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Purpose: This paper aims to introduce a custom-designed integrated nucleic acid detection polymerase chain reaction (PCR) instrument for clinical detection applications. Design/methodology/approach: The PCR instrument can make rapid, sensitive, low-cost and quantitative molecular diagnosis compared with the current routine test flow from the pipette, series reagent to RT-PCR by manual manipulation. By integrating the multichannel automatic pipetting module, heat amplification module and real-time fluorescence detection module for the first time, the custom-designed integrated nucleic acid detection PCR instrument can achieve sample collection, subpackage, mixing, extracting, measuring and result presentation. Findings: The multichannel automatic pipetting module was assembled with an accuracy of 0.4% (2 microliters) for accuracy measurement. Besides, the accuracy and sensitivity of nucleic acid using integrated low-cost nucleic acid detection PCR instruments were checked with COV-2019 virus (staining method) and African swine fever virus (probe method) under different concentrations. Practical implications: Because of its high cost, complex system and bulky laboratory settings, including sample subpackage, mixing, extracting, measuring and finally result in presentation, the current nucleic acid detection system is not suitable for field operation and disease diagnosis in remote areas. The group independently designed and assembled an integrated low-cost multichannel nucleic acid detection PCR instrument, including a multichannel automatic pipetting module, a heat amplification module and a real-time fluorescence detection module. Originality/value: The above equipment showed better reliability compared with commercial qPCR. These results can lay the foundation for functional, fast and low-cost PCR equipment for trace measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Bronchobiliary fistulas are rare and difficult to treat. Peacock first reported this entity in 1850 while treating a patient with hepatic encopresis. Case presentation: A 67-year-old Chinese male patient presented to the outpatient clinic with a complaint of coughing up phlegm with chest tightness for 4 days with symptoms of intermittent bilirubin sputum with a sputum volume of about 500 ml per day but no symptoms of abdominal pain or jaundice and no yellow urine or steatorrhea. The examination revealed cyanosis of the lips and mouth, barrel chest, low breath sounds on the right side, and a large number of wet rales heard in both lungs. The imaging investigations were suggestive of bronchobiliary fistula. Therefore, the patient was operated on and discharged with no perioperative complications. Conclusion: Bronchobiliary fistula should be considered diagnostically in patients with known liver disease who also experience trauma or medical treatment and cough up bile-colored sputum, regardless of the presence of concurrent infections, and in conjunction with radiological expertise to identify it. Here, we report a case of bronchobiliary fistula and a brief review of the literature on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing the detailed information embedded in rasterized floorplans is at the research forefront in the community of computer graphics and vision. With the advent of deep neural networks, automatic floorplan recognition has made tremendous breakthroughs. However, co‐recognizing both the structures and semantics of floorplans through one neural network remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework Raster‐to‐Graph, which automatically achieves structural and semantic recognition of floorplans. We represent vectorized floorplans as structural graphs embedded with floorplan semantics, thus transforming the floorplan recognition task into a structural graph prediction problem. We design an autoregressive prediction framework using the neural network architecture of the visual attention Transformer, iteratively predicting the wall junctions and wall segments of floorplans in the order of graph traversal. Additionally, we propose a large‐scale floorplan dataset containing over 10,000 real‐world residential floorplans. Our autoregressive framework can automatically recognize the structures and semantics of floorplans. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework, showing significant improvements on all metrics. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations indicate that our framework outperforms existing state‐of‐the‐art methods. Code and dataset for this paper are available at: https://github.com/HSZVIS/Raster-to-Graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multi-layer network consists of the interactions between different layers, where each layer of the network is depicted as a graph, providing a comprehensive way to model the underlying complex systems. The layer-specific modules of multi-layer networks are critical to understanding the structure and function of the system. However, existing methods fail to characterize and balance the connectivity and specificity of layer-specific modules in networks because of the complicated inter- and intra-coupling of various layers. To address the above issues, a joint learning graph clustering algorithm (DRDF) for detecting layer-specific modules in multi-layer networks is proposed, which simultaneously learns the deep representation and discriminative features. Specifically, DRDF learns the deep representation with deep nonnegative matrix factorization, where the high-order topology of the multi-layer network is gradually and precisely characterized. Moreover, it addresses the specificity of modules with discriminative feature learning, where the intra-class compactness and inter-class separation of pseudo-labels of clusters are explored as self-supervised information, thereby providing a more accurate method to explicitly model the specificity of the multi-layer network. Finally, DRDF balances the connectivity and specificity of layer-specific modules with joint learning, where the overall objective of the graph clustering algorithm and optimization rules are derived. The experiments on ten multi-layer networks showed that DRDF not only outperforms eight baselines on graph clustering but also enhances the robustness of algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cohort study evaluated the associations of different treatments with the prognosis of follicular variant papillary thyroid carcinoma (FVPTC) and classical papillary thyroid carcinoma (CPTC) patients. The data of 69034 PTC patients were retrieved from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The 5-year mortality of CPTC and FVPTC patients receiving surgery, radiation and combination therapy were compared. The univariable and multivariable cox proportional risk models explored the associations between different treatments and the 5-year mortality in CPTC and FVPTC patients. The 5-year mortality of CPTC patients was 2.81% and FVPTC patients was 2.47%. Compared with CPTC receiving lobectomy and/or isthmectomy, those not receiving surgery were associated with increased risk of 5-year mortality [Hazards ratio (HR)=3.27, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.55–4.20] while total thyroidectomy was correlated with reduced risk of 5-year mortality (HR=0.67, 95%CI: 0.55–0.80). Radioactive iodine (RAI) was linked with decreased risk of 5-year mortality in CPTC patients (HR=0.57, 95%CI: 0.50–0.65). CPTC patients undergoing both surgery and radiation were related to decreased risk of 5-year mortality compared with those receiving surgery only (HR=0.55, 95%CI: 0.48–0.63). CPTC patients receiving neither surgery nor radiation (HR=4.53, 95%CI: 3.72–5.51) or those receiving radiation (HR=1.98, 95%CI: 1.13–3.48) were correlated with elevated risk of 5-year mortality. The elevated risk of 5-year mortality in FVPTC patients was reduced in those undergoing RAI (HR=0.63, 95%CI: 0.51–0.76). In conclusion, combination therapy was associated with decreased risk of 5-year mortality in CPTC and FVPTC patients, which might provide a reference for the management of these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainable high yield of crops is critically important under the current situation of global climate warming. In order to improve regional yield, it is urgent to clarify the limiting factors of local grain yield and change the traditional planting measurements to adapt to the warming climate and make full use of climate resources. Long-term field experiments over seven years from 2014 to 2021 were conducted with the same maize cultivar (i.e., Luyu9105) with seven planting density treatments: 3.0 × 104 (D1), 4.5 × 104 (D2), 6.0 × 104 (D3), 7.5 × 104 (D4), 9.0 × 104 (D5), 10.5 × 104 (D6), and 12.0 × 104 (D7) plants per hectare in Taihe and Hefei, which belong to the southern Huang-Huai-Hai (SHHH) and southeast (SE) maize-producing areas in China. According to the field experiment data, differences in grain yield, ear number, kernel number per spike, and 1000-kernel weight of different treatments were analyzed. The utilization efficiency of climate resources in Taihe and Hefei was calculated using daily solar radiation, mean temperature, and precipitation data. The results showed that Taihe had 7.8% higher solar radiation during the growing season of maize than Hefei, while accumulated temperature ≥10 °C (AT10) was 3.9% lower than Hefei. The grain yields of different planting densities in Taihe were 9.7~23.6% higher than in Hefei. The agronomic optimal planting density (AOPD) was 8.6 × 104 plants ha−1 in Taihe and 8.0 × 104 plants ha−1 in Hefei. Compared to the actual grain yields, when the agronomic optimal planting densities were adopted, the simulated yield increased by 51.3% and 59.6%, respectively. The radiation utilization efficiency, temperature utilization efficiency, and precipitation utilization efficiency in Taihe were 12.9%, 24.6%, and 26.7% higher than the values of Hefei, respectively, and D4 and D5 treatments had significantly higher climatic resource utilization efficiency than D1 and D2 treatment. The grain yield was negatively correlated with accumulated temperature ≥10 °C and positively correlated with solar radiation. The multiple linear regression model among solar radiation, accumulated temperature was ≥10 °C, and grain yield was y = 0.550R−0.562AT10 + 14,593.6 (R = 0.379). Accumulated temperature ≥10 °C was the main climatic factor affecting the grain yield due to the higher occurrence probability of a maximum temperature ≥35 °C. Overall, in the future, increasing planting density and alleviating heat stress may enhance grain yield. These results could provide cultivation measurements with regional characteristics to adapt to the local climate and maximize the utilization efficiency of climatic resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phytochemical investigations on the fruits of Kadsura coccinea led to the isolation of six undescribed dibenzocyclooctadiene lignans named kadcolignans B-G, together with eleven previously described analogues. The structures of these compounds were established by spectroscopic methods including NMR, HRESIMS, and CD experiments. All isolated compounds were evaluated for their hepatoprotective activity by measuring the levels of triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in FFA-induced HepG2 cells. As a result, compounds 4 , 5 , 9 , 13 , and 15 showed potent inhibitory effects on hepatocyte lipid accumulation at a concentration of 100 μM. Our research not only broadens the understanding on the chemical composition of K. coccinea but also provides experimental and theoretical evidences supporting the fruit's active ingredients in alleviating nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Six undescribed dibenzocyclooctadiene lignans were isolated from the fruits of Kadsura coccinea. Five dibenzocyclooctadiene lignans showed strong inhibitory effects on hepatocyte lipid accumulation. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in single-cell biotechnologies simultaneously generate the transcriptomic and epigenomic profiles at cell levels, providing an opportunity for investigating cell fates. Although great efforts have been devoted to either of them, the integrative analysis of single-cell multi-omics data is really limited because of the heterogeneity, noises and sparsity of single-cell profiles. In this study, a network-based integrative clustering algorithm (aka NIC) is present for the identification of cell types by fusing the parallel single-cell transcriptomic (scRNA-seq) and epigenomic profiles (scATAC-seq or DNA methylation). To avoid heterogeneity of multi-omics data, NIC automatically learns the cell–cell similarity graphs, which transforms the fusion of multi-omics data into the analysis of multiple networks. Then, NIC employs joint non-negative matrix factorization to learn the shared features of cells by exploiting the structure of learned cell–cell similarity networks, providing a better way to characterize the features of cells. The graph learning and integrative analysis procedures are jointly formulated as an optimization problem, and then the update rules are derived. Thirteen single-cell multi-omics datasets from various tissues and organisms are adopted to validate the performance of NIC, and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of various measurements. The proposed algorithm provides an effective strategy for the integrative analysis of single-cell multi-omics data (The software is coded using Matlab, and is freely available for academic https://github.com/xkmaxidian/NIC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To update the recognition of the trends in the incidence of childhood thyroid cancer (TC) and its prognosis. Methods: A large-scale sample based on long time-line public database was recruited. Join-point regression model was used to analyze the incidence trend of childhood TC. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression model analyses were applied to explore the survival situation and prognostic factors. Results: The incidence rate of childhood TC increased between 1975 and 2016 from 3.8/million (95% CI 2.6–5.5) to 11.5/million (95% CI 9.2–14.1), AAPC = 2.38% (95% CI 1.98–9.65) and could be divided into two stages of increasing trends. The incidence rate of Trend1 (1975–2005) increased slowly (APC = 1.08%, 95% CI 0.38–1.82) while Trend2 (2005–2016) increased dramatically (APC = 6.77%, 95% CI 4.30–9.28). Annual incidence rate of small size tumor (< 4 cm) and local stage childhood TC increased significantly. The overall cumulative survival rate for childhood TC was high up to 97–99%. Males, black race, MTC type, distant metastasis, tumor size ≥ 4 cm, non-primary cancer were the independent risk factors of childhood TC prognosis. Conclusion: A contribution of overdetection to rising pediatric TC rates might not be able to rule out. For clinical implications, screening TC in children with potential specific risk factors is feasible. Over-treatment to small size and local stage TC in children should be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) explores the transcriptome of genes at cell level, which sheds light on revealing the heterogeneity and dynamics of cell populations. Advances in biotechnologies make it possible to generate scRNA-seq profiles for large-scale cells, requiring effective and efficient clustering algorithms to identify cell types and informative genes. Although great efforts have been devoted to clustering of scRNA-seq, the accuracy, scalability and interpretability of available algorithms are not desirable. In this study, we solve these problems by developing a joint learning algorithm [a.k.a. joints sparse representation and clustering (jSRC)], where the dimension reduction (DR) and clustering are integrated. Specifically, DR is employed for the scalability and joint learning improves accuracy. To increase the interpretability of patterns, we assume that cells within the same type have similar expression patterns, where the sparse representation is imposed on features. We transform clustering of scRNA-seq into an optimization problem and then derive the update rules to optimize the objective of jSRC. Fifteen scRNA-seq datasets from various tissues and organisms are adopted to validate the performance of jSRC, where the number of single cells varies from 49 to 110 824. The experimental results demonstrate that jSRC significantly outperforms 12 state-of-the-art methods in terms of various measurements (on average 20.29% by improvement) with fewer running time. Furthermore, jSRC is efficient and robust across different scRNA-seq datasets from various tissues. Finally, jSRC also accurately identifies dynamic cell types associated with progression of COVID-19. The proposed model and methods provide an effective strategy to analyze scRNA-seq data (the software is coded using MATLAB and is free for academic purposes; https://github.com/xkmaxidian/jSRC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A random modulation strategy is proposed to suppress the torque ripple of asynchronous motor for electric vehicle in this article. First, the models of harmonic torque and torque ripple are established. The reason of harmonic generation and its effect on torque are analysed. Second, the random position pulse width modulation (PWM) strategy with different random quantities is introduced. The problem of the increasing harmonic content near the integer multiple of the switching frequency in the modulation process is solved. Subsequently, the influences of different random quantity distributions and random number ranges on harmonic suppression are studied. The different structures of random pulse position space vector PWM strategy based on uniform probability density are designed. The specific harmonic content is dispersed and the torque ripple is suppressed. Finally, the precise test platform based on cSPACE is established. The influence of different random PWMs on motor at various speeds is compared. Experimental results verify the validity of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges of indoor scene synthesis is preserving the functionality of synthesized scenes to create practical and usable indoor environments. Function groups exhibit the capability of balancing the global structure and local scenes of an indoor space. In this paper, we propose a function-centric indoor scene synthesis framework, named FuncScene. Our key idea is to use function groups as an intermedium to connect the local scenes and the global structure, thus achieving a coarse-to-fine indoor scene synthesis while maintaining the functionality and practicality of synthesized scenes. Indoor scenes are synthesized by first generating function groups using generative models and then instantiating by searching and matching the specific function groups from a dataset. The proposed framework also makes it easier to achieve multi-level generation control of scene synthesis, which was challenging for previous works. Extensive experiments on various indoor scene synthesis tasks demonstrate the validity of our method. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations show the proposed framework outperforms the existing state-of-the-art. • Function-centric indoor scene synthesis via a Variational AutoEncoder framework. • A multi-level generation control for indoor scene synthesis. • Ensuring the diversity and plausibility of the generated indoor scenes. • Enhancing the functionality and stylistic consistency of the generated indoor scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) profiles transcriptome of individual cells, which enables the discovery of cell types or subtypes by using unsupervised clustering. Current algorithms perform dimension reduction before cell clustering because of noises, high-dimensionality and linear inseparability of scRNA-seq data. However, independence of dimension reduction and clustering fails to fully characterize patterns in data, resulting in an undesirable performance. Results In this study, we propose a flexible and accurate algorithm for scRNA-seq data by jointly learning dimension reduction and cell clustering (aka DRjCC), where dimension reduction is performed by projected matrix decomposition and cell type clustering by non-negative matrix factorization. We first formulate joint learning of dimension reduction and cell clustering into a constrained optimization problem and then derive the optimization rules. The advantage of DRjCC is that feature selection in dimension reduction is guided by cell clustering, significantly improving the performance of cell type discovery. Eleven scRNA-seq datasets are adopted to validate the performance of algorithms, where the number of single cells varies from 49 to 68 579 with the number of cell types ranging from 3 to 14. The experimental results demonstrate that DRjCC significantly outperforms 13 state-of-the-art methods in terms of various measurements on cell type clustering (on average 17.44% by improvement). Furthermore, DRjCC is efficient and robust across different scRNA-seq datasets from various tissues. The proposed model and methods provide an effective strategy to analyze scRNA-seq data. Availability and implementation The software is coded using matlab, and is free available for academic https://github.com/xkmaxidian/DRjCC. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBM-MSCs) in cell-based clinical therapies is hindered by the limited number of cells remaining after the initial isolation process and by cellular senescence following in vitro expansion. Understanding the process of in vitro senescence in hBM-MSCs would enable the development of strategies to maintain their vitality after cell culture. Herein, we compared the gene expression profiles of human embryonic stem cells and human BM-MSCs from donors of different ages. We first found that the expression of discoidin domain receptor 2 (DDR2) in adult donor-derived hBM-MSCs was lower than it was in the young donor-derived hBM-MSCs. Moreover, in vitro cultured late-passage hBM-MSCs showed significant downregulation of DDR2 compared to their early-passage counterparts, and siRNA inhibition of DDR2 expression recapitulated features of senescence in early-passage hBM-MSCs. Further, we found through knockdown and overexpression approaches that coactivator-associated arginine methyltransferase 1 (CARM1) regulated the expression level of DDR2 and the senescence of hBM-MSCs. Finally, chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis confirmed direct binding of CARM1 to the DDR2 promoter region with a high level of H3R17 methylation in early-passage hBM-MSCs, and inhibition of CARM1-mediated histone arginine methylation decreased DDR2 expression and led to cellular senescence. Taken together, our findings suggest that DDR2 plays a major role in regulating the in vitro senescence of hBM-MSCs and that CARM1-mediated histone H3 methylation might be the upstream regulatory mechanism controlling this function of DDR2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A field experiment was performed to explore the compensation effects of different nitrogen (N) regimes on the growth and photosynthetic capacity in different leaf layers of the summer maize hybrid of LuYu9105 under waterlogging at the seedling stage. The results showed that waterlogging significantly decreased the maximum green leaf area (gLA) by 10.0~15.3% and 9.3~22.5%, mainly due to the reduction in the below-ear layer leaves at the silking stage in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Waterlogging also significantly decreased the ear leaf photosynthetic rate (PN), and Fv/Fm, Fv/Fo, ΦPSII and qP at the below-ear layer leaves at the mid- and late-filling stages, which was accompanied by a reduction in the duration of grain-filling (T) by 2.6~5.9%, thus resulting in a loss of grain yield by 7.0~18.5%. Interestingly, a shift in N from basal application to topdressing at the big flare stage was shown to compensate the adverse effects of waterlogging by through increased gLA and leaf photosynthetic capacity at the ear layer and the above-ear layer, as well as a greater grain-filling rate, resulting in an increase in grain yield by 9.9~27.0% and 17.8~25.8% compared to other N treatments. Therefore, this study showed that optimal nitrogen regimes during maize growth are capable of compensating for the impacts caused by waterlogging at the seedling stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The micropump is the most important functional unit of a micro total analysis system (μTAS). An ideal microfluidics system should adopt simple, stable, robust, inexpensive, and integrated on-chip strategies to transport samples for downstream applications, with little or no external energy consumption and limited manual intervention. Nevertheless, it remains a key challenge for traditional micropumps to be directly integrated into self-contained and disposable μTAS for velocity-stable and passive sample transport. The best way to assess the capability of passive micropumps is to evaluate their pumping performance in extreme environments, e.g. a 3D configurated microchannel instead of a 2D configuration, high temperature conditions instead of at room temperature, a long microchannel instead of short microchannel, a complex topological microsystem (e.g. a microvascular network interconnecting multiple inlets and outlets) instead of a simple topological microsystem (e.g. a one-directional microchannel connecting only one inlet and one outlet), and multi-phase microdroplet transport instead of single-phase plug transport. In this review, a novel micropumping methodology – a pressure-driven gas-diffusion/permeation micropump – is described, which is the first review paper dedicated to this subject. A comprehensive overview is provided for comparison between this novel micropumping methodology and traditional passive micropumps, especially for applications in stable velocity control in the aforementioned extreme environments. Compared with mainstream conventional micropumps, we confirm that pressure-driven gas-diffusion/permeation micropumps combine a number of superior properties all into one device, such as small size, simple structure, without the need for microfabrication procedures or external power consumption, strong transport capacity, homogeneous flow velocity, delivery capacity for both multi-phase microdroplets and single-phase plugs, long-distance transport, persistent pumping for both 3D microchannels and complex topological microsystems (e.g. a biomimetic microvasculature), low cost, ease of microdevice integration, bubble suppression and amazing stability at high temperatures. An advanced outlook and perspectives for the future development of this novel micropump are also discussed, which may serve as a starting point for researchers in the microfluidics fields to harness pressure-driven gas-diffusion/permeation micropumps for downstream applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We propose a hierarchical framework for the generation of building interiors. Our solution is based on a mixed integer quadratic programming (MIQP) formulation. We parametrize a layout by polygons that are further decomposed into small rectangles. We identify important high‐level constraints, such as room size, room position, room adjacency, and the outline of the building, and formulate them in a way that is compatible with MIQP and the problem parametrization. We also propose a hierarchical framework to improve the scalability of the approach. We demonstrate that our algorithm can be used for residential building layouts and can be scaled up to large layouts such as office buildings, shopping malls, and supermarkets. We show that our method is faster by multiple orders of magnitude than previous methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voronoi treemaps are widely used for hierarchical data visualization. Existing methods calculate the visualization layouts of hierarchical data by combining the proportion optimization of weights and Lloyd's method of sites. However, this may not only produce results with large area errors but also require more time consumption. Besides, the relative visualization position of the same data element between adjacent frames in dynamic hierarchical data may be changed abruptly, resulting in unclear visual results. To this end, we propose an efficient and topological structure preserved visualization approach, called PowerHierarchy, for visualizing hierarchical data. Firstly, an improved version of the power diagram computing algorithm is introduced to generate the visualization layouts of each data element in the hierarchy. Unlike random initialization, we construct a centroidal Voronoi tessellation as input and then use a Breadth-First traversing strategy to adapt the depth information to produce visual layouts of static hierarchical data. Based on this, an updating scheme is presented for visualizing dynamic hierarchical data, where previous results are iteratively fed as inputs to initialize current layouts. Besides, the external boundary sites and their subsites are projected onto the visual boundary and then moved into the visual region with the relative position preserved. Experimental results on several datasets demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy, and topology preservation advantage of our proposed visualization approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An open system with a thermal gradient is described for the optimization of polymerase chain reactions (PCR). Two thermal electric coolers were used as the heat source. The gradient is measured through encapsulated water-based beads of a temperature-dependent dye inside mineral oil, thereby forming virtual reaction chambers. Nine droplets (with typical volume of 0.7 μL) were used. Using the intrinsic fluorescence of a temperature-sensitive inert dye (sulforhodamine B), the process involves measurement of the fluorescence intensity at a known, uniform temperature together with the instrument-specific calibration constant to calculate an unknown, possibly non-uniform temperature. The results show that a nearly linear thermal gradient is obtained. This gradient function is a useful feature that can be used for optimization of a commonly used enzyme-activated reaction, viz. PCR. The emission spectra of fluorescent droplets during two-step PCR were monitored and the changes in fluorescence between 50 °C and 100 °C quantified. As the gradient feature allows for testing a range of annealing temperatures simultaneously, the optimal annealing temperature can be easily determined in a single experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eighteen triterpenoids, abifarines A-R, including fourteen previously unknown and four artifacts, together with six known ones, were isolated from the branch and leaf of Abies fargesii . Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic data analysis. The relative configurations of abifarines A and F were further confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis with Mo K α irradiation. All compounds were evaluated for their in vitro cytotoxicity against the mouse cancer B16 cell line, and human cancer HepG2 and MCF7 cell lines. (24 R )-cycloartane-3 β ,24,25-triol and (24 R )-cycloartane-3 β ,24,25,28-tetrol showed moderate anti-proliferative effect for B16 and HepG2 cell lines with IC 50 values of 32.9, 19.5 μ M and 26.4, 21.5 μ M, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an instantaneous and robust strategy for bonding a variety of non-silicon substrates such as thermoplastics, metals, an alloy, and ceramics to poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) irreversibly, mediated by one-step chemical modification using a mercaptosilane at room temperature followed by corona treatment to realize heterogeneous assembly also at room temperature. The mercapto functional group is one of the strongest nucleophiles, and it can instantaneously react with electrophiles of substrates, resulting in an alkoxysilane-terminated substrate at room temperature. In this way, prior oxidation of the substrate is dispensed with, and the alkoxysilane-terminated substrate can be readily oxidized and irreversibly bonded with oxidized PDMS at room temperature. A commercially available Tesla coil was used for surface oxidation, replacing a bulky and expensive plasma generator. Surface characterization was conducted by water contact angle measurement and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. A total of fifteen non-silicon substrates including polycarbonate (PC), two types of poly(vinylchloride) (PVC), poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), polystyrene (PS), polyimide (PI), two types of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), polypropylene (PP), iron (Fe), aluminum (Al), copper (Cu), brass, alumina (Al2O3), and zirconia (ZrO2) were bonded successfully with PDMS using this method, and the bond strengths of PDMS–PMMA, PDMS–PC, PDMS–PVC, PDMS–PET, PDMS–Al, and PDMS–Cu assemblies were measured to be approximately 335.9, 511.4, 467.3, 476.4, 282.2, and 236.7 kPa, respectively. The overall processes including surface modification followed by surface oxidation using corona treatment for bonding were realized within 12 to 17 min for most of the substrates tested except for ceramics which required 1 h for the bonding. In addition, large area (10 × 10 cm2) bonding was also successfully realized, ensuring the high reliability and stability of the introduced method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a new strategy for fabricating a seamless three-dimensional (3D) helical microreactor utilizing a silicone tube and a paraffin mold. With this method, various shapes and sizes of 3D helical microreactors were fabricated, and a complicated and laborious photolithographic process, or 3D printing, was eliminated. With dramatically enhanced portability at a significantly reduced fabrication cost, such a device can be considered to be the simplest microreactor, developed to date, for performing the flow-through polymerase chain reaction (PCR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) has been reported as an important molecule in various types of cancers. The biological function of COMT in colorectal cancer (CRC) has not yet been fully investigated. Methods We constructed a transient transfection of a CRC cell lines to up- and downregulate COMT expression level and tested the proliferative, invasion ability in vitro . We also constructed a stable transduced CRC cell line and conducted tumor-forming capacity experiment in mouse xenograft model in vivo . Results In vitro experiment showed that COMT inhibited the cell proliferation by regulating p-Akt, PTEN and inhibited G1 to S phase transition by regulating p53, p27, and cyclinD1. COMT inhibited invasion by regulating E-cadherin. In vivo experiment showed decreased tumor growth in COMT overexpressing cell line. Conclusions COMT has tumor-suppressive functions for CRC cell lines in vitro and in vivo experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gallstone diseases are common during pregnancy. In most cases, patients are asymptomatic and do not require any treatment. However, choledocholithiasis, cholangitis, and gallstone pancreatitis may potentially become life-threatening for both mother and fetus and often require urgent intervention. Although endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography ( ERCP) has become the standard technique for removing common bile duct stones, it is associated with ionizing radiation that could carry teratogenic risk. Non-radiation ERCP ( NR-ERCP) is reported to be effective without incurring this risk. Two techniques have been described to confirm bile duct cannulation: bile aspiration and image guidance. With bile aspiration, biliary cannulation is confirmed by applying suction to the cannula to yield bile, thus confirming an intrabiliary position. Image guidance involves using ultrasound or direct visualization (choledochoscopy) to confirm selective biliary cannulation or duct clearance. Once cannulation is achieved, the stones are removed using standard ERCP techniques and tools. Case series and retrospective studies have reported success rates of up to 90% for NR-ERCP with complication rates similar to standard ERCP. Pregnancy outcomes are not adversely affected by NR-ERCP, but whether the avoidance of radiation carries benefit for the baby is unknown. Prospective comparative trials are lacking. NR-ERCP is technically demanding and should be attempted only by skilled biliary endoscopists in properly equipped and staffed health-care institutions, in a multidisciplinary setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a bent microdevice made from elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) on a polycarbonate (PC) solid support. Its bent shape is well sustained, and this allows an on-chip flow-through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to be performed employing a single heater. The PC support was bent to a predetermined angle by heating the substrate close to the glass transition temperature of PC, and the PDMS microdevice was physically adapted to the curvature of the bent PC. The relatively short plane of the bent PC substrate was then placed on top of a heater, leaving the relatively long plane floating in the air, on the entire surface of which a temperature gradient was established. The plane in contact with the heater represents the zone for denaturation, and the slanted plane floating in the air acts as the annealing/extension zone. Two targets with amplicon sizes of 230 and 282 bp were successfully amplified utilizing microdevices with 4° and 17° inclination angles, respectively, by employing a single heater in both cases and within 30 min. The system provides an effective alternative to conventional 3-temperature control flow-through PCR devices by minimizing the accessories and hence facilitating system miniaturization. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Delayed gastric emptying is a serious complication of pancreaticoduodenectomy. The effect of pylorus removal on delayed gastric emptying has not been well evaluated. Study Design: We searched five databases (PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Scopus and Web of Science) up to July 2014. The meta-regression analysis was performed to evaluate any factors accountable for the heterogeneity. Publication bias was assessed by Egger's test, and corrected by Duval's trim and fill method. Subgroup analyses were conducted for different surgical techniques of pyloric removal. Other intraoperative and postoperative parameters were compared between two groups. Results: We included 27 studies involving 2,599 patients, with a moderate-high heterogeneity for primary outcome (I2 = 63%). Meta-regression analysis showed that four variables primarily contributed to the heterogeneity, namely nasogastric tube intubation time, solid food start time, preoperative diabetes percentage and the number of patients in pylorus-preserving group. After excluding four studies, the remaining twenty-three studies showed reduced heterogeneity (I2 = 51%). Then we used Duval's trim and fill method to correct publication bias. The corrected MH odds ratio was 0.78 (95% CI: 0.52–1.17). A subgroup analysis showed that pylorus removal tends to reduce delayed gastric emptying incidence for subtotal stomach-preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy or pylorus-resecting pancreaticoduodenectomy, compared with pylorus-preserving group. However, standard Whipple procedure failed to show any significant reduction of DGE compared with pylorus-removal group. No significant differences were observed in terms of length of hospital stay, infection and pancreatic fistula; however, pylorus removal resulted in longer operation time, more blood loss and higher mortality. Conclusion: The pylorus removal does not significantly reduce the overall incidence of delayed gastric emptying. Subtotal stomach-preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy or pylorus-resecting pancreaticoduodenectomy tends to reduce delayed gastric emptying incidence, but needs further validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The therapeutic effect of lymph node dissection for pancreas invasive intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN) remains unclear. The study investigated whether cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS) rates among invasive IPMN patients improve when more lymph nodes are harvested during surgery. Study Design: The study cohort was retrieved from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The lymph node count was categorized into quartiles. The relationship between lymph node count and survival was analyzed using Kaplan–Meier curves and a Cox proportional-hazards model. The stage migration was assessed by Chi-square tests. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to minimize confounding variables between groups. Results: In total, 1,080 patients with resected invasive IPMNs from 1992 to 2011 were included. Univariate and multivariate Cox models indicated that an increased lymph node count independently improves survival. The Kaplan-Meier and log-rank tests identified 16 nodes as an optimal cut-off value that yielded a significant survival benefit for all invasive IPMN patients. The stage migration effect existed in this cohort. After PSM, the 5-year CSS increased from 36% to 47%, and the median survival rate increased from 30 months to 40 months by increasing the lymph node count to over 16, alone. The 5-year OS rate also provided additional support for this result. Conclusion: Increased lymph node counts were associated with improved survival in invasive IPMN patients. One cut-off value of lymph node count was 16 for this improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the reflexivity and transitivity of a double triangle lattice of subspaces in a Hilbert space. We show that the double triangle lattice is neither reflexive nor transitive when some invertibility condition is satisfied (by the restriction of a projection under another). In this case, we show that the reflexive lattice determined by the double triangle lattice contains infinitely many projections, which partially answers a problem of Halmos on small lattices of subspaces in Hilbert spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Assume that is a Hilbert space of dimension greater than two. We prove that an abelian Kadison–Singer algebra acting on cannot contain any non-trivial idempotent. Based on this, we show that an abelian KS-algebra in matrix algebra ( ) cannot be generated by a single element. As a corollary, it is also proved that the lattice of an abelian KS-algebra cannot be completely distributive. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this study, we fabricate a hybrid planar microdevice to perform an on-chip flow-through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) constructed by assembling glass and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) on which a serpentine microchannel is engraved. The proposed system employs a metal alloy slab, called Invar, which is basically a nickel iron alloy, sandwiched between the microdevice and a heater. Owing to the high thermal conductivity (10WK−1 m−1) but notably low thermal expansion coefficient (1.6×10−6 K−1) of Invar, a stable temperature gradient was established on its surface. The Invar was placed on the heater in such a way that they made partial contact, with the rest of the Invar exposed to the air. A uniformly distributed temperature gradient, which ranged in temperatures from 57°C to 95°C, was first established on the Invar sheet, and a planar microdevice was directly placed atop the Invar sheet. The proposed system was successfully applied to amplify three targets: a 230bp gene fragment from a plasmid vector, the first 282bp of the interferon-beta (IFN-β) promoter from human genomic DNA, and a 409bp long gene fragment in thyroid transcription factor-1 (TTF-1), which is used effectively as a marker for diagnosing lung and thyroid carcinomas, from human genomic DNA. All of the targets were amplified within less than 30min. One microdevice was utilized repeatedly for multiple target amplifications by fine tuning the relative position of the Invar sheet on the heater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with ordinary polyacrylamide, acrylamide copolymer of acryloyloxyethyl trimethylammonium chloride (AM/DAC) hydrogel is easier to reside in large pores and fractures in sandstone formation through electrostatic adsorption. However, the syneresis mechanism of AM/DAC hydrogel caused by high temperature and inorganic salts has not been clear. In this paper, the type of water in gelling solutions and hydrogels was analyzed by the DSC method, the results showed that the bound water in the hydrogel was transformed into free water and then the free water was separated from the hydrogel during the syneresis of AM/DAC hydrogel. Experimental investigations, including dynamic light scattering (DLS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), phase-analysis light-scattering (PALS), and scanning electron microscope (SEM), have been conducted to elucidate the mechanism of temperature and inorganic salts on syneresis rate of AM/DAC hydrogel. The result showed that with the increase of temperature, the polymer in the AM/DAC hydrogel degraded and the molecular chain broken, which destroyed the grid of hydrogel and reduced the water holding capacity. At the same time, the formation of the hydrophobic group in the molecular chain led to the decrease of the hydrophilicity so that the AM/DAC hydrogel was easy to syneresis. In addition, the increase of temperature will promote the formation of crosslinking intermediate (di/trimethylol), improve the crosslinking rate between crosslinking intermediate and polymer, which makes the AM/DAC hydrogel easy to over crosslink. Inorganic salts diffused the electric double layer by compressing the polymer and competed with the hydrophilic groups on the polymer to absorb water, which will reduce the elongation and hydrophilicity of the polymer molecular chain. This will lead to the decrease of the hydrodynamic radius of polymer molecules in AM/DAC hydrogel, which is the main reason why inorganic salts promote hydrogel dehydration. Besides, inorganic salts had little effect on the formation rate and crosslinking rate of di/trimethylol. Therefore, reducing the molecular hydrodynamic radius of AM/DAC is the main reason why inorganic salts promote the syneresis of AM/DAC hydrogel. The research demonstrated the mechanism of high temperature and inorganic salts on syneresis rate of AM/DAC hydrogel. This study also provides technical guidelines for inhibiting hydrogel syneresis. Micromorphology of AM/DAC solutions: (A) AM/DAC, 0 h; (B) AM/DAC, 24 h Micromorphology of AM/DAC hydrogels aged for 24 h. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Here, we introduce an instantaneous and robust strategy for bonding poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) substrates via ethanol treatment combined with subsequent UV irradiation under ambient conditions, and examine the bonding reversibility by varying the percentage of the ethanolic solution manufactured. Organic solvent such as ethanol can activate the surface of PMMA without sacrificing the optical property of the PMMA substrate, and a subsequent exposure to UV recrosslinks the diffused monomers of acrylate functionalities to realize permanent bonding of two PMMA substrates under mild and ambient experimental conditions, which minimizes the deformation of channel profiles. To achieve robust sealing, two PMMA substrates were immediately placed in direct contact with each other after the treatment with ethanolic solution, and were irradiated under UV. Permanent sealing was realized in less than 1min. Various bonding analyses were conducted by performing tensile strength measurement, high-throughput leakage test, burst test, and peel test. The highest bonding strength was determined to be approximately 6.17MPa when 90% ethanolic solution was employed, and the bonding was sufficiently robust to endure intense introduction of liquid whose per-minute injection volume was almost 1200-fold higher than the total internal volume of the microchannel adopted. We also investigated the potential in the manipulation of bonding reversibility, and the critical percentage of ethanolic solution to realize irreversible bonding for PMMA assemblies based on the proposed strategy was determined to be just over 50%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper reports on the fabrication of a two-layer microdevice for conducting on-chip parallel flow-through polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) equipped with a single heater and disposable plastic syringes for semi-automated sample delivery for the construction of a portable PCR microdevice. Identical shapes of disconnected spiral-like microchannels were engraved on two poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) substrates having varying thicknesses, and by rotating either one of the substrates 180°, they were aligned in such a way that one continuous sample flow was realized in a 3D configuration within a two-layer microdevice. Typical in vitro enzymatic amplifications were performed simultaneously in parallel on the microdevice by employing a single heater. Also, sample actuation module was miniaturized and its operation was semi-automated by employing portable plastic syringes as pumps. This system dispenses with the use of a bulky external apparatus such as a syringe pump, and also greatly simplifies the temperature control by utilizing a single heater, and therefore, downsizing the overall footprint of the device. Samples were injected into two inlets simultaneously and were successfully delivered through the entire length of the microchannels of over 2m, mediated by portable plastic syringes. To investigate the feasibility of employing a single heater as well as to assess the reliability of the sample injection performance initiated by the plastic syringes, on-chip flow-through PCRs were performed using plasmid DNA as templates inside 2m-long spiral microchannels constructed in a two-layer arrangement, as a proof-of-concept experiment. Target amplicons were successfully amplified simultaneously in parallel reactions inside the proposed microdevice in approximately 27min with high reproducibility, confirming stable sample injection performance and reliable temperature control inside the microdevice. The proposed schemes could pave the way for device miniaturization, process simplification, and reaction parallelization, realizing a portable microfluidic device applicable for on-site and direct field uses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Bubble formation inside a microscale channel is a significant problem in general microfluidic experiments. The problem becomes especially crucial when performing a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on a chip which is subject to repetitive temperature changes. In this paper, we propose a bubble-free sample injection scheme applicable for continuous-flow PCR inside a glass/PDMS hybrid microfluidic chip, and attempt to provide a theoretical basis concerning bubble formation and elimination. Highly viscous paraffin oil plugs are employed in both the anterior and posterior ends of a sample plug, completely encapsulating the sample and eliminating possible nucleation sites for bubbles. In this way, internal channel pressure is increased, and vaporization of the sample is prevented, suppressing bubble formation. Use of an oil plug in the posterior end of the sample plug aids in maintaining a stable flow of a sample at a constant rate inside a heated microchannel throughout the entire reaction, as compared to using an air plug. By adopting the proposed sample injection scheme, we demonstrate various practical applications. On-chip continuous-flow PCR is performed employing genomic DNA extracted from a clinical single hair root sample, and its D1S80 locus is successfully amplified. Also, chip reusability is assessed using a plasmid vector. A single chip is used up to 10 times repeatedly without being destroyed, maintaining almost equal intensities of the resulting amplicons after each run, ensuring the reliability and reproducibility of the proposed sample injection scheme. In addition, the use of a commercially-available and highly cost-effective hot plate as a potential candidate for the heating source is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A fusion model is constructed by integrating deep representation learning and classification into one model, guiding and reinforcing each other. • The model achieves good performance for binary classification even the simplest linear regression classifier is used. • The model has good generalization ability and stability for small sample and classification imbalance. • The system is open and can be improved as needed. • The performance is verified on genetic-based tumor recognition. Traditional pattern recognition problems are usually accomplished through two successive stages of representation and classification, the generalization ability and stability are difficult to guarantee for small samples and category imbalance. For tackling these problems, an unlabeled data-driven representation learning classification (RLC) fused model is constructed by integrating representation learning and classification into one model, rather than simple putting the two stages together. The RLC fused model mainly focuses on interactive iteratively optimizing representation learning and classification in a model, guiding and reinforcing each other. Under the framework of RLC, a deep nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is adopted for representation learning by complementing the advantages of NMF and deep learning, and avoiding complex network structure and parameter modulation. The framework is called deep NMF-RLC fusion model, which can achieve good performance for binary classification even the simplest linear regression classifier is used. The model explores useful information embedded in unlabeled data, and is suitable for small training samples and unbalanced classification. The performance of the proposed framework is verified on genetic-based tumor recognition, which contains all three stages of early diagnosis, tumor type recognition and postoperative metastasis. Experiments show that, compared with the published state-of-the-art methods and results, there are significant improvements in classification accuracy, specificity and sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To assess the feasibility of 5.0 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in characterizing pancreatic cystic lesions (PCLs), compared with 3.0 T MRI and multidetector computed tomography (MDCT). Methods: Thirty-five patients with PCLs underwent 5.0 T MR alongside 3.0 T MR or MDCT. Two observers measured subjective and objective image quality scores. The consistency of two observers between 5.0 T and 3.0 T was calculated by intraclass correlation coefficients. The characteristics of PCLs and their specific diagnosis, as well as benignity/malignancy, were evaluated across MDCT, 3.0 T, and 5.0 T MRI. Results: The 5.0 T MR demonstrated significantly higher subjective image quality and SNR on T1WI compared to that in 3.0 T MR (p < 0.05). The 5.0 T MRI identified more cyst lesions than the 3.0 T MRI (40 and 32) and MDCT (82 and 56). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for differentiating benign from malignant lesions with 5.0 T MRI (75%, 100%, and 91.4%, respectively) surpassed those of 3.0 T MRI and MDCT. The accuracy of the specific diagnosis of PCLs at 5.0 T MRI (80%) was superior to 3.0 T MRI and MDCT. Conclusions: 5.0 T MRI exhibits certain superiority in delineating details of PCLs and in clinical diagnostic accuracy, outperforming MDCT and 3.0 T MRI while maintaining sufficient image quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the surjective transition probability preserving transformations on the Grassmann space of infinite projections in an infinite semifinite factor are characterized. As in the classical Wigner's theorem, all these maps are induced by *-isomorphisms or *-anti-isomorphisms of the semifinite factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the southern Huang-Huai-Hai (HHH) region, China, maize production is frequently threatened by waterlogging at the seedling stage and by drought at the big flare stage. A two-year field experiment was performed to explore whether subsoiling (SS) in the winter wheat season could improve the photosynthetic capacity and increase the water use efficiency (WUE) of summer maize using the variety, Luyu9105. A split design was adopted in the experiment. The main plots used tillage practices, including SS and rotary tillage (RT). The subplots consisted of two irrigation methods, i.e., applied supplemental irrigation at the big flare stage (I) and no irrigation at the big flare stage (NI). The results showed that the SS treatment significantly increased soil water content (SWC) in the 40–60 cm soil layer. The SS treatment improved green leaf area index (gLAI) by 15.1%–30.2%, and enhanced the ear-leaf net photosynthetic rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (gs), intercellular CO2 concentration (ci) and transpiration rate (Tr), and was accompanied by an increase in the grain-filling duration (T) by 5 days and the mean grain-filling rate (Va). The SS treatment decreased the stomatal limitation (Ls), indicating that RT treatment, which was under lower SWC, led to a decrease in Pn. Applied supplemental irrigation under RT treatment was able to compensate for the growth of leaves, but could not reverse the decreasing trend in the gLAI. Ultimately, the SS treatment improved WUE by 9.1%–9.9%, and increased grain yields by 10.0%–29.3%. Therefore, this study showed that in the southern Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, which has a yellow cinnamon soil type, the practice of SS can improve the photosynthetic characteristics of leaves and WUE of rainfed summer maize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of Mobile Edge Computing, driverless, 5 G, and related techniques, Edge-Cloud based Urban Intelligent Video Systems are extremely promising to support public safety through powerful analysis and timely response. Furtherly, flexible Unmanned Ground Vehicles(UGVs), which are equipped with edge devices, can enhance these edge systems to withstand these abnormalities: natural disasters, abnormal crowd flows, and other emergencies. In this regard, as a critical issue in edge systems, task placement in these systems needs to consider these "mobile" edge nodes: ICVs(UGVs). Therefore, a novel and effective framework named Optimized Centroids K-means based Task Placement framework is proposed: we firstly involve the clustering approach to optimize initial centroids as the positions of ICVs in terms of Edge Nodes, various typical optimization methods can be utilized to place related edge tasks effectively. The experimental results demonstrate that our novel framework has a great improvement over several existing typical strategies and supports multiple optimization methods well in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was aimed to investigate the effects of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) cancer susceptibility candidate 2c (CASC2c) on the proliferation, metastasis and drug resistance of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. The expression of CASC2c in NSCLC tissues and cell lines was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). MTT and Transwell assay were used to determine the proliferation and migration of NSCLC cells in the experimental group and the control group respectively. The drug sensitivity test was used to confirm whether increasing the CASC2c expression level could reverse the resistance of NSCLC cells to the chemotherapy drug cisplatin. The effects of CASC2c on the expression levels of p-ERK1/2 and β-catenin were detected by western blot. The results of RT-qPCR showed that CASC2c was under-expressed in NSCLC tissues and cells compared with normal adjacent lung tissues cells (p < 0.05). In addition, the CASC2c expression was remarkably correlated with TNM staging, tumor cell differentiation, lymph node metastasis, smoking and other pathological indicators of patients with NSCLC (p < 0.05). MTT and Transwell assay showed that the high-expression of CASC2c significantly reduced the proliferation and migration of NSCLC cells compared to that of the control group (p < 0.05). Western blot assay showed that the high-expressed CASC2c can decrease the expression of phosphorylated-ERK1/2 (p-ERK1/2) and β-catenin. Conclusions: CASC2c was low expressed in NSCLC tissues and cells. What's more, it inhibited the proliferation and migration of NSCLC cells by inhibiting the expression of p-ERK1/2 and β-catenin and reversed NSCLC cells' resistance to the chemotherapy drug cisplatin. Therefore, CASC2c may serve as a new biomarker and therapeutic target in the diagnosis and treatment of NSCLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature control is the most important and fundamental part of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR). To date, there have been several methods to realize the periodic heating and cooling of the thermal-cycler system for continuous-flow PCR reactions, and three of them were widely used: the thermo-cycled thermoelectric cooler (TEC), the heating block, and the thermostatic heater. In the present study, a new approach called open-loop controlled single thermostatic TEC was introduced to control the thermal cycle during the amplification process. Differing from the former three methods, the size of this microdevice is much smaller, especially when compared to the microdevice used in the heating block method. Furthermore, the rising and cooling speed of this method is much rapider than that in a traditional TEC cycler, and is nearly 20–30% faster than a single thermostatic heater. Thus, a portable PCR system was made without any external heat source, and only a Teflon tube-wrapped TEC chip was used to achieve the continuous-flow PCR reactions. This provides an efficient way to reduce the size of the system and simplify it. In addition, through further experiments, the microdevice is not only found to be capable of amplification of a PCR product from Human papillomavirus type 49 (Genbank ref: X74480.1) and Rubella virus (RUBV), but also enables clinical diagnostics, such as a test for hepatitis B virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A centroidal power diagram with hybrid capacity constraints is introduced. • We proposed a method to optimize the weights of variable capacity-constrained sites. • Our computation method is coupled with Newton's method and Lloyd's method. • The HCCCPD algorithm is employed to solve the location-allocation problem. [Display omitted] Power diagrams, as a powerful extension of Voronoi diagrams, have been utilized in a wide range of applications in various fields. By imposing the capacity constraint and the centroid constraint to the ordinary power diagram, capacity-constrained power diagram and centroidal capacity-constrained power diagram can be obtained respectively, in which, all the capacity constraints are fixed values. However, some practical applications require a special kind of power diagrams, called hybrid capacity-constrained centroidal power diagrams, where not all capacity constraints are fixed values, and instead there are some capacities of sites constrained to intervals. To this end, we propose an iterative computation method for the power diagrams with hybrid capacity constraints. On the one hand, a weight evaluated method is introduced to update the weights of interval capacity-constrained sites, and Newton's method is applied to optimize the weights of fixed-value capacity-constrained sites. On the other hand, Lloyd's method is employed to move the sites to their respective mass centers. Experimental results prove that the proposed method can effectively compute the centroidal power diagram with hybrid capacity constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Efficient computational recognition and segmentation of target organ from medical images are foundational in diagnosis and treatment, especially about pancreas cancer. In practice, the diversity in appearance of pancreas and organs in abdomen, makes detailed texture information of objects important in segmentation algorithm. According to our observations, however, the structures of previous networks, such as the Richer Feature Convolutional Network (RCF), are too coarse to segment the object (pancreas) accurately, especially the edge. Method: In this paper, we extend the RCF, proposed to the field of edge detection, for the challenging pancreas segmentation, and put forward a novel pancreas segmentation network. By employing multi-layer up-sampling structure replacing the simple up-sampling operation in all stages, the proposed network fully considers the multi-scale detailed contexture information of object (pancreas) to perform per-pixel segmentation. Additionally, using the CT scans, we supply and train our network, thus get an effective pipeline. Result: Working with our pipeline with multi-layer up-sampling model, we achieve better performance than RCF in the task of single object (pancreas) segmentation. Besides, combining with multi scale input, we achieve the 76.36% DSC (Dice Similarity Coefficient) value in testing data. Conclusion: The results of our experiments show that our advanced model works better than previous networks in our dataset. On the other words, it has better ability in catching detailed contexture information. Therefore, our new single object segmentation model has practical meaning in computational automatic diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) devices consist of multiple independent devices, such as a droplet generator, a PCR thermocycler, and a droplet reader, which have the disadvantages of low integration, complex equipment structure, and high operation difficulty. This paper proposes a fully automatic integrated digital PCR device based on continuous-flow digital PCR theory. By simply adding the sample to the entrance of the integrated instrument, a series of procedures required for digital PCR detection can be fully automated, including sample injection, droplet generation, PCR thermal cycling, fluorescence acquisition, and signal analysis. In contrast to traditional techniques, sample testing requires only one integrated device rather than three separate instruments. For full automation, we design complete control and data processing software, which can complete a test by one-step operation. Therefore, the disadvantages of traditional instruments, such as multi-step operation, and hence, potential environmental pollution, are avoided. Moreover, the system can be powered by solar cells and does not require an external power supply. As a proof of concept, the proposed device is used for absolute quantitative detection of the hepatitis B virus in serum samples. The capacity of the system is validated by absolute quantification of three orders of magnitude from 103 to 105 IU/mL. The results have a good linear correlation (0.9986) with those of the traditional quantitative (qPCR), thus confirming the reliability of the instrument. In summary, we believe that our work can promote the development of integrated digital PCR systems. Image 1 The highlights of the manuscript as follow: •Single device for digital PCR detection. •Solar cells drive, no external power supply. •A software was designed which can control the system and analyze the data. •Absolute quantitative detection of hepatitis B virus in human serum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underlying mechanism involved in auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) remains largely unclear. It has been previously reported that mutations in the apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) gene are associated with auditory neuropathy and delayed peripheral neuropathy, which can eventually cause ANSD. In the present study, the regulatory effects of AIF knockdown on the cellular functions of spiral ganglion neurons (SNGs) and the molecular mechanism(s) of AIF knockdown in inducing cell apoptosis in SGNs were further investigated. The results showed that the AIF knockdown via siRNA transfection resulted in high levels of oxidative stress, and impaired mitochondrial respiration activity and membrane potential in SGNs. Western blotting further proved that the knockdown of AIF can decrease the content of anti-apoptotic and anti-oxidative proteins, as well as mitochondrial respiratory chain Complex I proteins. The present experimental data suggested that the abnormal expression of AIF may affect SGNs cellular function, and may contribute to the progress of ANSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Insulinoma and annular pancreas are both rare disorders. In this report, we describe a patient who had insulinoma in association with an annular pancreas. Results and Conclusion: Because the computed tomography scan revealed no relationship between the tumor and the major pancreatic duct, we performed a laparoscopic insulinoma enucleation. As for the asymptomatic annular pancreas, no bypass procedure was performed. The patient recovered well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Wigner's theorem, which is one of the cornerstones of the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, asserts that every symmetry of quantum system is unitary or anti-unitary. This classical result was first given by Wigner in 1931. Thereafter it has been proved and generalized in various ways by many authors. Recently, G.P. Gehér extended Wigner's and Molnár's theorems and characterized the transformations on the Grassmann space of all rank- n projections which preserve the transition probability. The aim of this paper is to provide a new approach to describe the general form of the transition probability preserving (not necessarily bijective) maps between Grassmann spaces. As a byproduct, we are able to generalize the results of Molnár and G.P. Gehér. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]