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Objectives: Sonochemotherapy, which uses microbubble (MB)-assisted ultrasound (US) to deliver chemotherapeutic agents, has the potential to enhance tumour chemotherapy. The combination of US and MB has been demonstrated to prolong the survival of patients with pancreatic cancer. This phase 2 clinical trial aimed to determine the clinical efficacy and safety of sonochemotherapy for inoperable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma by using US and MB. Methods: Eighty-two patients with stage III or IV pancreatic cancer were recruited from July 2018 to March 2021 and followed up until September 2022. US treatment was performed with a modified diagnostic US scanner for 30 min after chemotherapeutic infusion. The primary endpoint was overall survival (OS), and the secondary endpoints were Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) status < 2, progression-free survival (PFS), disease control rate (DCR), and adverse events. Results: Seventy-eight patients were randomly allocated (40 to chemotherapy and 38 to sonochemotherapy). The median OS was longer with sonochemotherapy than with chemotherapy (9.10 vs. 6.10 months; p = 0.037). The median PFS with sonochemotherapy was 5.50 months, compared with 3.50 months (p = 0.080) for chemotherapy. The time of ECOG status < 2 was longer with sonochemotherapy (7.20 months) than with chemotherapy (5.00 months; p = 0.029). The DCR was 73.68% for sonochemotherapy compared with 42.50% for the control (p = 0.005). The incidence of overall adverse events was balanced between the two groups. Conclusions: The use of sonochemotherapy can extend the survival and well-being time of stage III or IV pancreatic cancer patients without any increase in serious adverse events. Trial registration: ChineseClinicalTrials.gov ChiCTR2100044721 Clinical relevance statement: This multicentre, randomised, controlled trial has proven that sonochemotherapy, namely, the combination of diagnostic ultrasound, microbubbles, and chemotherapy, could extend the overall survival of patients with end-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma from 6.10 to 9.10 months without increasing any serious adverse events. Key Points: • This is the first multicentre, randomised, controlled trial of sonochemotherapy for clinical pancreatic cancer treatment using ultrasound and a commercial ultrasound contrast agent. • Sonochemotherapy extended the median overall survival from 6.10 (chemotherapy alone) to 9.10 months. • The disease control rate increased from 42.50% with chemotherapy to 73.68% with sonochemotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial N50 sintered Nd–Fe–B magnets were grain boundary diffusion (GBD) processed with TbHx powders. The diffusion temperature and time dependent microstructure and magnetic properties of the GBD processed magnets were investigated. High remanence and coercivity were obtained when the magnet was GBD processed at 875 °C for 14 h; the coercivity of the magnet increased from 12.57 kOe to 22.65 kOe. The relationships between microstructure and coercivity, remanence, and thermal stability of the GBD processed magnets were analyzed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) for breast cancer by comparing it to handheld ultrasound (HHUS) and mammography (MG). Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted between February 2016 and March 2017 in five tertiary hospitals in China, and 1922 women aged 30–69 years old were recruited. Women aged 30–39 years (group A) underwent ABUS and HHUS, and women aged 40–69 (group B) underwent additional MG. Images were interpreted using the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). All BI-RADS 4 and 5 cases were confirmed pathologically. Sensitivities and specificities of all modalities were compared. Results: There were 83 cancers in 677 women in group A and 321 cancers in 1245 women in group B. In the whole study population, the sensitivities of ABUS and HHUS were 92.8% (375/404) and 96.3% (389/404), and the specificities were 93.0% (1411/1518) and 89.6% (1360/1518), respectively. ABUS had a significantly higher specificity to HHUS (p < 0.01), while HHUS had higher sensitivity (p = 0.01). In group B, the sensitivities of ABUS, HHUS, and MG were 93.5% (300/321), 96.6% (310/321), and 87.9% (282/321). The specificities were 93.0% (859/924), 89.9% (831/924), and 91.6% (846/924). ABUS had significantly higher sensitivity (p = 0.02) and comparable specificity compared with MG (p = 0.14). Conclusion: ABUS increased sensitivity and had similar specificity compared with mammography in the diagnosis of breast cancer. Additionally, ABUS has comparable performance to HHUS in women aged 30–69 years old. ABUS or HHUS is a suitable modality for breast cancer diagnosis. Key Points: • In breast cancer diagnosis settings, automated breast ultrasound has a higher cancer detection rate, sensitivity, and specificity than mammography, especially in women with dense breasts. • Compared with handheld ultrasound, automated breast ultrasound has higher specificity, lower sensitivity, and comparable diagnostic performance. • Automated breast ultrasound is a suitable modality for breast cancer diagnosis, and may have a potential indication for its further use in the breast cancer early detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Breast cancer is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer‐related deaths for women all over the world. Recently, automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) has become a new and promising screening modality for whole breast examination. However, reviewing volumetric ABUS is time‐consuming and lesions could be missed during the examination. Therefore, computer‐aided cancer detection in ABUS volume is extremely expected to help clinician for the breast cancer screening. Methods: We develop a novel end‐to‐end 3D convolutional network for automated cancer detection in ABUS volume, in order to accelerate reviewing and meanwhile to provide high detection sensitivity with low false positives (FPs). Specifically, an efficient 3D Inception Unet‐style architecture with fusion deep supervision mechanism is proposed to attain decent detection performance. In addition, a novel asymmetric loss is designed to help the network balancing false positive and false negative regions, thus improving detection sensitivity for small cancerous lesions. Results: The efficacy of our network was extensively validated on a dataset including 196 patients with 661 cancer regions. Our network obtained a detection sensitivity of 95.1% with 3.0 FPs per ABUS volume. Furthermore, the average inference time of the network was 0.1 second per volume, which largely shortens the conventional reviewing time. Conclusions: The proposed network provides efficient and accurate cancer detection scheme using ABUS volume, and may assist clinicians for more efficient breast cancer screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the phase compositions, microstructures, and magnetic properties of PrNd-free Ce-Fe-B-based sintered magnets with the nominal composition of (Ce0.78Y0.17La0.05)16.28Febal.B7.44M1.94 (at.%: M = Co, Al, Cu, and Nb) have been investigated. It shows that a lamellar crystalline structure is formed in the Ce-Fe-B-based strip casting (SC) alloy. The Y-substituted Ce-Fe-B-based SC alloy is mainly composed of R2Fe14B and RFe2 phases. It suggests that Y substitution is helpful for depressing the $\alpha $ -Fe phase generated in the SC alloy. The island-like intermediate phases exist in the RFe2 region, which are probably caused by the incomplete peritectic reaction during alloy solidification. The Curie temperature $T_{\mathrm {c}}$ of the Y-substituted Ce-Fe-B-based alloy is about 463 K, which is higher than that of the Ce2Fe14B compound ($T_{\mathrm {c}} =424$ K). For the experimental Ce-Fe-B-based sintered magnet without PrNd addition, the remanence $B_{\mathrm {r}}$ of 8.31 kG, the coercivity $H_{\mathrm {cj}}$ of 0.92 kOe, and the maximum energy product (BH)max of 5.30 MGOe have been obtained. A good combination of coercivity $H_{\mathrm {cj}}$ (= 5.57 kOe) and maximum energy product (BH)max (= 20.17 MGOe) has been achieved in the Ce-Fe-B-based blended magnet with PrNd/ $\sum $ RE = 25% prepared using a binary main phase (BMP) method. The heterogeneous elemental distributions and microstructure characteristics of the BMP magnet are also analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: As an adjunct to mammography, ultrasound can improve the detection of breast cancer in women with dense breasts. We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of automated breast ultrasound system (ABUS) and handheld ultrasound (HHUS) in Chinese women with dense breasts, both in combination with mammography and separately. Methods: This is a cross-sectional multicenter clinical research study. Nine hundred and thirty-seven women with dense breasts underwent ABUS, HHUS, and mammography at one of five tertiary-care hospitals. The diagnostic performance of ABUS and HHUS was evaluated in combination with mammography, or separately in women with mammography-negative dense breasts. The agreement between ABUS and HHUS in breast cancer detection was also assessed. Results: The sensitivity of the combination of ABUS or HHUS with mammography was 99.1% (219/221), and the specificities were 86.9% (622/716) and 84.9% (608/716), respectively. The area under the curve was 0.93 for ABUS combined with mammography and 0.92 for that of HHUS combined with mammography. Statistically significant agreement between ABUS and HHUS in breast cancer detection was observed (percent agreement = 0.94, κ = 0.85). The incremental cancer detection rate in mammography-negative dense breasts was 42.8 per 1000 ultrasound examinations. Conclusions: Both ABUS and HHUS as adjuncts to mammography can significantly improve the breast cancer detection rate in women with dense breasts, and there is a strong correlation between them. Given the high prevalence of dense breasts and the multiple advantages of ABUS over HHUS, such as less operator dependence and reproducibility, ABUS showed great potential for use in breast cancer early detection, especially in resource-limited areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABUS, or Automated breast ultrasound, is an innovative and promising method of screening for breast examination. Comparing to common B-mode 2D ultrasound, ABUS attains operator-independent image acquisition and also provides 3D views of the whole breast. Nonetheless, reviewing ABUS images is particularly time-intensive and errors by oversight might occur. For this study, we offer an innovative 3D convolutional network, which is used for ABUS for automated cancer detection, in order to accelerate reviewing and meanwhile to obtain high detection sensitivity with low false positives (FPs). Specifically, we offer a densely deep supervision method in order to augment the detection sensitivity greatly by effectively using multi-layer features. Furthermore, we suggest a threshold loss in order to present voxel-level adaptive threshold for discerning cancer vs. non-cancer, which can attain high sensitivity with low false positives. The efficacy of our network is verified from a collected dataset of 219 patients with 614 ABUS volumes, including 745 cancer regions, and 144 healthy women with a total of 900 volumes, without abnormal findings. Extensive experiments demonstrate our method attains a sensitivity of 95% with 0.84 FP per volume. The proposed network provides an effective cancer detection scheme for breast examination using ABUS by sustaining high sensitivity with low false positives. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/nawang0226/abus_code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing a high-efficient, low-cost visible-light-responsive photocatalyst is still a challenge in environmental remediation. Here, a three-dimensional (3D) porous architecture named reduced graphene oxide/CdS nanowire (RGO/CdS) aerogel was constructed by a facile two-step approach through coupling graphene with one-dimensional CdS nanowires (CdS NWs). A variety of characterization methods displayed that the resultant RGO/CdS aerogels were embedded with large amounts of CdS NWs with an average length and width of ∼ 2.9 μm and ∼ 60 nm, respectively, which would maximize the specific surface area that in turn markedly facilitate the transportation of photogenerated charge carriers and strong adsorption of organic pollutants. Moreover, the visible-light photocatalytic experiments demonstrated that the RGO/CdS aerogel exhibited a higher degradation rate (96.6%) for methylene blue (MB) degradation compared with that of bare CdS NWs or pure RGO xerogel. In this proposed study, a photocatalytic mechanism indicates that the enhanced photocatalytic activity of the 3D framework might contribute potentially to generate synergetic effect of CdS NWs into the space of graphene sheets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The diagnostic value of axillary ultrasound (US) for level II and III axillary lymph node metastasis after axillary lymph node dissection for invasive breast cancer is currently not clear. The objectives of this study were to retrospectively analyze the diagnostic value of axillar US for level II and III axillary lymph node metastasis and compare it with palpation and to analyze the US features of level II and III axillary lymph nodes that are predictive of metastatic recurrence during follow‐up. Methods: Cases with level II or III axillary lymph nodes detected by US between January 2005 and December 2017 at a cancer center were divided into 2 groups according to a retrospective analysis of US findings: potential malignancy group and follow‐up group. Biopsy was performed in all patients in the potential malignancy group. In the follow‐up group, the patients were followed for at least 2 years, and biopsy was performed if suspicious US features were detected. Results: The 401 enrolled cases were followed by axillary US and physical examination (PE) for comparison. Finally, 55 axillary metastases were pathologically confirmed (14%). The sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for axillary US were 92.7%, 93.9%, and 0.933, respectively, and the corresponding values for PE were 49.1%, 91.3%, and 0.702 (P < .001). An increase in the major or minor axis diameter of the lymph nodes of greater than 2 mm, a Solbiati index value of less than 1.5, and the presence of new suspicious lesions in other regions were significant predictors of lymph node metastasis based on the US findings (P = .013,.006,.015, and.036). Conclusions: Axillary is helpful in the follow‐up of level II and III axillary lymph nodes after axillary lymph node dissection for invasive breast cancer and can detect cancer recurrence earlier than PE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Ovarian function is important for optimizing endocrine treatment in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+) early breast cancer (eBC). The aim of the study was to determine whether patients' pretreatment levels of anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) were associated with menses status after chemotherapy and to build a predictive nomogram model for amenorrhea in women with HR+ eBC.Methods: Between August 2013 and December 2014, 120 premenopausal patients with HR+ eBC were included retrospectively. The associations among age, prechemotherapy levels of AMH, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH),and estradiol (E2) and the 2-year postchemotherapy menses status were analyzed. We determined the cutoff values of hormone levels by using the biostatistical tool (Cutoff Finder). A novel nomogram was established to predict the 2-year amenorrhea status based on the logistic analysis. Concordance index (C-index) was used to validate the capacity.Results: One hundred nine women (90.8%) experienced amenorrhea after chemotherapy. AMH < 0.965 ng/ml predicted amenorrhea at 2 years (AUC 0.84, sensitivity 74% and specificity 81.8%), independent of age. The predictive nomogram based on age and pretreatment AMH and FSH levels was developed to predict the probability of 2-year postchemotherapy amenorrhea with a C-index of 0.88 (95% CI 0.84-0.91).Conclusions: In premenopausal patients with HR+ eBC, prechemotherapy AMH concentration was associated with the patient's 2-year amenorrhea status, independent of age. The nomogram model based on age and pretreatment AMH and FSH levels accurately predicted the 2-year amenorrhea status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of rare-earth contents, substitutions, and heat treatment parameters on the impact resistance of the Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets were investigated. Analysis shows that the impact resistance increases linearly with increasing plastic rare-earth-rich phase in the investigated magnets. Heavy rare-earth Dy substitutions for Nd help us to improve the impact resistance. The bending strength and impact resistance during annealing process was investigated. It is found that the annealing process affects the bending strength and impact resistance remarkably. Both the bending strength and the intrinsic coercivity are poor in the as-sintered specimen. In the postsintering annealing process, both of them get improved and the change of intrinsic coercivity is similar to that of the bending strength. Study showed that the optimized heat treatment parameters help us to improve the bending strength and impact resistance of the sintered Nd–Fe–B magnets. Study shows that the sintered Nd–Fe–B magnets with improved impact resistance can be produced by the adjustment of compositions and heat treatment parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the value of shear wave elastography (SWE) for characterization of breast masses in a Chinese population. Patients and methods: Two thousand two hundred seventy-three women consented to be prospectively enrolled for the characterization of breast masses with ultrasound and SWE. Breast masses were known from symptoms, palpability, and/or previous imaging screening with mammography and/or ultrasound. Correlation of SWE qualitative and quantitative features with malignancy risk and impact on diagnostic performance of combining SWE features were assessed, and the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) scoring was calculated using histopathology as reference. Results: Data of 2,262 masses (median size: 13 mm; range: 1.3–50) from 2,262 patients (median age: 43 years; range: 18–91) were investigated, of which 752 (33.3%) were malignant. Sensitivity and specificity of BI-RADS diagnosis were 97.5% (733/752) and 54.8% (827/1,510), respectively. By logistic regression, the combination of maximum elasticity (Emax) measurements with BI-RADS assessments increased the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve from 0.908 (95% CI: 0.896–0.920) to 0.954 (95% CI: 0.944–0.962). Using Emax of 30 kPa or lower to selectively downgrade BI-RADS 4a masses to follow-up, and Emax of 160 kPa or higher to selectively upgrade BI-RADS 3 lesions to biopsy, specificity significantly increased from 54.8% (827/1,510) to 66.1% (998/1,510) (P [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The (R,Ce)–Fe–B magnets have been successfully industrialized in recent years. The mechanical property of sintered permanent magnets is one important aspect of their comprehensive performances, which directly influences the service reliability and the production cost. In this paper, the bending strength, fracture toughness, Vickers hardness, and brittleness index of commercial (R1–xCex)30.5–31.5Febal.B1M1 magnets with different cerium contents have been investigated. The micro-fractures of the magnets were observed by a scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive X-ray analysis system. It shows that the bending strength and the fracture toughness of (R,Ce)–Fe–B magnets have a downward tendency with increasing Ce content x, while the Vickers hardness of the magnets varies irregularly with Ce contents in this paper. The optimum mechanical properties have been obtained in the (R1–xCex)30.5–31.5Febal.B1M1 magnet with $x = 0.15$ ; the bending strength, fracture toughness and brittleness index of the magnet with $x =0.15$ are obviously superior to those of the ordinary sintered Nd–Fe–B magnets. Some flocculent oxide phases have been discovered in the (R,Ce)–Fe–B magnet with $x = 0.15$ . The flocculent phases may absorb the crack propagating energy, and reduce the stress concentration at a crack tip, which is beneficial to strengthening and toughening of (R,Ce)–Fe–B magnets. However, the mechanical properties are obviously worse for the magnet with $x = 0.45$ (Ce/ $\sum $ RE = 45%). That is probably because the microstructures of the magnet with $x = 0.45$ become deteriorated, in which abnormally large grains have been observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets (grade 33H) were recycled to manufacture anisotropic sintered magnets by adding Ce-rich alloys. The influences of additive amounts of Ce-rich alloys on the microstructure and magnetic properties of the recycled sintered magnets were investigated. It showed that the recycled sintered Nd–Fe–B magnet without Ce-rich alloy addition has rather lower density; the density of the magnet is slightly raised with increased sintering temperature, but the recycled magnet is prone to oxidation, even cracking. For recycled sintered magnets with Ce-rich alloy addition, the densities of the magnets are upgraded with increasing amounts of Ce-rich alloy, and the magnetic properties are obviously improved. This suggests that Ce-rich alloy plays the important role of sintering-aid in the densification of the recycled magnet. However, the coercivity ( $H_{{\text {cj}}} ) of the recycled magnets is decreased, when the additive amounts of Ce-rich alloy are over 8 wt.%. This is probably because excessive Ce-rich alloy addition can cause RE-rich phase aggregation at the triple grain boundary junctions, and deteriorate the microstructure of the recycled magnets. The recycled magnet with 5 wt.% Ce-rich alloy, sintered at 1080 °C, exhibits the following optimal magnetic properties: Br of 11.67 kGs; H{\text {cj}} of 18.94 kOe; and maximum energy product [(BH)\max ] of 33.1 MGOe. The magnetic properties of the recycled magnets are comparative to those of the waste magnets. Recycled magnets have a higher coercivity and perfect squareness of demagnetization curve ( Hk/H{\text {cj}} =0.972 ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forkhead box O (FOXO) transcription factors play important roles in various cancer development including Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC). In this study we conducted a hospital-based case control study including 1049 cases (HCC patients) and 1052 controls (non-tumor patients) to examine whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within microRNA (miRNA) target sites of FOXO genes confer HCC susceptibility. A total of three miRNA target site SNPs in the 3’ untranslated regions (UTR) of FOXO1 (rs17592236), FOXO3 (rs4946936) and FOXO4 (rs4503258) were analyzed. No statistically significant differences were found in genotype distribution for rs17592236, rs4946936, and rs4503258 between the HCC patient group and the tumor-free control group using single factor chi-square analysis (P>0.05). However, multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the CT/TT genotype in rs17592236 was significantly associated with decreased risk of HCC development (P = 0.010, OR = 0.699, 95% CI: 0.526–0.927) as compared to the CC genotype in rs17592236. Additionally, a genetic interaction was found between rs17592236 and rs4503258 (P = 0.003, OR = 0.755, 95% CI: 0.628–0.908). Functional dual luciferase reporter assays verified that the rs17592236 SNP was a target site of human miRNA miR-137. Together, these results indicate that the rs17592236 polymorphism is associated with decreasing of HCC hereditary susceptibility likely through modulating the binding affinity of miR-137 to the 3’UTR in FOXO1 messenger RNA (mRNA). Further knowledge obtained from this study may provide important evidence for the prevention and targeted therapy of HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of physical parameters of cultivation (load volume, temperature, pH, agitation, inoculum size, and incubation period) in the production of laccase by wood-rotting basidiomycete Coriolus hirsutus were studied using diluted molasses distillery wastewater (MDW) as a major composition. Using fractional factorial design, our study first identified load volume, agitation, and inoculum size as statistically significant factors. Optimal preferences and mutual interactions of the factors were then determined by the response surface method, which is based on the center composite design. A quadratic model was used to fit the experimental data. The optimized operational parameters for laccase production were determined to be the following: culture temperature of 25°C, pH 4, load volume of 40 mL diluted MDW in 150 mL flask, agitation rate of 183 r·min, inoculation of 11.5% v/v, and cultivation time of 6 d. The experimental validation under these conditions (the maximum laccase production of 2198.2 U·mL was within the confidence interval) subsequently verified the accuracy of the constructed model. Moreover, the removal of chemical oxygen demand and nitrogen of MDW reached 62.85% and 48.00% respectively, and the decolorization ratio under the optimal condition was 41.85%. The enhanced production of laccase by C. hirsutus is a new recovery strategy for MDW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bending strength and fracture toughness of sintered Sm−Co permanent magnetic materials are measured. A scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray analysis system is employed to investigate the bending fractography. The fracture behavior and micromechanism are discussed. The fracture behavior of sintered Sm−Co permanent magnetic materials exhibits cleavage fracture. Some Sm-rich impurities are found in fracture plane, suggesting that the Sm-rich impurities help reduce the cleavage brittleness of sintered Sm−Co permanent magnetic materials. The possible methods for improving the strength and toughness are also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the structure and magnetic properties of the (Ce, Nd)–Fe–B magnets without Dy and Tb substitution have been investigated. The purpose of the investigation is to develop the applicable Ce–Fe–B magnets with Ce content over 50 wt.%. Sintered (Ce, Nd)–Fe–B magnets with the nominal composition of (Nd1−xCex)30(Fe, TM)balB1 ( x=0 –0.75) in wt.% were fabricated by advanced powder metallurgy processes. The effects of Ce substitution on the microstructure and magnetic properties of the (Ce, Nd)–Fe–B magnets were discussed. It was found that the (Ce, Nd)-rich boundary phase with lower melting point is helpful to obtain improved boundary microstructures and refined grain magnets. Good magnetic properties of Br = 13.5 kG, H_{\mathrm {cj}}= 9.5 kOe, and (BH)_{\mathrm {max}} = 42.8$ MGOe were obtained in the Dy-free (Ce, Nd)–Fe–B magnets with 30 wt.% Ce substitution. A higher coercivity (>10 kOe) has been achieved in the Ce–Fe–B type magnets by the modifications of alloy compositions and the optimization of preparation conditions, in which the proportion of Nd and/or Pr is lower than 35 wt.% of the total rare-earth content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fractal study was used to the analysis of the fractured surface of commercial N50-type Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets. The strain-stress properties of the specimens indicate that the elastic and plastic deformations occur simultaneously during intergranual cracking. The microfractography of the specimens exhibits typical brittle fracture pattern with some toughness dimples, indicating that plastic deformation has happened in some local areas. A 'line-measuring dimension' Dline was selected to discuss the fracture behavior. The calculated Dline is about 1.28 and 1.29 for the specimens with c-axis parallel and perpendicular to the applied force direction, respectively. The line-measuring dimension analysis indicates that the fracture feature may be isotropic for our studied specimens, which is a bit inconsistent with previous report on the fracture characterization of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets. More comprehensive fractal study is further needed to confirm the fracture behavior in detail in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backgroud: The incidence of recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury has increased due to RLN lymph node dissection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of intraoperative ultrasonography (IU) to detect RLN nodal metastases in esophageal cancer patients.Methods: Sixty patients with esophageal cancer underwent IU, computed tomography (CT), and endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) to assess for RLN nodal metastasis. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were compared.Results: The sensitivities of IU, CT, and EUS in diagnosing right RLN nodal metastases were 71.4, 14.3, and 30.0%, respectively, and a significant difference among these three examinations was observed (χ2 = 10.077, P = .006). The specificities of IU, CT, and EUS for diagnosing right RLN nodal metastasis were 67.4, 97.8, and 95.0%, respectively, and a significant difference was observed (χ2 = 21.725, P < .001). No significant differences in either PPV or NPV were observed when diagnosing right RLN nodal metastases. For diagnosis of left RLN lymph nodal metastases, the sensitivities of IU, CT, and EUS were 91.7, 16.7, and 40.0% respectively. There was a significant difference among these diagnostic sensitivities (χ2 = 14.067, P = .001). The specificities of IU, CT, and EUS for diagnosis of left RLN nodal metastases were 79.2, 100, and 82.5%, respectively and a significant difference was observed (χ2 = 10.819, P = .004). No significant differences were observed in PPV or NPV for these examinations when diagnosing left RLN nodal metastases.Conclusion: Intraoperative ultrasonography showed superior sensitivity compared with preoperative CT or EUS in detecting RLN lymph node metastasis in patients with thoracic esophageal cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]