| 1. |
- Abbafati, Cristiana, et al.
(författare)
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- 2020
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 2. |
- Chi, Jiayu, et al.
(författare)
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Topographic Orientation of Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration : Recent Advances in Biomaterial Design and Applications
- 2022
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Ingår i: Biomimetics. - : MDPI. - 2313-7673. ; 7:3
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tissue engineering to develop alternatives for the maintenance, restoration, or enhancement of injured tissues and organs is gaining more and more attention. In tissue engineering, the scaffold used is one of the most critical elements. Its characteristics are expected to mimic the native extracellular matrix and its unique topographical structures. Recently, the topographies of scaffolds have received increasing attention, not least because different topographies, such as aligned and random, have different repair effects on various tissues. In this review, we have focused on various technologies (electrospinning, directional freeze-drying, magnetic freeze-casting, etching, and 3-D printing) to fabricate scaffolds with different topographic orientations, as well as discussed the physicochemical (mechanical properties, porosity, hydrophilicity, and degradation) and biological properties (morphology, distribution, adhesion, proliferation, and migration) of different topographies. Subsequently, we have compiled the effect of scaffold orientation on the regeneration of vessels, skin, neural tissue, bone, articular cartilage, ligaments, tendons, cardiac tissue, corneas, skeletal muscle, and smooth muscle. The compiled information in this review will facilitate the future development of optimal topographical scaffolds for the regeneration of certain tissues. In the majority of tissues, aligned scaffolds are more suitable than random scaffolds for tissue repair and regeneration. The underlying mechanism explaining the various effects of aligned and random orientation might be the differences in “contact guidance”, which stimulate certain biological responses in cells.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Liang, Xiubo, et al.
(författare)
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Menstrual Monster : A Tangible Interactive Co-educational Game Designed for Teenagers
- 2022
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Ingår i: CHI EA '22. - New York, NY, USA : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 9781450391566
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Learning menstruation in early adolescence could reduce teenagers’ misunderstanding of it and help them treat menstruation in a proper way. This paper explored a tangible game for teenagers of different genders learning menstruation through collaborative playing. The game included five levels where users play together and learn the cause, products, symptoms of menstruation as well as try to judge some scenarios and listen to audios about menstruation. In our user study, we invited three groups of teenagers ages 11 to 16. Each group contained at least one male and one female, and we let them play the game freely. Teenagers were successfully able to play the game collaboratively, learn menstruation-related knowledge. The results revealed motivation differences related to gender, and after the game, teenagers demonstrated the observable change of the attitude towards menstruation.
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| 5. |
- Ning, Yujie, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic Variants and Protein Alterations of Selenium- and T-2 Toxin-Responsive Genes Are Associated With Chondrocytic Damage in Endemic Osteoarthropathy
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Genetics. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 1664-8021. ; 12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The mechanism of environmental factors in Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) remains unknown. We aimed to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and protein alterations of selenium- and T-2 toxin-responsive genes to provide new evidence of chondrocytic damage in KBD. This study sampled the cubital venous blood of 258 subjects including 129 sex-matched KBD patients and 129 healthy controls for SNP detection. We applied an additive model, a dominant model, and a recessive model to identify significant SNPs. We then used the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) to select selenium- and T-2 toxin-responsive genes with the candidate SNP loci. Finally, immunohistochemistry was applied to verify the protein expression of candidate genes in knee cartilage obtained from 15 subjects including 5 KBD, 5 osteoarthritis (OA), and 5 healthy controls. Forty-nine SNPs were genotyped in the current study. The C allele of rs6494629 was less frequent in KBD than in the controls (OR = 0.63, p = 0.011). Based on the CTD database, PPARG, ADAM12, IL6, SMAD3, and TIMP2 were identified to interact with selenium, sodium selenite, and T-2 toxin. KBD was found to be significantly associated with rs12629751 of PPARG (additive model: OR = 0.46, p = 0.012; dominant model: OR = 0.45, p = 0.049; recessive model: OR = 0.18, p = 0.018), rs1871054 of ADAM12 (dominant model: OR = 2.19, p = 0.022), rs1800796 of IL6 (dominant model: OR = 0.30, p = 0.003), rs6494629 of SMAD3 (additive model: OR = 0.65, p = 0.019; dominant model: OR = 0.52, p = 0.012), and rs4789936 of TIMP2 (recessive model: OR = 5.90, p = 0.024). Immunohistochemistry verified significantly upregulated PPARG, ADAM12, SMAD3, and TIMP2 in KBD compared with OA and normal controls (p < 0.05). Genetic polymorphisms of PPARG, ADAM12, SMAD3, and TIMP2 may contribute to the risk of KBD. These genes could promote the pathogenesis of KBD by disturbing ECM homeostasis.
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| 6. |
- Nita, Satoshi, et al.
(författare)
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Electrostatic cloaking of surface structure for dynamic wetting
- 2017
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Ingår i: Science Advances. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2375-2548. ; 3:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dynamic wetting problems are fundamental to understanding the interaction between liquids and solids. Even in a superficially simple experimental situation, such as a droplet spreading over a dry surface, the result may depend not only on the liquid properties but also strongly on the substrate-surface properties; even for macroscopically smooth surfaces, the microscopic geometrical roughness can be important. In addition, because surfaces may often be naturally charged or electric fields are used to manipulate fluids, electric effects are crucial components that influence wetting phenomena. We investigate the interplay between electric forces and surface structures in dynamic wetting. Although surface microstructures can significantly hinder spreading, we find that electrostatics can “cloak” the microstructures, that is, deactivate the hindering. We identify the physics in terms of reduction in contact-line friction, which makes the dynamic wetting inertial force dominant and insensitive to the substrate properties.
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| 7. |
- Sheng, Renwang, et al.
(författare)
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Material stiffness in cooperation with macrophage paracrine signals determines the tenogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells
- 2023
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Ingår i: Advanced Science. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2198-3844. ; 10:17
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Stiffness is an important physical property of biomaterials that determines stem cell fate. Guiding stem cell differentiation via stiffness modulation has been considered in tissue engineering. However, the mechanism by which material stiffness regulates stem cell differentiation into the tendon lineage remains controversial. Increasing evidence demonstrates that immune cells interact with implanted biomaterials and regulate stem cell behaviors via paracrine signaling; however, the role of this mechanism in tendon differentiation is not clear. In this study, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates with different stiffnesses are developed, and the tenogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exposed to different stiffnesses and macrophage paracrine signals is investigated. The results reveal that lower stiffnesses facilitates tenogenic differentiation of MSCs, while macrophage paracrine signals at these stiffnesses suppress the differentiation. When exposed to these two stimuli, MSCs still exhibit enhanced tendon differentiation, which is further elucidated by global proteomic analysis. Following subcutaneous implantation in rats for 2 weeks, soft biomaterial induces only low inflammation and promotes tendon-like tissue formation. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that soft, rather than stiff, material has a greater potential to guide tenogenic differentiation of stem cells, which provides comprehensive evidence for optimized bioactive scaffold design in tendon tissue engineering.
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| 8. |
- Ueberschär, Malin, et al.
(författare)
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BEN-solo factors partition active chromatin to ensure proper gene activation in Drosophila
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Drosophila genome encodes three BEN-solo proteins including Insensitive (Insv), Elba1 and Elba2 that possess activities in transcriptional repression and chromatin insulation. A fourth protein-Elba3-bridges Elba1 and Elba2 to form an ELBA complex. Here, we report comprehensive investigation of these proteins in Drosophila embryos. We assess common and distinct binding sites for Insv and ELBA and their genetic interdependencies. While Elba1 and Elba2 binding generally requires the ELBA complex, Elba3 can associate with chromatin independently of Elba1 and Elba2. We further demonstrate that ELBA collaborates with other insulators to regulate developmental patterning. Finally, we find that adjacent gene pairs separated by an ELBA bound sequence become less differentially expressed in ELBA mutants. Transgenic reporters confirm the insulating activity of ELBA- and Insv-bound sites. These findings define ELBA and Insv as general insulator proteins in Drosophila and demonstrate the functional importance of insulators to partition transcription units.
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| 9. |
- Wang, Jiayu, et al.
(författare)
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Surface structure determines dynamic wetting
- 2015
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Liquid wetting of a surface is omnipresent in nature and the advance of micro-fabrication and assembly techniques in recent years offers increasing ability to control this phenomenon. Here, we identify how surface roughness influences the initial dynamic spreading of a partially wetting droplet by studying the spreading on a solid substrate patterned with microstructures just a few micrometers in size. We reveal that the roughness influence can be quantified in terms of a line friction coefficient for the energy dissipation rate at the contact line, and that this can be described in a simple formula in terms of the geometrical parameters of the roughness and the line-friction coefficient of the planar surface. We further identify a criterion to predict if the spreading will be controlled by this surface roughness or by liquid inertia. Our results point to the possibility of selectively controlling the wetting behavior by engineering the surface structure.
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| 10. |
- Wang, Pin, et al.
(författare)
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Decision Making for Autonomous Driving via Augmented Adversarial Inverse Reinforcement Learning
- 2021
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Ingår i: Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. - 1050-4729. ; 2021-May, s. 1036-1042
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Making decisions in complex driving environments is a challenging task for autonomous agents. Imitation learning methods have great potentials for achieving such a goal. Adversarial Inverse Reinforcement Learning (AIRL) is one of the state-of-art imitation learning methods that can learn both a behavioral policy and a reward function simultaneously, yet it is only demonstrated in simple and static environments where no interactions are introduced. In this paper, we improve and stabilize AIRL's performance by augmenting it with semantic rewards in the learning framework. Additionally, we adapt the augmented AIRL to a more practical and challenging decision-making task in a highly interactive environment in autonomous driving. The proposed method is compared with four baselines and evaluated by four performance metrics. Simulation results show that the augmented AIRL outperforms all the baseline methods, and its performance is comparable with that of the experts on all of the four metrics.
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