Pancreatic β cells are a type of cells that are present in the islets of Langerhans. These cells are highly specialized for the secretion of insulin in response to low increasing of blood glucose levels. Hence, pancreatic β cells could contribute to maintaining systemic glucose homeostasis. Increasing evidence has revealed that a variety of internal (ie, genetic and epigenetic factors) and external factors (ie, radical‐oxidative stress) are involved in the protection and/or regeneration of pancreatic β cells. The pathways regulating β‐cell replication have been intensely investigated. Glucose has an important role in cell cycle entry of quiescent β cells, which exerts its effect via glucose metabolism and unfolded proteins. A variety of growth factors, hormones, and signaling pathways (ie, calcium‐calcineurin nuclear factor of activated T cells) are others factors that could affect β‐cell replication under different conditions. Therefore, a greater understanding of the underlying pathways involved in the regeneration and protection of pancreatic β cells could lead to finding and developing new therapeutic approaches. Utilization of stem cells and various phytochemical agents have provided new aspects for preventing β‐cell degeneration and stimulating the endogenous regeneration of islets. Thus, these therapeutic platforms could be used as potential therapies in the treatment of insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus. Here, we summarized the various mechanisms involved in pancreatic β‐cell regeneration. Moreover, we highlighted different therapeutic approaches which could be used for the regeneration of pancreatic β cells.

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of epidural anaesthesia with lidocaine in combination with general anaesthesia with propofol on some immunologic indices in dogs undergoing ovariohysterectomy. Twelve adult dogs were anesthetized with propofol (induction: 7 mg/kg; maintenance: 0.4 mg/kg/min) and were then allocated into either groups of epidural saline (control) or epidural lidocaine (4 mg/kg; treatment). All the included animals underwent ovariohysterectomy operation. The immune responses, hematologic parameters and cortisol levels were assessed in the predetermined intervals. Evaluation of the innate immunity revealed higher significant levels in the bactericidal, lysozyme and myeloperoxidase activities at 4 hours after surgery in the treatment. In the humoral immunity, the total immunoglobulin level was significantly higher in the treatment. In the assessment of cellular immunity, higher significant values were detected in the delayed skin sensitivity to phytohemagglutinine injection after 48 and 72 hours in the treatment. Moreover, higher significant levels were observed in the number and percentage of lymphocytes as well as an increase in the percentage of monocytes in the treatment at 4 hours after the operation. Notably, the cortisol hormone in the treatment was lower than control at 4 hours of the surgery. In conclusion, epidural anaesthesia with lidocaine when added to general anaesthesia with propofol attenuated the suppression of the innate and cellular immune responses produced by anaesthesia and surgery in the dogs.

We addressed the problem of finding salient characteristics of artists from two-dimensional (2D) images of historical artifacts. Given a set of 2D images of historical artifacts by known authors, we discovered what salient characteristics made an artist different from others, and then enabled statistical learning about individual and collective authorship. The objective of this effort was to learn what would be unique about the style of each artist, and to provide the quantitative results about salient characteristic. We accomplished this by exploring a large search space of low level image descriptors. The motivation behind our framework was to assist humanists in discovering salient characteristics by automated exploration of the key image descriptors. By employing our framework we had not only saved time of art historians but also provided quantitative measures for incorporating their personal judgments and bridging the semantic gap in image understanding. We applied the framework implementation to the face illustrations in Froissart's Chronicles drawn by two anonymous authors. We reported the salient characteristics to be (HSV, histogram, k-nearest neighbor) among the 55 triples considered with 5-fold validations. These low level characteristics were confirmed by the experts to correspond semantically to the face skin colors.