elevated Phospho-NF-κB p65 (p-p65)/NF-κB p65 (p65) ratio, NOD-like receptor thermal protein domain associated protein 3 (NLRP3) levels, and elevated inhibitor of NF-κB Alpha (IκBα) degradation and reversed the progression of PF. Hence, our study demonstrated that CEP prevented myofibroblast activation and treated BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis in a dose-dependent manner by regulating nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB)/ NLRP3 signaling, thereby suggesting that CEP has potential clinical application in pulmonary fibrosis in the future.

Impacts of COVID-19 on the transport sector in China: Facts and insights from early stages

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in the last season of 2019 seriously impacted the transportation industry. Countries around the world adopted various restrictions and policies to prevent the spread of the pandemic, which resulted in a sharp drop in the demand for transportation. To analyze the impact of the pandemic on China’s transportation sector at the early states and propose measures that may be taken to recover from the impact of COVID-19, the existing policies and impacts were reviewed. The government preparedness, recovery measures during/after pandemic, and their effects are analyzed. This chapter summarized the influence of COVID-19 to transportation system as well as the lifestyles and the whole society, and stated that future research could delve more deeply into this area. The research findings provided solid policy implications and experiences for constructing sustainable transportation system and improve flexibility, reliability, and resilience of traffic governance in postpandemic era.

SecDH: Security of COVID-19 images based on data hiding with PCA.

Nowadays, image security and copyright protection become challenging, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the paper, we develop SecDH as a medical data hiding scheme, which can guarantee the security and copyright protection of the COVID-19 images. Firstly, the cover image is normalized, which offers high resistance against the geometric attacks. Secondly, the normalized principal component as embedding factor is computed, which are calculated based on principal component analysis (PCA) between cover and mark image. Thirdly, the medical image is invisibly marked with secret mark based on normalized component, redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and randomized singular value decomposition (RSVD) is introduced. Finally, Arnold cat map scheme employed to ensure the security of the watermarking system. Under the experimental evaluation, our SecDH tool is not only imperceptible, but also has a satisfactory advantage in robustness and security compared with the traditional watermarking schemes.

Impacts of COVID-19 and anti-pandemic policies on urban transport-an empirical study in China.

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in the last quarter of 2019 seriously impacted the transportation industry. Countries around the world adopted various restrictions and policies to prevent the spread of the pandemic, which resulted in a sharp drop in the demand for transportation. China was the first country to detect the pandemic and the fastest to recover. Existing policies and impacts were reviewed to analyze the impact of the pandemic on China's urban transportation sector and propose measures that may be taken to reduce the impact of COVID-19. This study reviews the impact on urban transportation system operations and how government should respond to a viral pandemic. The recovery measures during and after the pandemic and their hierarchical response system are analyzed. Furthermore, to empirically explore the effect of the recovery measures, this study adopted the Event Study Methodology (ESM) to quantitatively analyze the impact of the epidemic as well as anti-pandemic policies on the traffic flow sequence in the resurgence of COVID-19 in Beijing. The research findings provided solid policy implications and experiences for constructing sustainable urban transportation system and improve flexibility, reliability, and resilience of traffic governance in post-pandemic era.