The Uptake and Distribution Evidence of Nano-and Microplastics in vivo after a Single High Dose of Oral Exposure

Objective Tissue uptake and distribution of nano-/microplastics was studied at a single high dose by gavage in vivo.Methods Fluorescent microspheres(100 nm,3μm,and 10μm)were given once at a dose of 200 mg/(kg∙body weight).The fluorescence intensity(FI)in observed organs was measured using the IVIS Spectrum at 0.5,1,2,and 4 h after administration.Histopathology was performed to corroborate these findings.Results In the 100 nm group,the FI of the stomach and small intestine were highest at 0.5 h,and the FI of the large intestine,excrement,lung,kidney,liver,and skeletal muscles were highest at 4 h compared with the control group(P<0.05).In the 3μm group,the FI only increased in the lung at 2 h(P<0.05).In the 10μm group,the FI increased in the large intestine and excrement at 2 h,and in the kidney at 4 h(P<0.05).The presence of nano-/microplastics in tissues was further verified by histopathology.The peak time of nanoplastic absorption in blood was confirmed.Conclusion Nanoplastics translocated rapidly to observed organs/tissues through blood circulation;however,only small amounts of MPs could penetrate the organs.

Emotion Recognition with Capsule Neural Network

For human-machine communication to be as effective as human-tohuman communication, research on speech emotion recognition is essential.Among the models and the classifiers used to recognize emotions, neural networks appear to be promising due to the network’s ability to learn and the diversity in configuration. Following the convolutional neural network, a capsuleneural network (CapsNet) with inputs and outputs that are not scalar quantitiesbut vectors allows the network to determine the part-whole relationships thatare specific 6 for an object. This paper performs speech emotion recognition basedon CapsNet. The corpora for speech emotion recognition have been augmented byadding white noise and changing voices. The feature parameters of the recognition system input are mel spectrum images along with the characteristics of thesound source, vocal tract and prosody. For the German emotional corpus EMODB, the average accuracy score for 4 emotions, neutral, boredom, anger and happiness, is 99.69%. For Vietnamese emotional corpus BKEmo, this score is94.23% for 4 emotions, neutral, sadness, anger and happiness. The accuracy scoreis highest when combining all the above feature parameters, and this scoreincreases significantly when combining mel spectrum images with the featuresdirectly related to the fundamental frequency.

Assessing structural integrity of the pyramidal tracts with difusion spectrum imaging to predict postoperative motor function in pediatric epilepsy patients with hemispherectomy

Background:Hemispherectomy is an efective treatment option for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy caused by hemispheric lesions.However,patients often have deterioration of their motor functions postoperatively.Difusion spectrum imaging(DSI)was reliable in presenting the natural shape of the white matter fbers.At the same time,the natural sprawl pyramid tract(PT)might be more intuitive for predicting postoperative motor functions.Therefore,we assessed the motor functions by the natural shape revealed by DSI tractography.Methods:Ten children with drug-resistant epilepsy who were candidates for hemispherectomy performed DSI PTs tractography and transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS)for motor mapping.The motor function was evaluated with muscle strength and hand grasping capability.Pyramidal tract(PT)structural integrity and TMS mapping results were compared between patients who remained stable and those with deteriorated motor functions.Receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curves with PTs asymmetric ratio were analyzed to evaluate DSI tractography diagnostic value.Results:All patients underwent DSI acquisition,while four patients successfully performed TMS.One patient had no response to TMS until the maximal machine output was reached.Four patients failed to perform TMS due to lacking cooperation.One patient was contraindicated to TMS.DSI successfully reconstructed the sharp angle fan-shaped PTs within the hemisphere.The accurate fber distribution with fber termination and thickness within the lesioned hemisphere was replicated with DSI tractography.No signifcance was found in patients’age,sex,seizure frequency,or medication between patients with stable or deteriorated postoperative motor functions.DSI efectively predicted postoperative motor function as stable with damaged PTs,mild deterioration with atrophied PTs,and intact PTs with contralateral innervation confrmed by intracranial stimulation.The area under the curve(AUC)of DSI tractography was 0.84.According to ROC,the cut-of value of PTs asymmetric ratio was 11.5%with 100%sensitivity and 75%specifcity.The sensitivity and specifcity of TMS were 2/3 and 1/2,respectively.Conclusions:The anatomic integrity of PTs with DSI tractography could efectively predict postoperative motor function after hemispherectomy.This enables neurosurgeons to inform patients and relatives about postoperative motor functions with direct morphological evidence of PTs to help them with their surgical decisions.

Fusion of visible and thermal images for facial expression recognition

Most present research into facial expression recognition focuses on the visible spectrum, which is sen- sitive to illumination change. In this paper, we focus on in- tegrating thermal infrared data with visible spectrum images for spontaneous facial expression recognition. First, the ac- tive appearance model AAM parameters and three defined head motion features are extracted from visible spectrum im- ages, and several thermal statistical features are extracted from infrared （IR） images. Second, feature selection is per- formed using the F-test statistic. Third, Bayesian networks BNs and support vector machines SVMs are proposed for both decision-level and feature-level fusion. Experiments on the natural visible and infrared facial expression （NVIE） spontaneous database show the effectiveness of the proposed methods, and demonstrate thermal 1R images＇ supplementary role for visible facial expression recognition.

Candidate Biomarkers in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review of MRI Studies

Searching for effective biomarkers is one of the most challenging tasks in the research ？eld of Autism Spectrum Disorder（ASD）. Magnetic resonance imaging（MRI） provides a non-invasive and powerful tool for investigating changes in the structure, function, maturation,connectivity, and metabolism of the brain of children with ASD. Here, we review the more recent MRI studies in young children with ASD, aiming to provide candidate biomarkers for the diagnosis of childhood ASD. The review covers structural imaging methods, diffusion tensor imaging, resting-state functional MRI, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Future advances in neuroimaging techniques, as well as cross-disciplinary studies and largescale collaborations will be needed for an integrated approach linking neuroimaging, genetics, and phenotypic data to allow the discovery of new, effective biomarkers.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment in AIDS patients

Background The pathological abnormalities of the AIDS patients lie in the subcortical regions of the brain, specifically the deep white matter and basal ganglia, while the extent of pathology generally correlates with the severity of cognitive impairments in the white matter and basal ganglia. Brain metabolite changes of these lesions can reflect the pathological abnormalities. The purpose of this study was to assess the value of magnetic resonance spectroscopy （MRS） in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment in AIDS patients.Methods 3.0T MR was used to measure N-acetyl aspartate （NAA）, choline （Cho）, myo-inositol （MI） and creatinine （Cr）in the frontal white matter, basal ganglia and parietal cortex of 21 AIDS patients with dementia complex （ADC）, 19 AIDS patients with neuroasymptomatic （NAS） and 20 seronegative （SN） controls. Then we compared the difference of metabolic rate between AIDS patients and SN groups.Results NAA/Cr （mean=1.2502, SD=0.1600） was significantly decreased and Cho/Cr （mean=1.2028, SD=1.1655） was increased in the frontal white matter in ADC group, while NAA/Cr （mean=1.5334, SD=0.0513） was reduced in NAS group when compared with SN group. NANCr in the basal ganglia was decreased in both ADC and NAS groups （mean=1.2625,SD=0.1615 and mean=1.5278, SD=0.0380, respectively）. Cho/Cr （mean=1. 1631, SD=0.0981） was markedly increased in ADC group. Although NAA/Cr, Cho/Cr and MI/Cr in the parietal cortex had a certain change in both ADC and NAS groups compared with SN group, the differences were not statistically significant.Conclusions The brain metabolite changes of AIDS patients are correlated with cognitive impairments. MRS can be used as a valuable inspection method to assess cognitive impairments in AIDS patients.

Ghost imaging for online angiography

Ghost imaging(GI) has characteristics that make it promising for applications in life sciences and other fields, such as its high sensitivity and strong anti-interference compared with traditional imaging. This paper presents a new approach for online angiography using GI. Two signals are correlation-calculated to detect the object image: one of them is the random light field generated by a computer, and the other enters the optical fiber path after being transmitted to the detected object via a modulator. A new approach for the real-time imaging of intravascular flow, vascular wall structures, and components of atherosclerotic plaque is proposed, which has the advantages of a high sensitivity and anti-interference.