Single-Image-Based Deep Learning for Segmentation of Early Esophageal Cancer Lesions.

Accurate segmentation of lesions is crucial for diagnosis and treatment of early esophageal cancer (EEC). However, neither traditional nor deep learning-based methods up to today can meet the clinical requirements, with the mean Dice score - the most important metric in medical image analysis - hardly exceeding 0.75. In this paper, we present a novel deep learning approach for segmenting EEC lesions. Our method stands out for its uniqueness, as it relies solely on a single input image from a patient, forming the so-called "You-Only-Have-One" (YOHO) framework. On one hand, this "one-image-one-network" learning ensures complete patient privacy as it does not use any images from other patients as the training data. On the other hand, it avoids nearly all generalization-related problems since each trained network is applied only to the same input image itself. In particular, we can push the training to "over-fitting" as much as possible to increase the segmentation accuracy. Our technical details include an interaction with clinical doctors to utilize their expertise, a geometry-based data augmentation over a single lesion image to generate the training dataset (the biggest novelty), and an edge-enhanced UNet. We have evaluated YOHO over an EEC dataset collected by ourselves and achieved a mean Dice score of 0.888, which is much higher as compared to the existing deep-learning methods, thus representing a significant advance toward clinical applications. The code and dataset are available at: https://github.com/lhaippp/YOHO.

Effects of salinity on growth, physiology, biochemistry and gut microbiota of juvenile grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella).

Grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) is among the most important freshwater fish species in China. However, it remained unclear how salinity could affect grass carp. Two experiments were performed. The first experiment was a 4-day acute salt tolerance experiment with six salinities (0, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 ppt). The second experiment was an 8-week chronic salt stress experiment with three salinities (0, 2 and 6 ppt). To investigate the intestinal bacterial community of grass carp from three salinities (0, 2, and 6 ppt), the 16S rDNA sequencing was performed. The results showed that grass carp exhibited great adaptability to low salinity (2 ppt), with no significant difference in growth and maintained stable physiological and immune status. However, exposed to high salinity (6 ppt) caused significant deleterious effects on grass carp, including growth inhibition as well as physiological and immune-related changes. The gut microbiota in grass carp changed with salinity. With the increase of salinity, the proportion of beneficial bacteria in the gut of grass carp gradually decreased, while some harmful bacteria gradually occupied the dominant position. Changes in gut microbial composition ultimately affected the growth of grass carp. This study helps further clarify the effects of salinity on grass carp.

Conscious and unconscious processing of ensemble statistics oppositely modulate perceptual decision-making.

Our visual system possesses a remarkable ability to extract summary statistical information from groups of similar objects, known as ensemble perception. It remains elusive whether the processing of ensemble statistics exerts influences on our perceptual decision-making and what roles consciousness and attention play in this process. In a series of experiments, we demonstrated that the processing of ensemble statistics can exert significant modulation effects on our perceptual decision-making, which is independent of consciousness but relies on attentional resources. More intriguingly, the conscious and unconscious ensemble representations respectively induce repulsive and attractive modulation effects, with the unconscious effect susceptible to the temporal separation and the distinction between the inducers and the targets. These results not only suggest that the conscious and unconscious ensemble representations engage different visual processing mechanisms but also highlight the distinct roles of consciousness and attention in ensemble perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Expression of genes related to antioxidation, immunity, and heat stress in Gambusia affinis exposed to the heavy metals Cu and Zn.

Water pollution is an increasingly serious problem. Here, Cu and Zn ions were used as stress factors, and G. affinis served as a test organism. Fluorescence quantitative PCR was used to detect changes in the expression of antioxidant genes (SOD, GST, CAT), heat stress genes (Hsp70, Hsp90, Hspd1, Hsc70), and immune system-related genes (IL-1ß, IL-8) in G. affinis exposed to Cu and Zn ions over time. To explore the toxic effects of Cu and Zn on G. affinis. The results showed that the 48 h LC50 concentrations of the heavy metals Cu and Zn to G. affinis were 0.17 mg/L and 44.67 mg/L, respectively. Within 48 h, with prolonged Cu exposure, the relative expression levels of the Hsp70, Hsp90, Hspd1, Hsc70, SOD, GST, and CAT genes in the gill tissue first showed a significant increase and then gradually decreased. Gene expression peaked between 9 and 36 h. The relative expression levels of SOD and GST genes in liver tissue showed a gradual decline. Within 48 h, with prolonged Zn exposure, the expression levels of SOD, CAT, and GST genes in G. affinis first increased and then fell before finally rising. The expression levels of IL-1ß and IL-8 mRNA showed varying degrees of upward trends, and the expression of IL-8 was the highest for all gill tissue. To sum up, Cu and Zn have strong toxic effects on G. affinis, which makes it possible to use G. affinis as indicator organisms for aquatic environmental pollution.

Inhibitory effect of main phenolic acid components of Jacobaea cannabifolia (Less.) on inflammation caused by PM2.5.

PM2.5 is an important environmental problem threatening human health at present, which poses serious harm to human body after inhalation. J. cannabifolia is a traditional Chinese medicine which exhibits anti-inflammatory effect. This study aimed to investigate the inhibitory effect of main phenolic acid components of J. cannabifolia on inflammation caused by PM2.5. Effect of PM2.5 on cell activity and apoptosis were determined by MTT, flow cytometry and calcein AM/PI staining. PHBA, PHPAA, and mixture of PHBA and PHPAA of different concentrations were given to RAW264.7 cells pretreated with PM2.5. The effect of drugs on cellular inflammatory factors was detected by ELISA. The expressions of TLRs related signal pathway at protein and gene levels were detected by western blot and qRT-PCR. The results showed that PM2.5 had no effect on cell activity and apoptosis within the determined concentration range. PHBA and PHPAA could markly inhibit the level of IL-1ß, IL-6, and TNF-α in RAW264.7 cells. Furthermore, the expressions of TLR2, TLR4, MyD88, IRAK1, TRAF6, TAK1, IKKß, and NF-κB induced by PM2.5 were markedly inhibited by PHBA and PHPAA at protein and gene levels. This study demonstrated that PHBA and PHPAA could attenuated inflammation caused by PM2.5 through suppressing TLRs related signal pathway.

Social attention triggered by eye gaze and walking direction is resistant to temporal decay.

The attentional orienting induced by social cues, such as eye gaze and walking direction of biological motion, plays a vital role in human survival and interpersonal interactions. It has long been debated whether this indispensable ability is unique and intrinsically distinct from nonsocial attention. In the current study, we characterized the temporal profiles of the attentional orienting triggered by social cues (i.e., eye gaze and walking direction) and compared them with those induced by nonsocial cues (i.e., arrows) and exogenous cues using a covert orienting task. We calculated the attentional cuing effects in the early and the late periods of the task and further carried out a time course analysis to characterize their dynamic changes over trials. Whereas the cuing effect induced by nonsocial cues exhibited a significant trend of temporal decay, the cuing effects induced by the two different social cues were similar and remained stable throughout the task, resembling that induced by reflexive exogenous cues. These results clearly demonstrate that the socially coordinated attentional orienting is a highly reflexive and temporally stable response, which is less susceptible to top-down cognitive control and substantially distinguished from the attentional orienting induced by nonsocial cues. These findings extend our understandings of the distinction between social and nonsocial attention and further substantiate the specificity of social attentional orienting from a temporal-stability perspective. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Wound-healing promoting effect of total tannins from Entada phaseoloides (L.) Merr. in rats.

The healing of wounds has always provided challenges for the medical community whether chronic or acute. Modern and traditional medicine has proved that herbal medicine shown superiority over chemical drugs. Herein, we report an Entada phaseoloides (L.) Merr. extract with a total tannin content of 76.18% showed wound-healing promoting effect in rat model. We found significantly accelerated wound closure already on day 7 in animals treated with total Entada phaseoloides (L.) Merr. tannins (TEPT) as compared to vaseline treated controls (p<0.05). At day 15, histologically, the wounds in animals treated with TEPT were completely closed as compared to controls. In vitro, TEPT promotes fibroblast proliferation and migration into wounds of NIH3T3 with concentration range of 9.38-37.50µg/ml. TEPT also had an inhibitory action against Staphylococcus aureus with MBC of 1.5mg/ml and the result was further proved by transmission electron microscope. Thus, TEPT could promote wound shrinkage, improve healing rate and promote healing of infectious wounds in rats. And this effect may due to antibacterial activities and NIH3T3 cell pro-proliferative effect of the tannins compounds, which indicating that TEPT can be used as efficient treatment in traumatic injury.