Ultrathin Supratrochlear Artery Cutaneous Branch Flaps for Large Defects Around Eyebrows.

BACKGROUND: The key point of repairing large defects around eyebrows is to keep the eyebrow undistorted. The limited skin elevates the application difficulty of conventional methods such as direct suture or local flap. Forehead pedicle flaps do well in tension control. However, most of them are too thick for defects because the frontalis muscle must be included. Recently, 1 stable supratrochlear artery cutaneous branch was found, which provides an opportunity to make an ultrathin forehead flap with a good blood supply. This study aims to investigate whether the supratrochlear artery cutaneous branch flap could perform good esthetic reconstruction for defects around the eyebrow. METHODS: The authors retrospectively included 15 patients whose defect around the eyebrows was repaired by the supratrochlear artery cutaneous branch flap from June 2017 to June 2020. The authors followed up about their flap color and texture, scar, abnormal sensation, any complication, recurrence, and patient satisfaction for at least 6 months online or face-to-face. RESULTS: All of the flaps survived, without distortion of the eyebrows or inner canthi. Similar flap color, texture, and thickness with the nearby skin were obtained, except 2 patients reported pigmentation. Donor and receptor scars were acceptable. There was no recurrence or other complications. All of the patients were satisfied with the surgery effect. CONCLUSIONS: The supratrochlear artery cutaneous branch flap is a valuable alternative method to repair large defects around the eyebrows. It can avoid facial distortion and achieve good esthetic outcomes in single-stage surgery.

Experimental study on the influence of different aperture connectors on nanofat.

BACKGROUND: Nanofat, as a derivative of adipose tissue, has gradually become a research hotspot in beauty and regenerative medicine. However, the nanofat preparation method has not yet been standardized; it remains unknown whether the aperture of the connector has any influence on the transplantation effect. METHODS: Adipose tissue was mechanically emulsified into nanofat tissue through different connector apertures (1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mm). Cell survival and apoptosis were measured using the volume of oil droplets, glucose transportation test, flow cytometry, cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), wound healing assay, transwell migration assay, and fluorescence staining. The expression of adiponectin, GluT4, and PPAR-γ in nanofat-derived stem cells (NFSCs) was detected using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). RESULTS: The fineness of nanofat tissue texture decreased with an increase in the aperture connector. The amounts of glucose transferred in the three groups (1, 1.5, and 2 mm) were 4.7 ± 0.894, 6.1 ± 1.026, and 6.9 ± 0.868 mmol/L, respectively. Flow cytometric analysis showed that the proportion of NFSCs in the 2.0 mm group was the highest (91.267±1.210%). Cell proliferation and migration abilities were stronger in the 1.5 and 2.0 mm groups. The numbers of late apoptotic and dead cells in the 2.0 mm group were significantly fewer than those in the two other groups. Expression levels of lipid-related genes were as follows: adiponectin > GluT4 > PPAR-γ in each component. CONCLUSIONS: As nanofat is emulsified, the use of larger aperture connectors (2.0 mm) appeared to decrease the degree of adipocyte lysis and increase the biological activity of adipose tissue.

HARNAS: Human Activity Recognition Based on Automatic Neural Architecture Search Using Evolutionary Algorithms.

Human activity recognition (HAR) based on wearable sensors is a promising research direction. The resources of handheld terminals and wearable devices limit the performance of recognition and require lightweight architectures. With the development of deep learning, the neural architecture search (NAS) has emerged in an attempt to minimize human intervention. We propose an approach for using NAS to search for models suitable for HAR tasks, namely, HARNAS. The multi-objective search algorithm NSGA-II is used as the search strategy of HARNAS. To make a trade-off between the performance and computation speed of a model, the F1 score and the number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) are selected, resulting in a bi-objective problem. However, the computation speed of a model not only depends on the complexity, but is also related to the memory access cost (MAC). Therefore, we expand the bi-objective search to a tri-objective strategy. We use the Opportunity dataset as the basis for most experiments and also evaluate the portability of the model on the UniMiB-SHAR dataset. The experimental results show that HARNAS designed without manual adjustments can achieve better performance than the best model tweaked by humans. HARNAS obtained an F1 score of 92.16% and parameters of 0.32 MB on the Opportunity dataset.

Carotenoids in Sporidiobolus pararoseus ameliorate diabetic nephropathy in mice through attenuating oxidative stress.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is the major life-threatening complication of diabetes, and oxidative stress takes part in its initiation and development. This study was performed to evaluate the effects of carotenoids from Sporidiobolus pararoseus (CSP) on the renal function and oxidative stress status of mice with streptozotocin (STZ)-induced DN. The results indicated that CSP significantly attenuated symptoms of STZ-induced DN shown by decreased fasting blood glucose, reduced urine volume, urine albumin, serum creatinine and serum urea nitrogen, and improved kidney histological morphology. Furthermore, biochemical analysis of serum and kidney revealed a marked increase in oxidative stress of DN mice as evidenced by reduced total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), decreased activity of antioxidant enzyme -superoxide dismutase (SOD) and increased level of malondialdehyde (MDA). However, treatment with CSP improved oxidative stress status in DN mice as compared with the mice in model group. Exploration of the potential mechanism validated that CSP ameliorated the oxidative stress status in DN mice by activating the expressions of Nrf2, NQO-1, HO-1, GST and CAT in kidney. These data revealed that CSP may retard the progression of DN by ameliorating renal function, improving the oxidative stress status and activating the Nrf2/ARE pathway.

HIF-1α inhibits mitochondria-mediated apoptosis and improves the survival of human adipose-derived stem cells in ischemic microenvironments.

BACKGROUND: Human adipose mesenchymal stem cells (hADSCs) show poor survival after transplantation, limiting their clinical application. Tissue regeneration resulting from stem cell treatment may be caused by attenuation of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α). In this study, we constructed hADSCs stably expressing HIF-1α and investigated the potential effects of HIF-1α expression in the ischemic microenvironment on mitochondrial apoptosis and survival of hADSCs, and studied the mechanisms involved. METHOD: Apoptosis was induced by an ischemic microenvironment in vitro. ADSCs with stable HIF-1α expression were established. Cell survival and apoptosis were observed by CCK-8 assay, western blotting, flow cytometry, and fluorescence staining. ADSCs were subcutaneously transplanted into nude mice in the location where a hypoxia ischemic microenvironment was simulated in vivo. After 1, 3, and 7 d, mitochondrial apoptotic proteins were evaluated by immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence staining. RESULTS: Exogenous HIF-1α downregulated mitochondrial reactive oxygen species, cytochrome c, caspase-9, and caspase-3, but inhibited mitochondrial membrane potential depolarization and increased the Bcl-2/bax ratio. HIF-1α prevented apoptosis and promoted vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) secretion as demonstrated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining, and flow cytometry analysis. HIF-1α enhanced the survival of transplanted ADSCs in nude mice. CONCLUSION: We have shown that through inhibition of the mitochondria-mediated apoptotic pathway and promotion of VEGF secretion in hADSCs in an ischemic microenvironment, HIF-1α may potentially be applied in clinical therapy and as an alternative strategy for improving hADSC therapy.

Margin-Based Deep Learning Networks for Human Activity Recognition.

Human activity recognition (HAR) is a popular and challenging research topic, driven by a variety of applications. More recently, with significant progress in the development of deep learning networks for classification tasks, many researchers have made use of such models to recognise human activities in a sensor-based manner, which have achieved good performance. However, sensor-based HAR still faces challenges; in particular, recognising similar activities that only have a different sequentiality and similarly classifying activities with large inter-personal variability. This means that some human activities have large intra-class scatter and small inter-class separation. To deal with this problem, we introduce a margin mechanism to enhance the discriminative power of deep learning networks. We modified four kinds of common neural networks with our margin mechanism to test the effectiveness of our proposed method. The experimental results demonstrate that the margin-based models outperform the unmodified models on the OPPORTUNITY, UniMiB-SHAR, and PAMAP2 datasets. We also extend our research to the problem of open-set human activity recognition and evaluate the proposed method's performance in recognising new human activities.

Study on the wall-breaking method of carotenoids producing yeast Sporidiobolus pararoseus and the antioxidant effect of four carotenoids on SK-HEP-1 cells.

The cell wall of carotenoids producing yeast Sporidiobolus pararoseus was broken through five different methods: acid-heating method, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) method, enzymatic method, high-pressure homogenization (HPH) method, and cell autolysis method. HPH method not only brought the optimum breaking effect (wall-breaking extent of 72.3%) and the highest carotenoid extraction rate (67.2%), but also had the advantages of short-time, simple process, safe, and pollution-free. After optimization, the wall-breaking extent and the carotenoid extraction rate were enhanced to 78.3% and 82.5%, respectively. And the optimum conditions of HPH were obtained as homogenization pressure 80 MPa, bacterial liquid concentration 8% and homogenization for three times. Moreover, cell experiments demonstrated that all of the four carotenoids (ß-carotene, γ-carotene, torulene, and torularhodin) purified from intracellular products of S. pararoseus. had the effect of resistance to oxidative damage from hydrogen peroxide on SK-HEP-1 cells, and torulene showed the most notable effect among them.

Sporidiobolus pararoseus wall-broken powder ameliorates oxidative stress in diabetic nephropathy in type-2 diabetic mice by activating the Nrf2/ARE pathway.

In type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), hyperglycemia promotes oxidative stress and eventually leads to diabetic nephropathy (DN). Sporidiobolus pararoseus is reported to exhibit enhanced anti-oxidation properties. However, its role in DN remains obscure. This study aimed to determine the antioxidative effects of a Sporidiobolus pararoseus wall-broken powder (SPP) supplement on DN and investigate the possible underlying mechanisms. A model of T2DM was successfully established, and C57BL/6J male mice were fed a high-fat diet for 4 weeks and then injected with streptozotocin (100 mg per kg per day) for three consecutive days. After eight weeks of intervention, SPP strongly lowered fasting glucose levels, serum creatinine, serum urea nitrogen, urinary albumin and reduced glomerular hypertrophy and mesangial matrix expansion. In addition, SPP increased the activities of SOD, T-AOC, CAT, and GST and decreased the amount of MDA. Furthermore, it was revealed that SPP significantly abrogated oxidative stress not only by activating the Nrf2 gene but also by activating two Nrf2-targeted antioxidative genes (NQO-1 and HO-1) compared with metformin hydrochloride, which is widely accepted as a diabetes drug. Our study showed that SPP has antioxidant properties and delays the progression of DN; the underlying mechanism may be associated with activation of the Nrf2/ARE pathway.