Meibomian glands segmentation in infrared images with limited annotation.

Aim: To investigate a pioneering framework for the segmentation of meibomian glands (MGs), using limited annotations to reduce the workload on ophthalmologists and enhance the efficiency of clinical diagnosis.

Methods: Totally 203 infrared meibomian images from 138 patients with dry eye disease, accompanied by corresponding annotations, were gathered for the study. A rectified scribble-supervised gland segmentation (RSSGS) model, incorporating temporal ensemble prediction, uncertainty estimation, and a transformation equivariance constraint, was introduced to address constraints imposed by limited supervision information inherent in scribble annotations.

Surface charges and optical characteristic of colloidal cubic SiC nanocrystals.

Colloidal cubic silicon carbide (SiC) nanocrystals with an average diameter of 4.4 nm have been fabricated by anisotropic wet chemical etching of microsized cubic SiC powder. Fourier transform infrared spectra show that these cubic SiC nanocrystals contain carboxylic acid, SiH, CH, and CHx groups.

Screening disease-associated proteins from sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a comparative proteomic study.

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic inflammation at the synovial membrane. Although great progress has been made recently in exploring the etiology and pathogenesis of RA, its molecular pathological mechanism remains to be further defined and it is still a great challenge in determining the diagnosis and in choosing the appropriate therapy in early patients. This study was performed to screen candidate RA-associated serum proteins by comparative proteomics to provide research clues to early diagnosis and treatment of RA.

Value of the peripheral blood B-cells subsets in patients with ankylosing spondylitis.

Background: The role of B-cell remains an enigma in the pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). This study aimed to investigate the distributions of B-cells and subsets in peripheral blood of AS patients and observe their changes in etanercept-treated AS patents.

Methods: We detected the proportions of CD19(+) B-cell, naive B-cell (CD19(+)CD27-), memory B-cell (CD19(+)CD27dim) and plasmablast (CD19(+)CD27high) in peripheral blood of 66 patients with AS (39 at active stage, 27 at stable stage; 35 patients with peripheral joint involvement, 31 patients with axial involvement alone), 30 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and 30 healthy volunteers using flow cytometry.

Asymmetric Epoxidation of alpha,beta-Unsaturated Ketones Catalyzed by Chiral Polybinaphthyl Zinc Complexes: Greatly Enhanced Enantioselectivity by a Cooperation of the Catalytic Sites in a Polymer Chain.

Polybinaphthyl zinc catalysts have been developed for the asymmetric epoxidation of alpha,beta-unsaturated ketones in the presence of tert-butyl hydroperoxide. Up to 81% ee has been achieved for the epoxidation of alpha,beta-unsaturated ketones containing beta-aliphatic substituents by using a binaphthyl polymer combined with diethylzinc. A very interesting positive cooperative effect of the catalytic sites in the polymer chain is observed which leads to greatly increased enantioselectivity over the corresponding monomer ligands.