Association between serum copper level and reproductive health of Women in the United States: a cross-sectional study.

Copper is an indispensable trace element in metabolism. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between copper and reproductive health, and possibly provide new insights for diagnosis and treatment. This study was based on data extracted from the NHANES database (2013-2014 and 2015-2016). The t-test, ANOVA, Chi-square test, multiple linear regression, and restricted cubic spline analysis were used. Serum copper levels were significantly higher in women with gestational diabetes than in those without gestational diabetes (P = 0.0150). Women with higher copper levels and smoking habits tended to deliver overweight babies (P = 0.028). Women with diabetes had higher serum copper and were prone to deliver overweight babies (P = 0.024). Serum copper levels showed a positive relationship with sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) levels (P < 0.0001). In this study, serum copper levels were found to be associated with reproductive health in women. Further studies are required to draw causal inferences.

Arbutin Ameliorates Murine Colitis by Inhibiting JAK2 Signaling Pathway.

Background and objective: Abnormal activation of Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) promotes the pathogenesis and progress of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) by stimulating the cytokine traffic. Based on docking studies, arbutin, a natural product extracted from a traditional medicinal plant bearberry, was found to bind to JAK2. The study aimed to investigate the effects and mechanisms of regulating JAK2 by arbutin on colitis in mice. Methods: A mice colitis model was established to mimic human IBD. The mice freely drank water containing dextran sulfate sodium. Inflammation in epithelial (IEC6) and immune (RAW264.7) cells was analyzed following treatment with lipopolysaccharides (LPS). Results: Colitis symptoms, including body weight loss, increased disease activity index, and increased colon weight/length ratio, were significantly alleviated by arbutin. Mediators of colonic pro-inflammatory cytokines as well as apoptosis markers in colitis were suppressed by the glycoside. High expression of phosphorylated JAK2 in colitis was significantly reversed by arbutin. The effects of arbutin treatment on colitis were considerably inhibited by the JAK2 inhibitor AG490. LPS-induced inflammatory responses were also suppressed by arbutin, which was notably inhibited by the JAK2 inhibitor AG490. Conclusion: The findings obtained herein suggest the protective role of arbutin and provide novel insights into alternative colitis treatments, which involve inhibition of the JAK2 signaling pathway.

On-chip generation of the reconfigurable orbital angular momentum with high order.

In this manuscript, the generation of an optical vortex beam with high order and reconfigurable orbital angular momentum (OAM) is studied. Multi-waveguide holographic gratings (MWHG) are deployed to generate OAM beams with high order. The generation of the OAM beam with an order l from +4 to +8 is demonstrated by numerical simulations, and the generated OAM order is manipulable and configurable by incident phase. The working bandwidths of the MWHG for different OAM orders are at the level of 40 nm. This work could provide valuable references for practical implementation of OAM in integrated optics.

A Study on Arrhythmia via ECG Signal Classification Using the Convolutional Neural Network.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death today. The current identification method of the diseases is analyzing the Electrocardiogram (ECG), which is a medical monitoring technology recording cardiac activity. Unfortunately, looking for experts to analyze a large amount of ECG data consumes too many medical resources. Therefore, the method of identifying ECG characteristics based on machine learning has gradually become prevalent. However, there are some drawbacks to these typical methods, requiring manual feature recognition, complex models, and long training time. This paper proposes a robust and efficient 12-layer deep one-dimensional convolutional neural network on classifying the five micro-classes of heartbeat types in the MIT- BIH Arrhythmia database. The five types of heartbeat features are classified, and wavelet self-adaptive threshold denoising method is used in the experiments. Compared with BP neural network, random forest, and other CNN networks, the results show that the model proposed in this paper has better performance in accuracy, sensitivity, robustness, and anti-noise capability. Its accurate classification effectively saves medical resources, which has a positive effect on clinical practice.

Reconfigurable vortex beam generator based on the Fourier transformation principle.

A method to generate the optical vortex beam with arbitrary superposition of orbital angular momentum (OAM) on photonic chip is proposed. The components of different OAMs can be controlled by the phases of incident light based on the Fourier transformation principle. A typical device composed of nine Fourier holographic gratings is illustrated, where the OAMs of the generated optical vortex beam can be controlled on-demand from -2nd to 2nd and the working bandwidth is about 80 nm. Our work provides a feasible method to manipulate the vortex beam or detect arbitrary superposition of OAMs in the integrated photonics.