Application of cell membrane-functionalized biomimetic nanoparticles in the treatment of glioma.

Glioma is one of the most common malignant tumors with characteristics of strong invasion and high postoperative recurrence rate, which seriously threatens human health. Nanoparticles as an emerging drug delivery system have promoted the development of glioma therapy. However, blocking of nanoparticles by the blood-brain barrier is still serious problem for the use of nanoparticles in glioma therapy. In this context, traditional nanoparticles are dressed with natural cell membranes to prepare biomimetic nanoparticles. Biomimetic nanoparticles show longer blood circulation time, excellent homologous targeting and outstanding immune escape capacity, which significantly improve the accumulation of nanoparticles at the tumor site. The therapeutic effect for glioma has been raised to an advanced level. This review focuses on the preparations and applications of cell membrane-functionalized biomimetic nanoparticles, as while as the advantages and problems of biomimetic nanoparticles in the treatment of glioma. In particular, the approach of using biomimetic nanoparticles to cross the blood-brain barrier is analyzed, in the hope of providing new ideas for further developments in crossing the blood-brain barrier and in glioma therapy.

A novel ensemble learning method for crop leaf disease recognition.

Deep learning models have been widely applied in the field of crop disease recognition. There are various types of crops and diseases, each potentially possessing distinct and effective features. This brings a great challenge to the generalization performance of recognition models and makes it very difficult to build a unified model capable of achieving optimal recognition performance on all kinds of crops and diseases. In order to solve this problem, we have proposed a novel ensemble learning method for crop leaf disease recognition (named ELCDR). Unlike the traditional voting strategy of ensemble learning, ELCDR assigns different weights to the models based on their feature extraction performance during ensemble learning. In ELCDR, the models' feature extraction performance is measured by the distribution of the feature vectors of the training set. If a model could distinguish more feature differences between different categories, then it receives a higher weight during ensemble learning. We conducted experiments on the disease images of four kinds of crops. The experimental results show that in comparison to the optimal single model recognition method, ELCDR improves by as much as 1.5 (apple), 0.88 (corn), 2.25 (grape), and 1.5 (rice) percentage points in accuracy. Compared with the voting strategy of ensemble learning, ELCDR improves by as much as 1.75 (apple), 1.25 (corn), 0.75 (grape), and 7 (rice) percentage points in accuracy in each case. Additionally, ELCDR also has improvements on precision, recall, and F1 measure metrics. These experiments provide evidence of the effectiveness of ELCDR in the realm of crop leaf disease recognition.

Influence of birthweight and delivery mode on obesity among primary school students in Guangzhou / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To explore the influence of birthweight and delivery mode on overweight/obesity and abdominal obesity in primary school students, and to provide evidence for childhood obesity prevention.@*Methods@#After physical examination, questionnaire survey was conducted among 3 361 students and their parents from 3 primary schools in Guangzhou selected through stratified clustering sampling. Information about birthweight and delivery mode was collected. Logistic regression model was used to analyze the association of birthweight and delivery mode with overweight/obesity and abdominal obesity. The multiplicative interaction term and the Delta method was used to explore the potential interaction.@*Results@#The prevalence rate of overweight and obesity for primary school students was 21.33%, and the rate of abdominal obesity was 12.08%. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that delivery by cesarean section was associated with 44% increased risk of overweight/obesity(OR=1.44, 95%CI=1.16-1.80), as compared to vaginal delivery. Higher birthweight was linked to increased risk of overweight/obesity(OR=1.62, 95%CI=1.09-2.42). There was no significant association of birth weight and delivery mode with abdominal obesity in multivariate analysis(P>0.05). Additionally, a positive additive interaction was seen between delivery mode and parental obesity for students risk of overweight/obesity(RERI=0.33, 95%CI=0.02-0.65), as well as for the risk of abdominal obesity(RERI=0.39, 95%CI=0.12-0.65).@*Conclusion@#Cesarean section delivery and higher birthweight are linked to increased risk of overweight and obesity in primary school students. The synergistic effect of cesarean section and parental obesity may increase the risk of childhood obesity.

Effects of maternal passive smoking during pregnancy and girls’ overweight / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To investigate the effect of maternal passive smoking during pregnancy and girls’ overweight /obesity on the age at menarche(AAM), and to provide a reference for improving healthy development of children and adolescents.@*Methods@#Based on the school entrance physical examination in 2016, a cross-section study was conducted by convenient sampling method, in a total of 2 722 students of 7th grade, from 26 middle schools in urban areas of Guangzhou. Multivariate logistic regression model was used to investigate the relationship between maternal passive smoking during pregnancy and girls’ overweight /obesity and AAM. A four-way decomposition method was used to explore the mediated effect of girls’ overweight/obesity on the relationship between maternal passive smoking during pregnancy and AAM.@*Results@#The proportion of girls who had menstruate was 90.82%(2 472/2 722). The median AAM was 12.00 years old, with an early menarche rate of 34.91%(863/2 472). Compared with girls whose mother hadn’t passive smoking during pregnancy, the risk of early AAM in girls with mother passive smoking during pregnancy≤3 days/week increased by 32%(OR=1.32, 95%CI=1.06-1.65), the risk in girls with maternal passive smoking during pregnancy>3 days/week increased by 58%(OR=1.58, 95%CI=1.21-2.07). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that, overweight or obesity girls had a 77% higher risk of early AAM than non-overweight/obesity girls(OR=1.77, 95%CI=1.36-2.31). The four-way decomposition analysis showed 79.60% of early AAM risk could be accounted by maternal passive smoking during pregnancy(P<0.01).@*Conclusion@#Girls’ overweight/obesity and maternal passive smoking during pregnancy were associated with early menarche. The effect on daughters’ age at menarche is mainly in a direct effect manner of maternal passive smoking during pregnancy.

Inhibition of water activated by far infrared functional ceramics on proliferation of hepatoma cells.

Rare earth (RE)/tourmaline composite materials prepared by the precipitation method are added to the ceramic raw materials at a certain percentage and sintered into RE functional ceramics with high far infrared emission features. Then the far infrared functional ceramics are used to interact with water. The influence of the ceramics on the physical parameters of water is investigated, and the effect of the activated water on the growth of Bel-7402 hepatoma cells cultured in vitro is further studied. The results indicate that, compared with the raw water, the water activated by the ceramics can inhibit the proliferation of hepatoma cells, with statistical probability P < 0.01, which means that the effect is significant. It can be explained that the water activated by the ceramics has a higher concentration of H+, which decreases the potential difference across the cell membrane to release the apoptosis inducing factor (AIF). After entering the cells, the activated water stimulates the mitochondria to produce immune substances that lead tumor cells to apoptosis.

Comparative genomic sequence analysis between a standard challenge strain and a vaccine strain of duck enteritis virus in China.

Here, we present the complete genomic sequence of the Chinese standard challenge strain (CSC) of duck enteritis virus (DEV), which was isolated in China in 1962. The DEV CSC genome is 162,131 bp long and contains 78 predicted open reading frames (ORFs). Comparison of the genomic sequences of DEV CSC and DEV live vaccine strain K at passage 63 (DEV K p63) revealed that the DEV CSC genome is 4,040 bp longer than the DEV K p63 genome, mainly because of 3,513-bp and 528-bp insertions at the 5' and 3' ends of the unique long segment, respectively. At the nucleotide level, 63 of the 76 ORFs in the DEV CSC genome were 100 % identical to the ORFs in the DEV K p63 genome. Two ORFs (UL56 and US10) had frameshift mutations in the C-terminal regions, while LORF5 was unique to the DEV K p63 genome. It is difficult to assign attenuated virulence to changes in specific genes. However, the complete DEV CSC genome will further advance our understanding of the genes involved in virulence and evolution. The DEV CSC genome sequence has been deposited in GenBank under accession number JQ673560.