Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been widely investigated to repair injured cartilage tissues for the treatment of arthritis. Despite these great efforts, the difficulty in the spatiotemporal control of delivered cells has limited the further clinical development with rapid clearance. Here, we developed injectable hyaluronate (HA) hydrogels to encapsulate MSCs for controlled cartilage tissue regeneration based on the supramolecular chemistry between βcyclodextrin-modified HA (HA-CD) and adamantane (Ad)-modified HA (HA-Ad). Supramolecular HA hydrogels exhibited remarkable mechanical characteristics such as shear thinning and self-healing with a high cell viability of encapsulated MSCs. The spatiotemporally controlled delivery of MSCs from the supramolecular HA hydrogels resulted in the statistically significant chondrogenic differentiation and extracellular matrix deposition in vitro and in vivo. We could confirm the notable cartilage tissue regeneration in cartilage defect model rats after treatment with supramolecular HA hydrogels encapsulating MSCs for 28 days. Taken together, supramolecular HA hydrogels would be successfully harnessed as an injectable delivery system of MSCs for cartilage tissue regeneration and other tissue engineering applications.

Current many Internet of Things (IoT) services are monitored and controlled through smartphone applications. By combining IoT with smartphones, many convenient IoT services have been provided to users. However, there are adverse underlying effects in such services including invasion of privacy and information leakage. In most cases, mobile devices have become cluttered with important personal user information as various services and contents are provided through them. Accordingly, attackers are expanding the scope of their attacks beyond the existing PC and Internet environment into mobile devices. In this paper, we apply a linear support vector machine (SVM) to detect Android malware and compare the malware detection performance of SVM with that of other machine learning classifiers. Through experimental validation, we show that the SVM outperforms other machine learning classifiers.

Background Chin tuck against resistance exercise was recently reported as a novel method for improving the swallowing function of patients with post‐stroke dysphagia. However, as this exercise involves holding and fixing the device using the hand, physically weak patients may find it difficult to perform it. Objectives This study aimed to investigate the effect of modified chin tuck against resistance (mCTAR) exercise on patients with post‐stroke dysphagia. Methods In total, 30 patients with dysphagia were recruited in this study. They were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. The experimental group performed mCTAR exercise and received traditional dysphagia treatment, whereas the control group received only traditional dysphagia treatment. mCTAR exercise involved isometric and isotonic exercises. Aspiration and oral diet were evaluated using penetration‐aspiration scale (PAS) and functional oral intake scale (FOIS), respectively. Moreover, the rate of nasogastric tube removal was analysed. Results Compared with the control group, the experimental group showed statistically significant improvement in PAS and FOIS (P < 0.001, both). The rates of nasogastric tube removal were 25% and 15% in the experimental and control groups, respectively. Conclusion This study demonstrated that mCTAR exercise can reduce aspiration and improve dietary levels in patients with post‐stroke dysphagia. Therefore, mCTAR exercise is expected to be beneficial for physically vulnerable patients with dysphagia who have limited hand strength and range of motion.

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Background: Electromyographic biofeedback (EMG-BF) is known to be an effective therapy for stroke rehabilitation. However, because few studies have investigated the therapy in patients with dysphagia, its effectiveness is not yet clear. This study aimed to investigate the effect of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) using EMG-BF on swallowing function in stroke patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia. Methods: In this study, 10 patients with dysphagia were recruited. The 1-group, pre−post study design was adopted. All subjects received NMES combined with EMG-BF in the suprahyoid area. Electrical stimulation was provided as a reward when the electrical signal generated by effortful swallowing reached a preset threshold. The intervention was provided for 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week for 4 weeks. The videofluoroscopic dysphagia scale (VDS) and penetration–aspiration scale (PAS) based on the videofluoroscopic swallowing study were used to evaluate the swallowing function. Results: Pre-intervention showed no significant differences in all items of VDS (P > .05). However, there was a statistically significant change in VDS from 13.36 ± 5.94 to 9.36 ± 5.14 (P = .015) in the oral phase, and from 38.36 ± 7.42 to 20.71 ± 14.61 (P = .016) in the pharyngeal phase. The PAS scores showed significant change from 5.14 ± 2.27 to 3.00 ± 1.00 (P = .031). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the use of NMES combined with EMG-BF had the potential to improve oropharyngeal swallowing in stroke patients with dysphagia.

We designed a β-CD dimer on silver nanoparticles embedded with silica nanoparticles (Ag@SiO2 NPs) structure to detect polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Silica NPs were utilized as a template for embedding silver NPs to create hot spot structures and enhance the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signal, and a thioether-bridged dimeric β-CD was immobilized on Ag NPs to capture PAHs. The assembled Ag NPs on silica NPs were confirmed by TEM and the presence of β-CD dimer on Ag@SiO2 was confirmed by UV-vis and attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The β-CD dimer@Ag@SiO2 NPs were used as SERS substrate for detecting perylene, a PAH, directly and in a wide linearity range of 10−7 M to 10−2 M with a low detection limit of 10−8 M. Also, the β-CD dimer@Ag@SiO2 NPs exhibited 1000-fold greater sensitivity than Ag@SiO2 NPs in terms of their perylene detection limit. Furthermore, we demonstrated the possibility of detecting various PAH compounds using the β-CD dimer@Ag@SiO2 NPs as a multiplex detection tool. Various PAH compounds with the NPs exhibited their distinct SERS bands by the ratio of each PAHs. This approach of utilizing the assembled structure and the ligands to recognize target has potential for use in sensitive analytical sensors.

A large portion of the genome represents repetitive elements. Identifier (ID) elements, the major elements of short interspersed repetitive elements, are widespread with about 150 000 copies in the rat genome. Each ID element contains six CpG dinucleotides, which might account for the global methylation status of rat. We validated the CpG methylation of the ID elements by various methods. The methylation of one CpG site (CpG-3) of the ID element was investigated by performing pyrosequencing. The methylation percentage of the CpG-3 site was 53.6% (SD = 2.2) on average from six rat tissues with blood, but 24.6% (SD = 1.0) in rat pheochromocytoma, PC-12, cell line. This CpG-3 methylation was further verified by whole genome amplification (WGA), 5-azacytidine treatment, and proportional mixing of rat WGA genomic DNA (gDNA) with liver gDNA. Methylation-sensitive restriction enzyme PCR method showed that three other CpG sites (CpG-1, CpG-4, and CpG-5) within the ID element were also methylated (about 60%) in rat gDNA, but not in WGA gDNA. The ID elements may be good candidates for routine analysis of the global DNA methylation changes of rat for pharmaceutical treatment and their use can make basic epigenetic research possible with high accuracy.

Diabetic retinopathy is currently treated by highly invasive repeated therapeutic injections and surgical interventions without complete vision recovery. Here, a noninvasive smart wireless far red/near‐infrared (NIR) light emitting contact lens developed successfully for the repeated treatment of diabetic retinopathy with significantly improved compliance. A far red/NIR light emitting diode (LED) is connected with an application‐specific integrated circuit chip, wireless power, and communication systems on a PET film, which is embedded in a silicone elastomer contact lens by thermal crosslinking. After in vitro characterization, it is confirmed that the retinal vascular hyper‐permeability induced by diabetic retinopathy in rabbits is reduced to a statistically significant level by simply repeated wearing of smart far red/NIR LED contact lens for 8 weeks with 120 µW light irradiation for 15 min thrice a week. Histological analysis exhibits the safety and feasibility of LED contact lenses for treating diabetic retinopathy. This platform technology for smart LED contact lens would be harnessed for various biomedical photonic applications.