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Emerging evidence indicates that cancer cell-derived exosomes contribute to cancer progression through the modulation of tumor microenvironment, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully elucidated. Here, we reported that hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)-derived exosomes could remodel macrophages by activating NF-κB signaling and inducing pro-inflammatory factors, and resulted in M2polarized tumor-associated macrophages. In addition, the expression of IFN-γ and TNF-α was inhibited, while the expression of inhibitory receptors such as PD-1 and CTLA-4 was upregulated in T cells by HCCderived exosome educated macrophages. Data also revealed that HCC exosomes were enriched with miR-146a-5p and promoted M2-polarization. Further investigation demonstrated that the transcription factor Sal-like protein-4 (SALL4) was critical for regulating miR-146a-5p in HCC exosomes and M2polarization. Mechanistically, SALL4 could bind to the promoter of miR-146a-5p, and directly controlled its expression in exosomes. Blocking the SALL4/miR-146a-5p interaction in HCC reduced the expression of inhibitory receptors on T cells, reversed T cell exhaustion, and delayed HCC progression in DEN/CCL 4induced HCC mice. In conclusion, identification of a role of the exosomal SALL4/miR-146a-5p regulatory axis in M2-polarization as well as HCC progression provides potential targets for therapeutic and diagnostic applications in liver cancer.

Acoustic nonlinearity parameter tomography for biological tissues via parametric array from a circular piston source-Theoretical analysis and computer simulations J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 1219 (2001) We present tomographic imaging of biological tissues by use of microwave-induced acoustic signal. It was demonstrated that the acoustic signal was proportional to the intensity of the incident microwave and was related to the absorption property of microwave in the medium. Pulsed microwave radiation was used to illuminate the samples. Absorbed microwave energy caused thermoelastic expansion that radiated acoustic waves. A focused ultrasonic transducer detected the time-resolved acoustic signals. Each acoustic signal was converted into a one-dimensional image. A linear scanning of the ultrasonic transducer yielded multiple one-dimensional images, which formed a two-dimensional image. The imaging contrast is based on the difference in the dielectric constants among biological tissues. Because of the large contrast in microwave absorption among different tissue types, microwave-induced acoustic tomography could potentially provide a new modality for detecting early-stage cancers.

No abstract

We address the problem of structure learning of human motion in order to recognize actions from a continuous monocular motion sequence of an arbitrary person from an arbitrary viewpoint. Human motion sequences are represented by multivariate time series in the joint-trajectories space. Under this structured time series framework, we first propose Kernelized Temporal Cut (KTC), an extension of previous works on change-point detection by incorporating Hilbert space embedding of distributions, to handle the nonparametric and high dimensionality issues of human motions. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, which yields realtime segmentation, and produces high action segmentation accuracy. Second, a spatio-temporal manifold framework is proposed to model the latent structure of time series data. Then an efficient spatio-temporal alignment algorithm Dynamic Manifold Warping (DMW) is proposed for multivariate time series to calculate motion similarity between action sequences (segments). Furthermore, by combining the temporal segmentation algorithm and the alignment algorithm, online human action recognition can be performed by associating a few labeled examples from motion capture data. The results on human motion capture data and 3D depth sensor data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in automatically segmenting and recognizing motion sequences, and its ability to handle noisy and partially occluded data, in the transfer learning module.

Continuous-wave ultrasonic modulation of scattered laser light was used to image objects buried in tissue-simulating turbid media. The buried object had an absorption coefficient greater than the background turbid medium. The ultrasonic wave that was focused into the turbid media modulated the laser light that passed through the ultrasonic field. The modulated laser light that was collected by a photomultiplier tube reflected the local mechanical and optical properties in the zone of ultrasonic modulation. Objects buried in the middle plane of 5-cm-thick dense turbid media were imaged with millimeter resolution through the scanning and detecting alterations of the ultrasound-modulated optical signal. The optical properties of the dense turbid media included an absorption coefficient of 0.1 cm(-1) and a reduced scattering coefficient of 10 cm(-1) and were comparable with those of biological tissues in the visible and near-IR ranges. The dependence of the ultrasound-modulated optical signal on the off-axis distance of the detector from the optic axis and the area of the detector was studied as well.

No abstract

Driven by the rapidly increasing demand for technological applications, multifunctional materials have been one important research area, which are expected to enhance the capacity and versatility of materials in various applications. Nevertheless, combining more than three functions in one molecular compound is still a challenge. Molecular solid–solid phase transition materials could exhibit switchable properties, which could have potential applications such as switches, sensors, and memory devices. However, these switchable molecular materials are rarely researched as thermal energy storage materials. In this work, we report the coexistence of thermal energy storage and magnetic-optic-electric triple switching in a plastic crystal, trimethyl­chloro­methyl ammonium tetrachloro­ferrate­(III), ([(CH3)3­NCH2Cl]­[FeCl4], referred to as 1). 1 undergoes plastic phase transition at near room temperature (326 K) induced by the order–disorder of the ions. The magnetic-optic-electric triple switching in 1 could be triggered by temperature stimuli near room temperature. Meanwhile, with utilization of large latent heat during the phase transition process and sensible heat, the energy storage in 1 is up to 107 J g–1 from 293 to 343 K, demonstrating its thermal energy storage application in solar energy systems and industrial sectors. This work particularly exhibits the advantages of plastic molecular materials as thermal energy storage materials and introduces the thermal energy storage into the multi-switchable plastic phase transition molecular materials, which will give extra flexibility for the design of new types of multifunctional materials.