No abstract

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PaH) is a severe vascular disease that adversely affects patient health and can be life threatening. The present study aimed to investigate the detailed role of nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (neaT1) in PaH. using rT-qPcr, the expression levels of neaT1, microrna (mir)-34a-5p, and Krüppel-like factor 4 (KlF4) were detected in both hypoxia-treated pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PaSMcs) and serum from PaH patients. Then, the interactions among mir-34a-5p, neaT1, and KlF4 were evaluated by dual-luciferase reporter assay. The detailed role of the neaT1/mir-34a-5p/KlF4 axis in PaH pathogenesis was further explored using MTT, Transwell, and western blot assays. The results revealed that neaT1 targeted mir-34a-5p and mir-34a-5p targeted KlF4. in hypoxia-treated PaSMcs and serum from PaH patients, high neaT1 and KlF4 expression levels and low mir-34a-5p expression were observed. The proliferation and migration of hypoxia-treated PaSMcs were reduced by transfection with sh-neaT1 or mir-34a-5p mimics. The suppressive effects of neaT1 knockdown on the proliferation and migration of hypoxia-treated PaSMcs were reversed by knock down of mir-34a-5p expression and increased KlF4 expression. neaT1 was not only highly expressed in the serum of PaH patients but its silencing also alleviated PaH by regulating mir-34a-5p/KlF4 in vitro. The present study highlighted a potential new therapeutic target and diagnostic biomarker for PaH.

No abstract

In performing the detection and tracking of ferromagnetic targets or the detection of magnetic anomalies, a magnetometer array or magnetic gradiometer is often used to suppress interference from environmental background magnetic fields and to improve measurement accuracy. Increasing the distance between the magnetometers is beneficial to improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the magnetic gradiometer, but the mismatching error of the magnetometer array affects the accuracy in measuring the magnetic gradient tensor and the positioning accuracy of the ferromagnetic target. In order to calibrate the mismatch error of a magnetometer array, the mounting position and orientation of each magnetometer must be accurately measured. When the magnetometer array is too large, the commonly used calibration methods are difficult to implement because it is difficult to make a rigid support, optical system or robot that is large enough. This paper reports a method that uses two coils and an excitation current source to generate a test magnetic field, after which methods of modulation/demodulation and phase-locked filtering are used to suppress interference from the ambient magnetic field. The output of each magnetometer is recorded, and the particle swarm optimization algorithm is employed to calculate the mounting position and orientation of each magnetometer. After theoretical analysis, computational simulation and experimental verification, the results showed that position measurements over an area of 2.4 m × 2.4 m were accurate to within 0.05 m and the orientation measurements were accurate to within 0.03 rad. The average relative positioning error was less than 1.7%. By designing larger coils and current sources, the needs of larger arrays can be satisfied as long as the same SNR is maintained.