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In order to prevent major acid drainage pollution accidents, this study aims to improve the accuracy of acid production potential evaluation of mine rocks in the prediction of acid drainage. Specifically, this paper introduced existing calculation methods of acid-producing potential, and then determined the acid-producing mineral contents in some sulfur minerals and coal gangue samples by three-step sequential extraction method, which is then compared with the traditional method of calculating the maximum acid-producing potential by measuring total sulfur. Results show that: 1) the acid-producing potential of coal gangue is dependent on the mass percentage content of each acid-producing sulfur and the corresponding unit acid value; 2) except for sample SC, the acid-producing potential calculated by acid-producing sulfur content is lower than(with different degrees) the acid-producing potential predicted by total sulfur. The sulfur in the sample SC is mainly arsenopyrite sulfur, which has a higher acid value per unit than pyrite sulfur, resulting in a higher acid potential calculated by SC sample than predicted by total sulfur; 3) the three-step sequential extraction is suitable for samples with iron and copper sulfides as the main sulfur minerals; 4) when other sulfide components increase and blank samples are unevenly mixed, the results will be disturbed to some extent. This research provides evidences to justify the evaluation of accurate acid production potential of coal gangue in mining area.

Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy is the recommended treatment for patients with resectable esophageal cancer but is associated with a higher incidence of adverse effects. Given the efficacy of immunotherapy, we propose a chemotherapy-free regimen of neoadjuvant radio-immunotherapy (NRIT) to balance therapeutic efficacy and potential side effects or overtreatment. In this phase 1b clinical trial, we assessed the safety and efficacy of NRIT in esophageal squamous cell cancer. The enrolled patients received 41.4 Gy of radiation and 4 cycles of 240 mg of toripalimab injection before surgery. The primary endpoint was treatment-related adverse events and the secondary endpoints were pathologic complete response and major pathologic response. Immunohistochemistry and multiplex immunofluorescence staining were used to evaluate the tumor microenvironment before and after neoadjuvant treatment. Of the 22 patients enrolled, 19 underwent R0 surgery. One patient discontinued neoadjuvant immune therapy due to experiencing a grade 3 treatment-related adverse event. Three patients did not undergo surgery due to tumor progression or side effects. Among the patients who underwent surgery, 3 patients experienced serious complications shortly after surgery. Upon pathologic evaluation, the pathologic complete response and major pathologic response rates were 47.4% and 68.4%, respectively. The NRIT regimen is safe and feasible for patients with esophageal squamous cell cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarized the water chemistry characteristics of three complex limestone aquifers in Xinzhi coal mine by systematically studying the water quality of 52 water samples.The improved fuzzy comprehensive discriminant method was used to discriminate the water samples of three limestone aquifers in Xinzhi coal mine.The water chemistry characteristics of the K3 limestone aquifer in the Taiyuan Formation of the Carboniferous in Xinzhi coal mine are obvious.The discriminating basis of K3 limestone aquifer are SO4-Na type and the ratio of γCa/γSO4 of the water sample less than 0.5.Due to the complicated geological structure,the uneven lithology of the stratum and the variable groundwater runoff conditions,the water quality parameters of the K2 limestone aquifer of the Carboniferous Taiyuan Formation and the O2f limestone aquifer of the Ordovician Fengfeng Formation overlap each other and cannot be effectively identified by conventional hydrochemical methods.In this study,the percentage of constant ion equivalent concentration,ratio coefficients of γCa/γCland γMg/γCl were used as the identification factors in the fuzzy comprehensive discriminant model,which organically integrated the water chemical mechanism with the fuzzy mathematical principle.The constantion mass concentration is used as the identification factor in the traditional fuzzy comprehensive identification method.Through these improvements,the accuracy of the fuzzy comprehensive identification method has been improved from 75% to 96.2%.

Purpose: MRI is increasingly utilized for image‐guided radiotherapy due to its outstanding soft‐tissue contrast and lack of ionizing radiation. However, geometric distortions caused by gradient nonlinearities (GNLs) limit anatomical accuracy, potentially compromising the quality of tumor treatments. In addition, slow MR acquisition and reconstruction limit the potential for effective image guidance. Here, we demonstrate a deep learning‐based method that rapidly reconstructs distortion‐corrected images from raw k‐space data for MR‐guided radiotherapy applications. Methods: We leverage recent advances in interpretable unrolling networks to develop a Distortion‐Corrected Reconstruction Network (DCReconNet) that applies convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to learn effective regularizations and nonuniform fast Fourier transforms for GNL‐encoding. DCReconNet was trained on a public MR brain dataset from 11 healthy volunteers for fully sampled and accelerated techniques, including parallel imaging (PI) and compressed sensing (CS). The performance of DCReconNet was tested on phantom, brain, pelvis, and lung images acquired on a 1.0T MRI‐Linac. The DCReconNet, CS‐, PI‐and UNet‐based reconstructed image quality was measured by structural similarity (SSIM) and RMS error (RMSE) for numerical comparisons. The computation time and residual distortion for each method were also reported. Results: Imaging results demonstrated that DCReconNet better preserves image structures compared to CS‐ and PI‐based reconstruction methods. DCReconNet resulted in the highest SSIM (0.95 median value) and lowest RMSE (<0.04) on simulated brain images with four times acceleration. DCReconNet is over 10‐times faster than iterative, regularized reconstruction methods. Conclusions: DCReconNet provides fast and geometrically accurate image reconstruction and has the potential for MRI‐guided radiotherapy applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The role of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in glioblastoma (GBM) disease progression has received increasing attention. Recent advances have shown that TAMs can be re-programmed to exert a pro-inflammatory, anti-tumor effect to control GBMs. However, imaging methods capable of differentiating tumor progression from immunotherapy treatment effects have been lacking, making timely assessment of treatment response difficult. We showed that tracking monocytes using iron oxide nanoparticle (USPIO) with MRI can be a sensitive imaging method to detect therapy response directed at the innate immune system. Methods: We implanted syngeneic mouse glioma stem cells into C57/BL6 mice and treated the animals with either niacin (a stimulator of innate immunity) or vehicle. Animals were imaged using an anatomical MRI sequence, R2* mapping, and quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) before and after USPIO injection. Results: Compared to vehicles, niacin-treated animals showed significantly higher susceptibility and R2*, representing USPIO and monocyte infiltration into the tumor. We observed a significant reduction in tumor size in the niacin-treated group 7 days later. We validated our MRI results with flow cytometry and immunofluoresence, which showed that niacin decreased pro-inflammatory Ly6C high monocytes in the blood but increased CD16/32 pro-inflammatory macrophages within the tumor, consistent with migration of these pro-inflammatory innate immune cells from the blood to the tumor. Conclusion: MRI with USPIO injection can detect therapeutic responses of innate immune stimulating agents before changes in tumor size have occurred, providing a potential complementary imaging technique to monitor cancer immunotherapies. Manuscript highlight: We show that iron oxide nanoparticles (USPIOs) can be used to label innate immune cells and detect the trafficking of pro-inflammatory monocytes into the glioblastoma. This preceded changes in tumor size, making it a more sensitive imaging technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are distinct differences between radiation characteristics of volcanic ash and meteorological clouds, and conventional retrieval methods for cloud base height (CBH) of the latter are difficult to apply to volcanic ash without substantial parameterisation and model correction. Furthermore, existing CBH inversion methods have limitations, including the involvement of many empirical formulae and a dependence on the accuracy of upstream cloud products. A machine learning (ML) method was developed for the retrieval of volcanic ash cloud base height (VBH) to reduce uncertainties in physical CBH retrieval methods. This new methodology takes advantage of polar-orbit active remote-sensing data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), from vertical profile information and from geostationary passive remote-sensing measurements from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) and the Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager (AGRI) aboard the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) and FengYun-4B (FY-4B) satellites, respectively. The methodology involves a statistics-based algorithm with hybrid use of principal component analysis (PCA) and one of four ML algorithms including the k-nearest neighbour (KNN), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), and gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) methods. Eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano (Iceland) during April-May 2010, the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcanic complex (Chilean Andes) in June 2011, and the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano (Tonga) in January 2022 were selected as typical cases for the construction of the training and validation sample sets. We demonstrate that a combination of PCA and GBDT performs more accurately than other combinations, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.152 km, a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.529 km, and a Pearson's correlation coefficient (r) of 0.724. Use of PCA as an additional process before training reduces feature relevance between input predictors and improves algorithm accuracy. Although the ML algorithm performs well under relatively simple single-layer volcanic ash cloud conditions, it tends to overestimate VBH in multi-layer conditions, which is an unresolved problem in meteorological CBH retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of the meta-analysis was to explore effects of resistance exercise (RE) on body composition and physical function in patients with prostate cancer (PCa).Data Sources: We searched the electronic databases of Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane, and web of science. Published studies have been collected from these databases. Search terms include resistance training, strength training, RE, androgen suppression therapy, androgen deprivation therapy and PCa, with a deadline of 31 March 2022.Main Results: These studies showed significant improvements of body composition(Lean body mass MD: 1.12 95% CI [0.48, 1.76], p < 0.01; Body fat rate MD: -1.12 95% CI [-1.99,-0.24], p < 0.05; Appendicular skeletal mass MD: 0.74 95% CI [0.45, 1.03], p < 0.01) and physical function (leg press MD: 77.95 95% CI [38.90, 117.00], p < 0.01; stair climb MD:-0.30 95% CI [-0.49, -0.12], p < 0.01). In addition, the improvement of Body fat mass (MD: -0.21 95% CI [-0.79, 0.37], p > 0.05), 400 m walk (MD: -21.74 95% CI [-45.53, 2.05], p > 0.05) and times up and go (MD: -0.50 95% CI [-1.03, 0.03], p > 0.05) were not obvious. Subgroup analyses showed that RE for ≥ 6 months (compared with RE intervention for < 6 months) and starting exercise immediately after androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) (compared with delayed exercise after ADT) resulted in more significant improvements in body composition. Furthermore, the results showed that the exercise intensity of 8-12 RM significantly improved body composition.Conclusions: RE seems to be a promising approach in order to improve body composition and physical function in PCa patients to offset their treatment-related side effects. RE should be used as a means of rehabilitation and care for PCa. Starting exercise immediately after ADT and extending exercise time while choosing the right intensity can better improve the patients' body composition and function.Registration Number: INPLASY202280019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can negatively affect brain development thereby increasing the risk of cognitive deficits, behavioral challenges, and mental health problems. Brain iron is important for a number of physiological processes for healthy brain development. Animal studies show that PAE reduced brain iron; however, this has not been investigated in human children with PAE. Methods: We studied 20 children and adolescents with PAE and 44 unexposed children and adolescents aged 7.5 to 15 years. All children underwent quantitative susceptibility mapping and T1‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans. Susceptibility and volume measurements of the caudate, putamen, pallidum, thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and nucleus accumbens were extracted using FreeSurfer. ANCOVAs were used to compare volume and susceptibility between groups for each region of interest, controlling for age and gender. For structures where susceptibility differed by group, we also tested for an association between intelligence quotient (IQ) and susceptibility. Results: There were no significant group differences in susceptibility after multiple comparison correction, though the PAE group had higher susceptibility in the thalamus compared to unexposed participants before correction (p = 0.032, q = 0.230). There was no association between IQ and thalamus susceptibility. The PAE group had significantly lower volume in the bilateral caudate, bilateral pallidum, and left putamen. Conclusions: These findings suggest susceptibility may be altered in children and adolescents with PAE, though more research is needed. Volume reductions are consistent with previous literature and likely underlie cognitive and behavioral deficits associated with PAE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]