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Purpose: To study the effect of high mobility group box protein 1 (HMGB1)-mediated toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)/myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88) on esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Methods: Cell viability was determined using CCK-8 test and colony formation assay, while cell migration and invasion were assessed by Transwell assay. Western blotting was used to determine protein and mRNA expression levels. The effect of TLR4/MyD88 signaling pathway on proliferation of ESCC cells was investigated via in vitro knockdown of HMGB1. Results: Data from in vitro experiments indicated that HMGB1 knockdown significantly decreased the proliferation, migration, and invasion of EC9706 cells in siHMGB1 group, when compared with siNC group (number of invasive cells in siHMGB1 vs. corresponding number in siNC: 26.7 ± 4.5 vs. 68.7 ± 2.5; p < 0.01), and also decreased proliferation, migration and invasion of TE-9 cells in siHMB1, relative to siNC group (number of invasive cells in siHMGB1 vs. corresponding number in siNC: 29.3 ± 3.5 vs. 55.7 ± 3.1; p < 0.01). Moreover, MGB1 knockdown via siTLR4 transfection significantly down-regulated the expressions of TLR4/MyD88 and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), but over-expression of TLR4 reversed the inhibition by HMGB1 knockdown on ESCC cells (p < 0.01). Conclusion: These findings suggest that HMGB1-mediated TLR4/MyD88 signal pathway is a potential treatment route for ESCC.

In the one-step preparation of methylal from methanol, achieving high methanol conversion and high methylal yield is a huge challenge. To address this problem, in this study a new Fe–Mo-based catalyst was designed, and the effect of the type and amount of the support on catalytic activity was explored. The results showed that Mo:Fe(2)/HZSM-5(80 + 80), in which HZSM-5(80 + 80) was the catalytic support, had excellent catalytic performance, with the yield of methylal reaching 81.33%, much higher than other reported results of this process. Through XPS, NH3-TPD and PY-FTIR analyses it was found that the formation of Mo5+ promoted coordination of the two terminal oxygens with the Mo double bond in the Fe2(MoO4)3 octahedron, and the higher the B/L acid site ratio, the better the catalytic activity and the higher the selectivity of the target product. The apparent activation energy also further proved that Mo:Fe(2)/HZSM-5(80 + 80) was highly suitable for the one-step production of methylal from methanol.

Objective: Synchronic colorectal peritoneal carcinomatosis (SCRPC) was recognized as a predictor of poor prognosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII) on the survival outcome, which might help determine the treatment management of SCRPC patients. Methods: A total of 103 SCRPC patients following cytoreduction surgery (CRS) and systematic chemotherapy (CT) between 1997 and 2013 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University were retrospectively analyzed. The comparison of the clinicopathological variables and systematic inflammatory biomarkers, including NLR, PLR and SII, was performed by Chi-test and Cox regression analysis. According to the results of multivariate analysis, a prognostic nomogram was generated, and its prediction ability was measured by the concordance index (C-index). The survival curves were generated using the Kaplan-Meier method and survival comparison between groups was conducted via the log-rank test. Results: Univariate analysis revealed that elevated NLR, PLR and SII were significantly correlate with worse survival outcome. Only low SII value was recognized as an independent favorable prognostic factor for overall survival (HR=1.772, 95% CI=1.015-3.095, P=0.044), except for NLR and PLR. The nomogram could perform well in the prediction of overall survival in SCRPC patients (c-index 0.782). Moreover, SII had strong prognostic discriminatory ability to predict survival outcome for the patients receiving completeness of cytoreduction score (CCR) 0/1 or CCR2/3, rather than NLR and PLR. Conclusions: SII was a better inflammation factor to predict the outcomes of SCRPC patients receiving CRS and systematic CT. Low SII value was the most favorable factor benefiting from different level of CRS and it was useful for determining the appropriate treatment strategy for SCRPC patients.

Based on the previous research on the Fe-Mo based bifunctional catalyst, the team explored the effects of reaction temperature, reaction space velocity and the feed ratio of methanol to air on the catalytic effect of the process, and found out the optimal reaction conditions for the process. The results show that too high reaction temperature is not conducive to the formation of the target product DMM, and this phenomenon is verified by thermodynamic analysis. At the same time, it was found from the analysis of the catalyst's microstructure and surface characteristics that an excessively high reaction temperature would not only cause metal oxides to accumulate on the catalyst surface, blocked channels and reduced specific surface area, but also it will destroy the acid active sites on the catalyst surface, weaken the acidity of the catalyst and reduce the catalytic activity.

In this study, the diversity within the duodenum (S), jejunum (K) and caecum (M) contents of the three different intestinal gut sections microbiota of 30-week-old (peak production stage) Jinghong laying hens were evaluated. The bacterial DNA was sequentially isolated and the V3 to V4 regions of 16S rRNA genes were amplified. Results showed that the average bacterial sequences from the duodenum, jejunum and caecum content were identified to be 175.33 ± 26.63, 64.00 ± 20.95 and 305.33 ± 4.16 OTUs, respectively. The inherent OTUs were found among duodenum (75), jejunum (2) and caecum (172). The caecum had the highest diversity (Shannon = 5.57 ± 0.06) among the three communities. Firmicutes (65.54%) and Proteobacteria (32.68%) were the predominant bacterial phyla in the duodenum content. Firmicutes (97.27%) was the most commonly detected phyla in the jejunum content. As to the caecum, the relatively prominent phyla were Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes and Fusobacteria, accounting for 48.70%, 28.91% and 15.93%, respectively. At the genus level, Lactobacillus, Helicobacter, Bacillus, Peptoclostridium and Campylobacter were the relatively abundant genera in the duodenum content, accounting for 51.76%, 28.07%, 5.89%, 5.04% and 1.70%, respectively. Within the jejunum content, Lactobacillus was the most commonly detected genera, which represent 96.26% of the total genera.

Screen-printed copper oxide (CuO) and CuO/few-layer graphene on graphite electrodes were used to fabricate the ultrasensitive nonenzymatic glucose biosensors. Flower-like CuO and flower-like CuO/few-layer graphene composites were prepared by screen-printing method and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HETEM). On the basis of their cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry results, it was concluded that the addition of graphene to CuO significantly improved the performance of the fabricated glucose sensors, exhibiting high and reproducible sensitivity of 3120 μAmM −1 cm −2 with three linear ranges from 4 μM to 13.5 mM and the detection limit of 4 μM (S/N = 3) in a fast response time of 2 s. In addition, the fabricated sensors could effectively avoid the disturbance by interferents, such as Ascorbic Acid (AA), Uric Acid (UA), and Dopamine (DA). Most importantly, the testing results of real blood serum samples demonstrated that the electrodes were applicable and acceptable for the determination of glucose concentrations in human serum. The efficiencies of two non-enzymatic glucose biosensors for glucose determination were comparable with that of a commercial enzymatic sensor.

Two non-enzymatic glucose sensors based on ordered self-assembly of flower-like CuO and CuO/MWCNTs modified graphite electrodes have been successfully fabricated by a facile and effective screen-printed way. The prepared flower-like CuO and CuO/MWCNTs were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry demonstrated that the CuO/MWCNTs modified electrode displayed much higher electrocatalytic activity than the CuO modified electrode toward glucose, exhibiting a high sensitivity of 1.211 mA mM− 1 cm− 2, a fast response time of 3 s, a low detection limit of 4 μM (S / N = 3) and three linear regions from 4 μM to 14.5 mM. The sensors can effectively resist the effect of interferences such as UA, DA, AA, fructose, lactose, sucrose and NaCl. In addition, the results tested by real blood serum samples showed that the optimized electrodes were applicable for determination of glucose in real blood serum samples. Thus, the CuO and CuO/MWCNTs modified electrodes are potential candidates for routine glucose analysis.

This study was to investigate the effects of Qingwen Baidu granules on the antibody level, immune organ index and the lymphocyte transformation of broilers. Hy-line variety white cocks of 30 days were used to evaluate the antibody titer of Newcastle Disease in each serum group, and MTT method was used to determine the T lymphocyte proliferation, and organ weighing methods to measure the immune organ index 21 days after immunization. The results showed that Qingwen Baidu granules could prolong the residue time in the body, improve the lymphocyte conversion ratio, increase the bursa, thymus and spleen index and promote immune organ development. These results suggested that Qingwen Baidu granules could improve the serum Newcastle disease antibody level, improve peripheral blood lymphocyte proliferation, enhance the cellular immune function, and elevate the immune organ index and growth, in order to raise the immune function in chicken. The above demonstrates that the Qingwen Baidu granules have significant effects on the cytoimmunity and humoral immunity, and the potentiation of the immune function in broilers.

In this paper, we present a system to detect and count the number of vehicles in traffic surveillance videos based on Fast Region-based Convolutional Network (Fast R-CNN). Fast R-CNN is a state-of-the-art object detection network, which takes an entire image and a set of object proposals as input, produces bounding-box positions with probability estimates over object classes as output. First, we fine-tune a pre-trained Fast R-CNN net with images captured from traffic videos for accuracy improvement. Second, we define a series of rules of bounding boxes screening for vehicle counting. The proposed system takes around 3 seconds per image to count vehicles on a GTX970 GPU, and then records the corresponding number of vehicles into a database for traffic flow analysis. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed system can provide significant improvements on the detection accuracy. In addition, experiments on challenging videos with occlusions or full of vehicles show that the proposed system works effectively.