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Liver tumor segmentation and classification are important tasks in computer aided diagnosis. We aim to address three problems: liver tumor screening and preliminary diagnosis in non-contrast computed tomography (CT), and differential diagnosis in dynamic contrast-enhanced CT. A novel framework named Pixel-Lesion-pAtient Network (PLAN) is proposed. It uses a mask transformer to jointly segment and classify each lesion with improved anchor queries and a foreground-enhanced sampling loss. It also has an image-wise classifier to effectively aggregate global information and predict patient-level diagnosis. A large-scale multi-phase dataset is collected containing 939 tumor patients and 810 normal subjects. 4010 tumor instances of eight types are extensively annotated. On the non-contrast tumor screening task, PLAN achieves 95% and 96% in patient-level sensitivity and specificity. On contrast-enhanced CT, our lesion-level detection precision, recall, and classification accuracy are 92%, 89%, and 86%, outperforming widely used CNN and transformers for lesion segmentation. We also conduct a reader study on a holdout set of 250 cases. PLAN is on par with a senior human radiologist, showing the clinical significance of our results., Comment: MICCAI 2023

We conducted anchoring performance, stress distribution, and full-scale indoor pulling tests on glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bolts. The tests were conducted using finite element software while considering the multi-interface contact and BK criterion by using the cohesive element to simulate the contact relations between the anchor rod body and concrete and building an axial symmetry calculation model of the GRFP bolt and concrete. The results indicated that the finite element model based on cohesive element accurately represents the load–displacement relationship of the GFRP bolt and the distribution law of axial stress along the anchoring length. In addition, the simulation outcomes of the load–displacement relationship were in good agreement with the measured test values. Under the same load, the axial-force-transferred depth of the bolt body was identical regardless of the anchorage length. As anchoring length increases, the pull load on the bolt and the decay rate of axial stress along the anchoring length rises gradually. There is a critical value for the anchorage length of the bolt.

Herein, an excellent cathode of ZnO-CeO2/CF was fabricated successfully via one-step electro-deposition method for the degradation of ciprofloxacin (CIP) in sewage by electro-Fenton (EF) technology. The detailed characterizations of ZnO-CeO2/CF material were conducted by SEM, XRD, XPS, CV and EIS. Effects of deposition time, initial pH and voltage value on degradation performance of ZnO-CeO2/CF were investigated systematically. The results showed nearly 100% degradation efficiency was easily obtained at 2 h owing to the large specific surface area of cathode, the good oxygen storage ability and Fenton-like performance of ZnO-CeO2. It was worth to mention that the favorable capability still existed in cathode body after 10 consecutive runs. Moreover, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) test and sacrificial agent experiments revealed that the increase of active substance accelerated the degradation efficiency of CIP during the process of valence state transition of Ce3+/Ce4+ or Fe2+/Fe3+.

Additional file 1: TableS1 Comparison of GMV volume between two groups.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-5-onc-10.1177_11795549221109511 for GRHL2 Expression Functions in Breast Cancer Aggressiveness and Could Serve as Prognostic and Diagnostic Biomarker for Breast Cancer by Xiaoyu Bai, Yue Li, Yanlei Li, Fan Li, Na Che, Chunsheng Ni, Nan Zhao, Xiulan Zhao and Tieju Liu in Clinical Medicine Insights: Oncology

The cellular structure can exhibit many special mechanical behaviors due to its variable cell shape. A three-dimensional compression-twist cell structure based on the rotation mechanism of two-dimensional chiral cell structure is developed, which has twist deformation under axial compression. The shape of three-dimensional compression-twist cell structure is determined through cell angle, cell length, and thickness ratio. Analytical expressions of effective Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and twist angle are derived by using beam theory, which have a good agreement with the finite element calculations and the deformation process of the cell is discussed. To work on the effect of geometric parameters of cell on the mechanical properties, a finite element analysis model of compression-twist cell structure is carried out, which shows the process of elastic and plastic deformation under compression. Effects of cell angle, cell length, and thickness ratio are fully discussed, which indicate that cell angle has obvious nonlinear effect on relative twist angle and could stiffen it. Finally, a compression-twist cell structure sample is made through three-dimensional printing, and an in-plane compressive experiment is carried out to prove analytical and finite element analysis results.

Fabricating high-performance electromagnetic absorbents with strong absorbing intensity and wide effective absorbing bandwidth at low filler loading is still a challenge. Herein, hierarchical NiCo alloy/carbon nanorod@carbon nanotube (NiCo alloy/carbon nanorod@CNT) structures were prepared by a carbonization process using NiCo-MOF-74 nanorods as precursors in Ar flow, in which the aspect ratio of the NiCo alloy/carbon nanorod and the coating density of the CNTs could be easily controlled by the ratio of Ni/Co in the precursor. When the Ni/Co molar ratio was 1:1, a dual electric network was easily formed among the NiCo alloy/carbon nanorods as well as between the intertwined coating CNTs due to the higher aspect ratio and larger coating density, which induced significant enhancement of the comprehensive microwave absorbing properties of the NiCo alloy/carbon nanorod@CNT composites. By adding only 5 wt % to paraffin, the resulting composite displayed a maximum reflection loss of −58.8 dB and a covered an ef...

The rational design of nanostructures for absorbers has great potential in the microwave absorption field. In this work, a mixed ligand nickel metal–organic framework (ML-Ni MOF) was first prepared by the self-assembly of pyrazine and 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic acid with nickel ions. Then, the as-prepared ML-Ni MOF was used as a precursor to fabricate a nitrogen-doped carbon and nickel composite (ML-Ni/C). With the molar ratio of pyrazine and 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic acid of 1 : 1, the flower-like ML-Ni MOF was obtained. After pyrolysis, the ML-Ni MOF-derived ML-Ni/C composite showed an optimal reflection loss value of −65.33 dB with a thickness of 2.4 mm and a corresponding effective absorbing bandwidth (EAB, RL ≤ −10 dB) of 5.1 GHz. Besides, the broadest EAB of 7.6 GHz was achieved when the thickness was about 2.8 mm. This strategy paves a new way to design novel MOFs as precursors for fabricating absorbers.

Antibiotics accumulate because of their extensive use and difficult degradation, which can lead to the formation of novel antibiotic resistant genes and bacteria, which can cause damage to human health and the ecological environment. Here, we designed a novel photo-electro-Fenton-like (PEF-like) system with bifunctional Z-scheme WO3/g-C3N4 for accelerated decomposition and enhanced mineralization of stubborn ciprofloxacin (CIP). This PEF-like system, accompanied by visible light activation, with the optimal WO3/g-C3N4 (1 : 6) composite exhibited outstanding removal efficiency of CIP compared with a single photocatalysis system and electro-Fenton-like (EF-like) system, and the elimination rate reached 100% within 2 h under visible light irradiation. The WO3/g-C3N4 (1 : 6) composite displayed the strongest visible light absorption, the weakest recombination of electron–hole pairs, the highest photocurrent response and the lowest electrochemical impedance compared with pristine WO3 and g-C3N4. Significantly, WO3/g-C3N4 (1 : 6) played a dual role in the PEF-like system which could not only produce ˙OH, ˙O2− and h+ during photocatalysis, but could also generate ˙OH through the reactions of W5+ and photoexcited electrons of g-C3N4 for the decomposition of H2O2. It was worth noting that this bifunctional PEF-like catalyst with photoelectric synergy could replace Fe2+ in a conventional electro-Fenton reaction and the pH range was broadened while still maintaining efficient degradation efficiency in the range of 2–9. The PEF-like system maintained a high elimination rate of CIP after five consecutive runs which revealed that it possessed prominent stability and feasibility.

Using radiological scans to identify liver tumors is crucial for proper patient treatment. This is highly challenging, as top radiologists only achieve F1 scores of roughly 80% (hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) vs. others) with only moderate inter-rater agreement, even when using multi-phase magnetic resonance (MR) imagery. Thus, there is great impetus for computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) solutions. A critical challenge is to robustly parse a 3D MR volume to localize diagnosable regions of interest (ROI), especially for edge cases. In this paper, we break down this problem using a key-slice parser (KSP), which emulates physician workflows by first identifying key slices and then localizing their corresponding key ROIs. To achieve robustness, the KSP also uses curve-parsing and detection confidence re-weighting. We evaluate our approach on the largest multi-phase MR liver lesion test dataset to date (430 biopsy-confirmed patients). Experiments demonstrate that our KSP can localize diagnosable ROIs with high reliability: 87% patients have an average 3D overlap of >= 40% with the ground truth compared to only 79% using the best tested detector. When coupled with a classifier, we achieve an HCC vs. others F1 score of 0.801, providing a fully-automated CAD performance comparable to top human physicians., 14 pages

The influence mechanism of buffer layer on HIT solar cells is researched by AFORS-HET and MATLAB. First, P layer’s condition is optimized, result shows that high doping, thin thickness P layer should be chosen. Buffer layer have a twofold effect, the influence on density of interface state, and the energy band offsets between with crystalline silicon. Through calculation and simulation with AFORS-HET and MATLAB, it is found that when the density of interface state increases, the density of recombination center would increase, then open circuit voltage decreases. When the band mismatch increases, the interface minority carrier concentration would decline, open circuit voltage then improves. The influence of buffer layer on short circuit current and fill factor is small, but P layer’s condition has a relative bigger influence on them.