Quercetin influences intestinal dysbacteriosis and delays alveolar epithelial cell senescence by regulating PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling in pulmonary fibrosis.

Pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic and progressive lung disease with high mortality. This study aims to explore the protective mechanism of quercetin against pulmonary fibrosis regarding cell senescence and gut microbiota. Rats were intratracheally injected with bleomycin (BLM) to establish a pulmonary fibrosis rat model. RLE-6TN cells were stimulated with BLM to build the model of alveolar epithelial cell senescence, and RLE-6TN-derived conditional medium (CM) was harvested to further culture fibroblasts. Histopathological changes were assessed by H&E and Masson staining. α-SMA expression was assessed by immunofluorescence assay. Senescence-associated ß-galactosidase (SA-ß-gal) staining and senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) cytokine assay were conducted to assess cellular senescence. Gut microbiota was analyzed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The fibrosis-, senescence-, and PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling-related proteins were examined by western blot. In BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis rats, quercetin exerted its protective effects by reducing histological injury and collagen deposition, lessening cellular senescence, and regulating gut microbiota. In BLM-induced alveolar epithelial cell senescence, quercetin inhibited senescence, lessened SASP cytokine secretion of alveolar epithelial cells, and further ameliorated collagen deposition in fibroblasts. In addition, quercetin might exert its functional effects by regulating the PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Moreover, quercetin regulated intestinal dysbacteriosis in BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis rats, especially boosting the abundance of Akkermansia. To conclude, our findings provide an in-depth understanding of the potential mechanism behind the protective role of quercetin against pulmonary fibrosis.

YOLO-SCL: a lightweight detection model for citrus psyllid based on spatial channel interaction.

Efficient and accurate detection and providing early warning for citrus psyllids is crucial as they are the primary vector of citrus huanglongbing. In this study, we created a dataset comprising images of citrus psyllids in natural environments and proposed a lightweight detection model based on the spatial channel interaction. First, the YOLO-SCL model was based on the YOLOv5s architecture, which uses an efficient channel attention module to perform local channel attention on the inputs in the recursive gated convolutional modules to achieve a combination of global spatial and local channel interactions, improving the model's ability to express the features of the critical regions of small targets. Second, the lightweight design of the 21st layer C3 module in the neck network of the YOLO-SCL model and the small target feature information were retained to the maximum extent by deleting the two convolutional layers, whereas the number of parameters was reduced to improve the detection accuracy of the model. Third, with the detection accuracy of the YOLO-SCL model as the objective function, the black widow optimization algorithm was used to optimize the hyperparameters of the YOLO-SCL model, and the iterative mechanism of swarm intelligence was used to further improve the model performance. The experimental results showed that the YOLO-SCL model achieved a mAP@0.5 of 97.07% for citrus psyllids, which was 1.18% higher than that achieved using conventional YOLOv5s model. Meanwhile, the number of parameters and computation amount of the YOLO-SCL model are 6.92 M and 15.5 GFlops, respectively, which are 14.25% and 2.52% lower than those of the conventional YOLOv5s model. In addition, after using the black widow optimization algorithm to optimize the hyperparameters, the mAP@0.5 of the YOLO-SCL model for citrus psyllid improved to 97.18%, making it more suitable for the natural environments in which citrus psyllids are to be detected. The experimental results showed that the YOLO-SCL model has good detection accuracy for citrus psyllids, and the model was ported to the Jetson AGX Xavier edge computing platform, with an average processing time of 38.8 ms for a single-frame image and a power consumption of 16.85 W. This study provides a new technological solution for the safety of citrus production.

Genetic association of telomere length, obesity and tobacoo smoking with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis risk.

BACKGROUND: Due to the inadequacy of published evidence, association of telomere length (TL), obesity and tobacco smoking with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) remains unclear. The aim of the study was to explore whether these exposures genetically affected the risk of the disease. METHODS: Genetic variants from genome-wide association studies for TL, body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage (BFP) and tobacco smoking (including maternal smoking) were used as instrumental variables. Inverse-variance weighted were mainly adopted to determine the genetic association of these exposures with IPF. All analyses were conducted by R-software (version 3.6.1). RESULTS: Firstly, longer TL was associated with the decreased risk of IPF (OR = 0.475 per SD increase in TL, 95%CI = 0.336 ~ 0.670, P<0.001). Secondly, higher levels of BMI and BFP were related to the increased risk of the disease (OR = 1.425 per SD increase in BMI level, 95%CI = 1.114 ~ 1.823, P = 0.005; OR = 1.702 per SD increase in BFP level, 95%CI = 1.202 ~ 2.409, P = 0.003). Thirdly, maternal smoking was implicated in the increased risk of the disease (OR = 13.183 per SD increase in the prevalence of maternal smoking, 95%CI = 1.820 ~ 95.484, P = 0.011). CONCLUSION: TL should be a genetic risk factor for IPF. Obesity and exposure to tobacco smoking as a fetus might also contribute to the development of this fibrotic diseases. These findings should be verified by future studies.

Investigation of the flocculating activity of oyster shell powders on Microcystis aeruginosa with varying particle size and mechanical conditions.

Harmful algal blooms have been a serious environmental problem. The flocculation of Microcystis aeruginosa by oyster shell powders prepared by aerobic calcination (CO), anaerobic calcination (CN), acidification anaerobic calcination (CAN), and deacetylation anaerobic calcination (CHN) was studied. The CO800 (100 mesh) and CN800 (160 mesh) presented the highest flocculation rate of 89.46% and 77.39% when they were stirred for 1 min with speed of 750 r/min and 250 r/min, respectively. The photosynthesis and viability of the algae cells flocculated by CO800 with particle size of 100 mesh were not significantly damaged. The phosphorus nutrient could be removed by CO800 and CN800 effectively due to the presence of Ca2+, which also limited Microcystis aeruginosa growth. The study showed that the processing of oyster shell powder could be used as an effective flocculating material.

BiPO4-coated carbon microtube electrodes: preparation and characterization of their properties and electrocatalytic degradation of methylene blue.

Bismuth phosphate (BiPO4), a very attractive candidate for organics electrodegradation, harbors tremendous potential on removing contaminants from water. Here, four carbon microtube electrodes were prepared from corncob, each coated with BiPO4 by a different method to study the electrodegradation of methylene blue (MB). A thorough insight into the composite features of four electrodes was characterized. Better reversibility and electrocatalytic activity of the fourth electrode (BCC4) prepared by digital signal generator was presented with a current density of 5.71 mA cm-2 at a potential of 1.6 V vs Ag/AgCl. The electrochemical impedances and actual lifetime of BCC4 were 125 Ω and 833 h, respectively. The effectiveness of each kind of BiPO4/carbon electrode was preliminarily evaluated by analyzing the actual conversion rate of the MB concentration, which confirms MB electrodegradation by the BiPO4/carbon electrode was mainly dominated by the hydroxyl radical oxidation. The mass transfer rate was increased by carbon microtube; thereby, electrocatalysis of BiPO4/carbon electrode increased as revealed by an increase in the MB degradation rate. The rate constants k obtained for the degradation of MB by BiPO4/carbon electrode at 20 â„ƒ was 0.0046 mM-1 s-1, which was 11 times than that of BiPO4. The diffusion layer was decreased by carbon microtube, resulting in MB electrodegradation rate increased. The BiPO4 coated on the surface of the carbon microtube electrodes strengthened their electrocatalytic performance, which shed new light on effective selection of suitable carbon electrode for degradation of organics. Therefore, BiPO4/carbon electrode could be potentially applied in the electrodegradation of organic pollutants.

Contribution of Adiponectin/Carnitine Palmityl Transferase 1A-Mediated Fatty Acid Metabolism during the Development of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic progressive interstitial lung disease that leads rapidly to death. The present study is aimed at discovering the in-depth pathogenesis of IPF, exploring the role of adiponectin/carnitine palmityl transferase 1A- (APN/CPT1A-) mediated fatty acid metabolism during the development of IPF, and excavating its potential mechanism. Here, THP-1 cells were differentiated into M0 macrophages, followed by polarization to M1 macrophages upon hypoxia. Subsequently, lung fibroblast HFL-1 cells were stimulated by M1 macrophages to simulate hypoxia-related IPF condition in vitro. It was discovered that the stimulation of M1 macrophages promoted fibroblast proliferation and fibrosis formation in vitro, accompanied with a disorder of the APN/CPT1A pathway, an overproduction of lipid peroxides, and a low level of autophagy in HFL-1 cells. Thereafter, APN treatment or CPT1A overexpression greatly suppressed above lipid peroxide accumulation, fibroblast proliferation, and fibrosis but activated autophagy in vitro. Furthermore, an in vivo IPF rat model was established by injection of bleomycin (BLM). Consistently, CPT1A overexpression exerted a protective role against pulmonary fibrosis in vivo; however, the antifibrosis property of CPT1A was partly abolished by 3-methyladenine (an autophagy inhibitor). In summary, APN/CPT1A-mediated fatty acid metabolism exerted its protective role in IPF partly through activating autophagy, shedding a new prospective for the treatment of IPF.

Quasi-Distributed Temperature and Strain Sensors Based on Series-Integrated Fiber Bragg Gratings.

Two types of series-integrated fiber Bragg gratings (SI-FBGs), i.e., strong and weak SI-FBGs, were inscribed in a standard single-mode fiber (SMF) using the femtosecond laser point-by-point technology. In the SI-FBGs inscribing system, the grating pitch of each FBG and the distance between the two adjacent FBGs in the SI-FBGs can be flexibly controlled by adjusting the inscription parameters. The strong SI-FBGs with different grating pitches and the weak SI-FBGs with an identical grating pitch were employed to successfully measure the temperature distribution in a tube furnace and the strain distribution on a cantilever beam, respectively. A high spatial resolution of less than 1 mm was achieved during the distributed temperature sensing experiment. Moreover, the spatial resolution could be improved by decreasing the distance between the two adjacent FBGs, i.e., decreasing the FBG length and the space between the two adjacent FBGs. Hence, the inscribed high-quality SI-FBGs have great potential to be developed as various quasi-distributed sensors with a high spatial resolution.

Efficacy and safety of pirfenidone in the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.

OBJECTIVES: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has been defined as a distinctive type of chronic fibrotic disease, characterised by a progressive decline in lung function and a common histological pattern of interstitial pneumonia. To analyse the efficacy and safety of pirfenidone in the treatment of IPF, a systematic review and meta-analysis was performed. DESIGN: This is a meta-analysis study. PARTICIPANTS: Patients were diagnosed as IPF. INTERVENTIONS: Use of pirfenidone. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME: Progression-free survival (PFS), acute exacerbation and worsening of IPF and Impact on adverse events. MEASURES: The inverse variance method for the random-effects model was used to summarise the dichotomous outcomes, risk ratios and 95% CIs. RESULTS: A total of 9 randomised controlled trials with 1011 participants receiving pirfenidone and 912 controls receiving placebo were summarised. The pooled result suggested a statistically significant difference inall-cause mortality after pirfenidone use, with a summarised relative ratio of 0.51 (p<0.01). Longer PFS was observed in patients receiving pirfenidone compared with those who were given placebo (p<0.01). The IPF groups presented a high incidence of adverse events with a pooled relative ratio of 3.89 (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Pirfenidone can provide survival benefit for patients with IPF. Pirfenidone treatment was also associated with a longer PFS, a lower incidence of acute exacerbation and worsening of IPF.

Low short-wavelength loss fiber Bragg gratings inscribed in a small-core fiber by femtosecond laser point-by-point technology.

A femtosecond-laser-induced fiber Bragg grating (FBG) usually has a higher insertion loss at the shorter wavelength than at the reflection wavelength, i.e., so-called short-wavelength loss. High-quality FBGs are inscribed in different types of small-core single-mode fibers (SMFs) by the use of femtosecond laser point-by-point technology in order to investigate the effect of the fiber core diameter on the grating inscription efficiency and on the short-wavelength loss. A lower laser pulse energy is required to achieve the same grating reflectivity in a smaller-core fiber than in a large-core fiber. The short-wavelength loss of the small-core FBG is lower than that of the large-core FBG with the same reflectivity. Furthermore, a series of FBGs with a low short-wavelength loss are inscribed in a small-core SMF along the fiber axis to achieve so-called series-integrated FBGs (SI-FBGs). Finally, the effect of the input light direction on the reflection peak of the SI-FBGs is investigated to reduce the influence of the grating short-wavelength loss in the sensing and communication applications.

Transverse-load, strain, temperature, and torsion sensors based on a helical photonic crystal fiber.

In this Letter, we demonstrate a fabrication method of a helical photonic crystal fiber (HPCF) and an inflated HPCF (IHPCF) by use of an inflation-assisted hydrogen-oxygen flame heating technique. The transverse load, strain, temperature, and mechanical torsion properties of the HPCF and IHPCF were investigated experimentally to develop high-sensitivity sensors. The experimental results show that the transverse-load sensitivity could be greatly enhanced by means of enlarging the size of the air holes in the IHPCF; that is, the transverse-load sensitivity, i.e., 15.50 nm/(N·mm-1), of the IHPCF is two times higher than the transverse-load sensitivity of the HPCF, i.e., 4.45 nm/(N·mm-1). Moreover, both the HPCF and IHPCF exhibit high strain, temperature, and torsion sensitivities. Hence, such an HPCF/IHPCF could have great potential in sensing applications.

Feasible and effective reuse of municipal sludge for vegetation restoration: physiochemical characteristics and microbial diversity.

The large volume of municipal sludge causes environmental problems in cities worldwide. In this study, municipal sludge, mixed with construction waste residue, was used as substrate to plant Ailanthus altissima. The growth of A. altissima, the substrate characteristics, and substrate microbial diversity were measured to investigate potential recycling and reusing pathways of municipal sludge. The obtained results showed that compared to garden soil, the mixed substrate was weakly alkaline, and had higher nutrient contents, which is beneficial for A. altissima, and results in better growth in mixed substrate. Although the contents of the main heavy metals in the mixed substrate were significantly higher than in garden soil, the values met the criterion of Class II soil in the Environmental Quality Standard for the Soils of China (GB15618-1995). Different substrates showed a variety of microbial diversities. Proteobacteria was the top microbial phylum in all samples, and higher relative abundances were found in samples containing municipal sludge. After growing A. altissima, the relative abundances of Acidobacteria and Gemmatimonadetes increased in the mixed substrate. Therefore, addition of construction waste residue and growth of A. altissima caused a difference. The microbial communities in the mixed substrate with A. altissima are both plant friendly and environmentally friendly. These results suggest this mixed substrate as a potentially feasible and effective pathway for the reuse and recycling of municipal sludge for vegetation restoration.

Residual-stress-induced helical long period fiber gratings for sensing applications.

We demonstrate a high-efficiency grating fabrication system, which can be used to inscribe a high-quality helical long period fiber grating (HLPFG) on single-mode fiber by means of hydrogen-oxygen flame. Such the HLPFG can be produced in enormous quantities with a uniform grating parameters and good reproducibility of grating inscription. Possible mechanisms for refractive index modulation in the HLPFG can be attributed to residual stress concentration by solidifying the periodic twisting stress under a fused status of optical fiber. Moreover, the HLPFG exhibits an excellence performance of high temperature sensing with a high sensitivity of ~132.8 pm/°C and a measuring range from room temperature to 900 °C. Comparing to the traditional LPFG fabricated by CO2 laser or arc discharge technique, the HLPFG has a low the bending and tensile strain sensitivity of 1.94 nm/(1/m) and 1.41 pm/µÎµ, respectively. So the proposed HLPFG could have a great potential in special applications as optical high-temperature sensors.