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Since the discovery of magnetocaloric effect (MCE), numbers of method in producing magnetocaloric materials has been studied. Among those methods, ball milling has been shown as a very versatile technique with several advantages compared to other preparation methods. In this work, the effect of ball milling preparation technique on the phase structural behaviour and electrical properties of MnCoGe alloys has been analysed. The changes in the structural behaviour have been studied by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and Raman Spectroscopy. The results suggest that the samples show significant structural changes with different method of ball milling running time. This finding has also been supported by electrical properties where the measurement found that the frequency also plays important role in the structure changes. The absolute impedance value,|Z| (Ω) suggest that structure start to change at initial frequency structure of hexagonal at point 3.22 Ω and 44.1 MHz region. The permittivity and dielectric loss (tan delta) graph that corresponds to a frequency (Hz) up to 100 kHz shown that the 2-hours milling time MnCoGe compound has the lowest permittivity value which make it had lower energy and required more frequency to react.

In this work, the effect of different annealing treatments on the phase transition, structural behaviour and thermal analysis of MnCoGe alloys has been analysed. The changes in the transition temperatures have been studied by Simultaneous Thermal Analysis (STA). The results show that the structural transition temperature (Tstr) depends on the annealing treatment of the samples preparation. However, under the same heat treatment no significant change is observed on the curie temperature (Tc). The thermal analysis reveals endothermic peak which corresponds to the structural phase transition of the compounds. The microstructural evolution has been monitored using in-situ X-ray diffraction which made known this compound produce three type of structures which are hexagonal, orthorhombic and mix structure (hexagonal and orthorhombic).

This paper studies the electrical efficiency of carbon nanotubes (CNT) with nanosized diameter inserted into palm-based oil at various concentrations (0, 0.0125, 0.025, 0.0375, 0.05, 0.125, 0.25 and 0.5 g/L). Dispersion methods, including sonication and drying process were systematically applied for producing stable CNT nanofluids. Several parameters such as electrical properties (AC breakdown voltage) and dielectric properties (dissipation factor, relative permittivity and resistivity) were measured accordingly based on IEC 60156 and IEC 60247 international standards. The test results reveal that the higher concentration of CNTs dispersed in palm oil, the lower AC breakdown voltages produced. At 0.5 g/L concentration, the average of 50 breakdown was 22.30 kV, which is 72.33% decrement compared to palm oil without any nanofiller. Besides, the permittivity and resistivity of CNT nanofluids decrease as concentrations increased, while dissipation factor increases along with CNT concentrations. In order to further support this indication, Raman analysis is measured to relate the behavior of AC breakdown voltages and chemical structure of CNT nanofluids. Based on the Raman spectra at 2800-3200 cm-1 region, it is shown that the value of total unsaturated fatty acid and total fatty acid decreased as concentrations of CNT increased. This occurrence directly influences the degradation performance of AC breakdown voltages.

Recently, the transform-based tensor nuclear norm (TNN) methods have shown promising performance and drawn increasing attention in tensor completion (TC) problems. The main idea of these methods is to exploit the low-rank structure of frontal slices of the tensor under the transform. However, the transforms in TNN methods usually treat all modes equally and do not consider the different traits of different modes (i.e., spatial and spectral/temporal modes). To address this problem, we suggest a new low-rank tensor representation based on the coupled nonlinear transform (called CoNoT) for a better low-rank approximation. Concretely, spatial and spectral/temporal transforms in the CoNoT, respectively, exploit the different traits of different modes and are coupled together to boost the implicit low-rank structure. Here, we use the convolutional neural network (CNN) as the CoNoT, which can be learned solely from an observed multidimensional image in an unsupervised manner. Based on this low-rank tensor representation, we build a new multidimensional image completion model. Moreover, we also propose an enhanced version (called Ms-CoNoT) to further exploit the spatial multiscale nature of real-world data. Extensive experiments on real-world data substantiate the superiority of the proposed models against many state-of-the-art methods both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Food quality and safety issues occurred frequently in recent years, which have attracted more and more attention of social and international organizations. Considering the increased quality risk in the food supply chain, many researchers have applied various information technologies to develop real-time risk identification and traceability systems (RITSs) for preferable food safety guarantee. This paper presents an innovative approach by utilizing the deep-stacking network method for hazardous risk identification, which relies on massive multisource data monitored by the Internet of Things timely in the whole food supply chain. The aim of the proposed method is to help managers and operators in food enterprises to find accurate risk levels of food security in advance and to provide regulatory authorities and consumers with potential rules for better decision-making, thereby maintaining the safety and sustainability of food product supply. The verification experiments show that the proposed method has the best performance in terms of prediction accuracy up to 97.62%, meanwhile achieves the appropriate model parameters only up to 211.26 megabytes. Moreover, the case analysis is implemented to illustrate the outperforming performance of the proposed method in risk level identification. It can effectively enhance the RITS ability for assuring food supply chain security and attaining multiple cooperation between regulators, enterprises, and consumers.

Background: Thromboangiitis obliterans (TAO) is a chronic, non-atherosclerotic, progressive inflammatory vascular disease affecting the small- and medium-size arteries and veins of the extremities. Objective: To evaluate whether long-term anticoagulation with low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) and warfarin is beneficial for treating the inflammation and symptoms associated with TAO. Methods: Patients with TAO who underwent anticoagulation as the mainstay of treatment were included in this prospective study. Rest pain relief and healing of trophic lesions (as the primary and secondary endpoint) were investigated at Day 14 and after 6 months of follow-up. High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), monocyte count, and ankle-brachial index (ABI) were recorded, and the difference was compared before and after 2-week anticoagulation. The Chi-square test was used to compare the difference between anticoagulant and aspirin groups (based on the literature). Results: From 2014 to 2019, 18 patients were included. Only 1 patient with wet gangrene received endo-therapy for a failing stent at the start of treatment. After ~14 days, 12 of 13 (92%) patients showed complete ulcer healing, and 17 of 18 (94%) patients showed complete relief from rest pain. Monocyte-counts and hsCRP levels decreased significantly (p Conclusion: Anticoagulant therapy may alleviate the inflammation and symptoms of TAO.

Approximately 20% of patients with lung nodules (LNs) have multiple LNs (MLNs). This meta-analysis was performed to assess the safety and efficacy of computed tomography (CT)-guided localization of MLNs in comparison with those of single LN (SLN) localization.The PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library were searched to collect relevant articles published till February 2022. The meta-analysis was performed using the RevMan v5.3.In total, seven studies met the inclusion criteria for this meta-analysis. No significant difference was observed between patients with MLNs and SLN in terms of pooled successful localization rate based on LNs (CT-guided simultaneous MLN localization is clinically safe and effective, despite requiring a longer procedural time and having higher incidence of pneumothorax and lung hemorrhage than SLN localization.

Background LCAR-B38M is a chimeric antigen receptor T cell product with two binding domains targeting B cell maturation antigen. Our previous reports showed a remarkable efficacy of LCAR-B38M in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM) at a median follow-up of 2 years. Here, we report long-term safety and efficacy data from a median follow-up of 4 years. Methods LEGEND-2 was a phase 1, single-arm, open-label study conducted in four registered sites in China. Seventy-four participants with RRMM received LCAR-B38M treatment. Lymphodepletion was performed using cyclophosphamide or cyclophosphamide plus fludarabine. LCAR-B38M, at a median dose of 0.513 × 106 cells/kg, was intravenously administered either in three split infusions or in a single infusion. The primary objective was the safety of LCAR-B38M, and the secondary objective was efficacy. Results As of May 25, 2021, the median follow-up was 47.8 months. All patients experienced ≥ 1 adverse events (AEs). Grade ≥ 3 AEs were observed in 45/74 (60.8%) patients. Cytokine release syndrome (CRS) occurred in 68/74 (91.9%) cases; 7 (9.5%) had grade ≥ 3 CRS. One patient experienced grade 1 central nervous system toxicity. The overall response rate was 87.8%. Fifty-four out of 74 (73.0%) patients achieved complete response. The median progression-free survival was 18.0 months, and the median overall survival for all patients was not reached. The median duration of response was 23.3 months. Four patients experienced viral infection more than 6 months post-infusion, and four patients developed second primary non-hematological malignancies at a median time of 11.5 months post-CAR-T cell transfer. Conclusions The 4-year follow-up data of LCAR-B38M therapy demonstrated a favorable long-term safety profile and a durable response in patients with RRMM. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT03090659 (retrospectively registered on March 27, 2017); ChiCTR-ONH-17012285.

Dysregulation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is critically involved in gastric cancer (GC) progression. However, current Wnt pathway inhibitors being studied in preclinical or clinical settings for other cancers such as colorectal and pancreatic cancers are either too cytotoxic or insufficiently efficacious for GC. Thus, we screened new potent targets from β-catenin destruction complex associated with GC progression from clinical samples, and found that scaffolding protein RACK1 deficiency plays a significant role in GC progression, but not APC, AXIN, and GSK3β. Then, we identified its upstream regulator UBE2T which promotes GC progression via hyperactivating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway through the ubiquitination and degradation of RACK1 at the lysine K172, K225, and K257 residues independent of an E3 ligase. Indeed, UBE2T protein level is negatively associated with prognosis in GC patients, suggesting that UBE2T is a promising target for GC therapy. Furthermore, we identified a novel UBE2T inhibitor, M435-1279, and suggested that M435-1279 acts inhibit the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway hyperactivation through blocking UBE2T-mediated degradation of RACK1, resulting in suppression of GC progression with lower cytotoxicity in the meantime. Overall, we found that increased UBE2T levels promote GC progression via the ubiquitination of RACK1 and identified a novel potent inhibitor providing a balance between growth inhibition and cytotoxicity as well, which offer a new opportunity for the specific GC patients with aberrant Wnt/β-catenin signaling.

Purpose This study aimed to evaluate the regulatory role of miR-431-5p on the tumorigenesis of osteosarcoma (OS) and the underlying mechanism involving pannexin 3 (PANX3). Methods qRT-PCR was applied to measure the expression of miR-431-5p in OS tissues and cells. PANX3 and miR-431-5p were overexpressed in U2OS and HOS cells. The cell viability and apoptosis were determined by MTT and FITC/PI double staining assay, respectively. Transwell assay was performed to detect cell migration and invasion. The protein expression of cleave-caspase-3 and MMP-2/-9 was detected by Western blot. The target relationship between miR-431-5p and PANX3 was predicated by ENCORI and identified by DLR assay. The anti-tumor effect of miR-431-5p was further analyzed in a xenograft tumor model in mice. Results MiR-431-5p expression was down-regulated in OS tissues and negatively correlated with lymph node metastasis and TNM stage. Over-expression of miR-431-5p induced cell apoptosis, inhibited cell proliferation, migration and invasion, up-regulated cleave-caspase-3, and down-regulated MMP-2 and -9 in OS cells. Over-expression of miR-431-5p also inhibited the growth of tumor xenografts in mice. In addition, PANX3 was a target of miR-431-5p. Over-expression of PANX3 reversed the anti-tumor effect of miR-431-5p mimics on U2OS and HOS cells. Conclusion Up-regulation of miR-431-5p suppressed the tumorigenesis of OS via targeting PANX3.

In the present work, samples of Al-Si-Cu piston alloy after T6 heat treatment were exposed for 2 h at temperatures ranging from 400 to 550 °C. The evolution of surface roughness and microstructure of the alloy during thermal exposure was studied by combination methods of roughness profiles, optical and scanning electron microscopy as well as XRD analysis. It is found that the roughness and mass of the alloy increase with the raise of the thermal exposure temperature, and the increasing rates of them are slow as the exposure temperature is below 500 °C, but accelerates abruptly when the temperature is higher than 500 °C. The variation of surface roughness of the alloy is closely related to phase transformation and oxidation during the thermal exposure.

Both coil and hook-wire localization techniques are commonly employed prior to video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) resection in patients with lung nodules (LNs), but the relative advantages of each remain uncertain.This meta-analysis was performed to explore the relative safety and efficacy of coil localization (CL) and hook-wire localization (HWL) for patients with LNs.The PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Wanfang, and CINK databases were searched to identify relevant studies published as of February 2022, after which pooled analyses of study outcomes were conducted.In total, 8 studies met the inclusion criteria for the present meta-analysis. Successful localization rates were higher for the CL group relative to the HWL group (p = 0.0001). The CL group additionally exhibited significantly lower pooled total complication, pneumothorax, and lung hemorrhage rates relative to the HWL group (p = 0.01, p = 0.0001, p = 0.0009). Pooled duration of localization, VATS procedure duration, and wedge resection duration values were comparable in both groups (p = 0.69, p = 0.16, p = 0.76), as were chest pain scores (p = 0.06). When specifically analyzing the subset of patients with ground-glass LNs, pooled pneumothorax rates were significantly lower in the CL group relative to the HWL group (p = 0.03). Significant publication bias was detected with respect to rates of lung hemorrhage (Egger test, p = 0.029), but was not evident for other analyzed variables.These results suggest that the coil-based localization of LNs before VATS resection is safer and more effective than hook-wire localization.

Summary Recent attempts have been made to direct the sensory neurotisation of free superficial circumflex iliac artery (SCIA) flaps. However, donor nerves enabling sensory recovery are limited. We report our findings in fifteen patients who underwent distal limb defect reconstruction using a sensate SCIA flap, including the lateral cutaneous branch of the subcostal nerve (LCSN), between August 2017 and September 2018. The distance from the anterosuperior iliac spine to the point where the LCSN crossed the iliac crest ranged between 6.5 and 10 cm. The diameter ranged between 1.5 and 4.0 mm. The flap size ranged between 8 × 4 and 13 × 10 cm2. All of the flaps survived uneventfully. Tests of sensory modalities, including the Semmes-Weinstein (SW) touch, vibration, pinprick, temperature and static two-point discrimination (s2PD) tests were applied in nine regions of each flap post-operatively. One or more modalities were present in at least one region at 6 months post-operatively, and the recovery of vibration perception was more consistent than that of SW touch and pinprick perception. The recovery of s2PD was noted in 4 cases over a follow-up period of more than 12 months. A reliable sensate flap with the LCSN can be considered as an attractive option for the sensory reconstruction of distal limb defects of moderate size.

Guangzhou Asian Games Comprehensive Museum is one of the permanent buildings for the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, whose bowl-shaped main body is a steel structure with the largest cantilever length of more than 30 meters. The structure has a low natural frequency, so it tends to be excited by people synchronizing walking with amplification of resonance, which will affect the serviceability. A large amount of analysis and field-tests are performed for this historical museum with tuned mass dampers (TMDs) being used to reduce human walking induced vibration. The results showed that TMDs can control the structure vertical vibration effectively, with the efficiency of over 50%. The research results have obvious significance for similar projects.

Destriping has attracted a lot of interest in the field of remote sensing images processing. Recent research works consider the characteristics of stripes, among which low-rankness and group sparsity regularizations are widely used. However, for real scenarios, these regularizations sometimes fail to work when the underlying assumptions are violated. Motivated by this observation, we propose a novel and flexible regularization, named as the reweighted block sparsity (RBS), for complex stripes (e.g., the partial stripes). RBS divides the stripe layer into several blocks along the stripe-perpendicular direction and boosts the group sparsity of each block, where the sparsity level is adaptively controlled by updating weights. Based on RBS, we further propose a destriping model by integrating RBS and unidirectional total variation regularization, which can better detect and remove complex stripes. Moreover, we develop an alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm to solve the proposed model. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art competitors qualitatively and quantitatively.

[Formula: see text]-functionals are used in learning theory literature to study approximation errors in kernel-based regularization schemes. In this paper, we study the approximation error and [Formula: see text]-functionals in [Formula: see text] spaces with [Formula: see text]. To this end, we give a new viewpoint for a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) from a fractional derivative and treat powers of the induced integral operator as fractional derivatives of various orders. Then a generalized translation operator is defined by Fourier multipliers, with which a generalized modulus of smoothness is defined. Some general strong equivalent relations between the moduli of smoothness and the [Formula: see text]-functionals are established. As applications, some strong equivalent relations between these two families of quantities on the unit sphere and the unit ball are provided explicitly.

Stripe noise removal from remote sensing imagery is a key preprocessing step for many applications, such as urban planning, military, and environmental monitoring. Two significant priors of the stripe are low-rankness and group sparsity, which play a central role in many destriping methods. However, for oblique stripes, these two priors are no longer explicitly applicable. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a novel sheared decomposition framework for oblique stripe removal. The main idea is to perform a shear operation on the observed image, so that the oblique stripe is transformed to nearly vertical lines. For the stripe component, we characterize the low-rankness and group sparsity priors in the sheared domain. For the image component, we characterize the smoothness prior in the original domain by unidirectional total variation (UTV), which can preserve the strong edges and geometric features while suppressing stripes. To solve the proposed model, we design an efficient alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm with guaranteed convergence. Experiments using simulated and real data show that the proposed method can remove the oblique stripe effectively and outperform the state-of-the-art methods qualitatively and quantitatively.

Although sodium and water reabsorption by the kidney plays a major role in maintaining body fluid homeostasis, the seasonal response of renal morphology and the factors involved in water and salt regulation are not well known, especially in reptiles. Eremias multiocellata is a typical desert-dwelling lizard. Here, we compared water and salt regulation of E. multiocellata in winter (hibernation), spring (emerging from hibernation), and summer (active) according to histomorphometry and the expression of genes such as those encoding aquaporins (AQP1, AQP2, AQP3), the Na

This paper is concerned with the characteristics of a tracking differentiator (TD) in arranging transition process for the physical system. In order to overcome disadvantages of linear TD (LTD) in practice, a novel variable parameter linear tracking differentiator (VLTD) is proposed. By designing the speediness factor as a function of the tracking error, the VLTD can track a large range of set values with reasonable speed and acceleration. Analysis shows that VLTD can converge to its set value under certain conditions. Meanwhile, the speed and acceleration bounds are added to the VLTD, which guarantees that the proposed transition signal really plays a transitional role. The numerical simulation results emphasize necessity for adding speed and acceleration bounds to the VLTD. By comparing VLTD with the nonlinear TD (NLTD) in the simulations and experiments, VLTD can achieve almost the same performance as the NLTD while it is easier to be implemented.

Background Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains a treatment-refractory malignancy with poor prognosis. It is urgent to identify novel and valid biomarkers to predict the progress and prognosis of PDAC. The S100A family have been identified as being involved in cell proliferation, migration and differentiation progression of various cancer types. However, the expression patterns and prognostic values of S100As in PDAC remain to be analyzed. Methods We investigated the transcriptional expressions, methylation level and prognostic value of S100As in PDAC patients from the Oncomine, GEPIA2, Linkedomics and cBioPortal databases. Real-time PCR was used to detect the expressions of S100A2/4/6/10/14/16 in four pancreatic cancer cell lines and pancreatic cancer tissues from PDAC patients undergoing surgery. To verify the results further, immunohistochemistry was used to measure the expression of S100A2/4/6/10/14/16 in 43 PDAC patients’ tissue samples. The drug relations of S100As were analyzed by using the Drugbank database. Results The results suggested that, the expression levels of S100A2/4/6/10/14/16 were elevated to PDAC tissues than in normal pancreatic tissues, and the promoter methylation levels of S100A S100A2/4/6/10/14/16 in PDAC (n = 10) were lower compared with normal tissue (n = 184) (P Conclusions Taken together, these results suggest that S100A2/4/6/10/14/16 might be served as prognostic biomarkers for survivals of PDAC patients.

Background Multiple myeloma remains incurable despite treatment advancements over the last 20 years. LCAR-B38M Cells in Treating Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma was a phase 1, first-in-human, investigator-initiated study in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma conducted at four sites in China. The study used LCAR-B38M chimeric antigen receptor-T cells expressing two B-cell maturation antigen-targeting single-domain antibodies designed to confer avidity, and a CD3ζ signaling domain with a 4-1BB costimulatory domain to optimize T-cell activation and proliferation. This chimeric antigen receptor construct is identical to ciltacabtagene autoleucel. In the LEGEND-2 study (n = 57, Xi’an site), overall response rate was 88%; median (95% CI) progression-free survival and overall survival were 19.9 (9.6–31.0) and 36.1 (26.4–not evaluable) months, respectively; and median follow-up was 25 months. This case study reports on a patient with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (λ light chain type) who was treated with LCAR-B38M chimeric antigen receptor T cells in the LEGEND-2 study (Xi’an site); he had received five prior lines of treatment and had extensive extramedullary lesions. Case presentation The patient, a 56-year-old Asian male, received cyclophosphamide (500 mg daily × 3 days) as lymphodepletion therapy and a total dose of 0.5 × 106 chimeric antigen receptor + T cells/kg split into three infusions (days 1, 24, and 84 from June to August 2016). He experienced grade 2 cytokine release syndrome after the first infusion; all symptoms resolved with treatment. No cytokine release syndrome occurred following the second and third infusions. His λ light chain levels decreased and normalized 20 days after the first infusion, and extramedullary lesions were healed as of January 2018. He has sustained remission for 5 years and received no other multiple myeloma treatments after LCAR-B38M chimeric antigen receptor T cell infusion. As of 30 October 2020, the patient is still progression-free and has maintained minimal residual disease-negative (10–4) complete response status for 52 months. Conclusions This case provides support that treatment with LCAR-B38M chimeric antigen receptor T cells can result in long-term disease remission of 5 or more years without disease progression in a heavily pretreated patient with extensive extramedullary disease and no other treatment options.

Shortened versions of self-reported questionnaires may be used to reduce respondent burden. When shortened screening tools are used, it is desirable to maintain equivalent diagnostic accuracy to full-length forms. This manuscript presents a case study that illustrates how external data and individual participant data meta-analysis can be used to assess the equivalence in diagnostic accuracy between a shortened and full-length form. This case study compares the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and a 4-item shortened version (PHQ-Dep-4) that was previously developed using optimal test assembly methods. Using a large database of 75 primary studies (34,698 participants, 3,392 major depression cases), we evaluated whether the PHQ-Dep-4 cutoff of ≥ 4 maintained equivalent diagnostic accuracy to a PHQ-9 cutoff of ≥ 10. Using this external validation dataset, a PHQ-Dep-4 cutoff of ≥ 4 maximized the sum of sensitivity and specificity, with a sensitivity of 0.88 (95% CI 0.81, 0.93), 0.68 (95% CI 0.56, 0.78), and 0.80 (95% CI 0.73, 0.85) for the semi-structured, fully structured, and MINI reference standard categories, respectively, and a specificity of 0.79 (95% CI 0.74, 0.83), 0.85 (95% CI 0.78, 0.90), and 0.83 (95% CI 0.80, 0.86) for the semi-structured, fully structured, and MINI reference standard categories, respectively. While equivalence with a PHQ-9 cutoff of ≥ 10 was not established, we found the sensitivity of the PHQ-Dep-4 to be non-inferior to that of the PHQ-9, and the specificity of the PHQ-Dep-4 to be marginally smaller than the PHQ-9.

This paper addresses the tensor completion problem, which aims to recover missing information of multi-dimensional images. How to represent a low-rank structure embedded in the underlying data is the key issue in tensor completion. In this work, we suggest a novel low-rank tensor representation based on coupled transform, which fully exploits the spatial multi-scale nature and redundancy in spatial and spectral/temporal dimensions, leading to a better low tensor multi-rank approximation. More precisely, this representation is achieved by using two-dimensional framelet transform for the two spatial dimensions, one/two-dimensional Fourier transform for the temporal/spectral dimension, and then Karhunen–Loeve transform (via singular value decomposition) for the transformed tensor. Based on this low-rank tensor representation, we formulate a novel low-rank tensor completion model for recovering missing information in multi-dimensional visual data, which leads to a convex optimization problem. To tackle the proposed model, we develop the alternating directional method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm tailored for the structured optimization problem. Numerical examples on color images, multispectral images, and videos illustrate that the proposed method outperforms many state-of-the-art methods in qualitative and quantitative aspects.

To investigate the proportion and clinical characteristics of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in Chinese patients with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) through home sleep apnea test (HSAT) and to evaluate the reproductive endocrine and metabolic characteristics in these patients. The study was a cross-sectional analysis of infertile PCOS patients who underwent sleep respiratory monitoring between January and December 2019 at Peking University Third Hospital Reproductive Medical Center and respiratory and critical care medicine department. The prevalence of OSA, body mass index (BMI), menstruation, reproductive endocrine, and metabolic characteristics were collected in patients with PCOS. Logistic regression was performed to identify significant relationships among these factors and OSA. Amont 328 patients with PCOS, the prevalence of OSA was 40% (131/328), and six cases (5%) were severe. Univariate analysis showed that BMI and blood pressure were significantly higher in patients with OSA than in those without OSA (P

IntroductionTo investigate the value of carotid cistern drainage in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage during intracranial aneurysm clipping.Material and methodsPatients with ruptured intracranial aneurysms were included in this study. During the operation, the craniotomy was performed via a pterional approach to separate the Sylvian cistern and carotid cistern. After completing the clipping of the intracranial aneurysm, a drainage tube was placed in the carotid cistern between the ipsilateral internal carotid artery and optic nerve or lateral internal carotid artery, which was led out through the dura mater, cranial flap foramen or gap and scalp, and connected with an external drainage device.ResultsA total of 6 patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage, who required craniotomy for clipping, were enrolled in the study. These patients were given carotid cistern drainage during the operation. Among these 6 patients, 2 had anterior communicating aneurysms, 1 had a posterior communicating aneurysm of the internal carotid artery, 2 had middle cerebral artery furcation aneurysms, and 1 patient had multiple intracranial aneurysms. For the Hunt-Hess score before the operation, 5 patients were in grade II and 1 patient was in grade III. Furthermore, the postoperative drainage was unobstructed, with a daily drainage of 130–290 ml of haemorrhagic cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).ConclusionsThe CSF drainage of the carotid cistern applied in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage during the craniotomy for clipping can effectively remove the subarachnoid haemorrhage, control the intracranial hypertension, and reduce the incidence of cerebral vasospasm and hydrocephalus.

Transplant vasculopathy is one of the major causes of chronic rejection after solid organ transplantation. The pathogenic mechanisms of transplant vasculopathy are still poorly understood. Herein, we summarize current evidence suggesting that activation of the tunica adventitia may be involved in the pathogenesis of transplant vasculopathy. Adventitia is an early responder to various vascular injuries and plays an integral role in eliciting vascular inflammation and remodeling. Accumulation of macrophages in the adventitia promotes the development of vascular remodeling by releasing a variety of paracrine factors that have profound impacts on vascular mural cells. Targeting adventitial macrophages has been shown to be effective for repressing transplantation-induced arterial remodeling in animal models. Adventitia also fosters angiogenesis, and neovascularization of the adventitial layer may facilitate the transport of inflammatory cells through the arterial wall. Further investigations are warranted to clarify whether inhibiting adventitial oxidative stress and/or adventitial neovascularization are better strategies for preventing transplant vasculopathy.

The high-precision requirements will always be constrained due to the complicated operating conditions of the ground-based telescope. Owing to various internal and external disturbances, it is necessary to study a control method, which should have a good ability on disturbance rejection and a good adaptability on system parameter variation. The traditional proportional-integral (PI) controller has the advantage of simple and easy adjustment, but it cannot deal with the disturbances well in different situations. This paper proposes a simplified active disturbance rejection control law, whose debugging is as simple as the PI controller, and with better disturbance rejection ability and parameter adaptability. It adopts a simplified second-order extended state observer (ESO) with an adjustable parameter to accommodate the significant variation of the inertia during the different design stages of the telescope. The gain parameter of the ESO can be adjusted online with a recursive least square estimating method once the system parameter has changed significantly. Thus, the ESO can estimate the total disturbances timely and the controller will compensate them accordingly. With the adjustable parameter of the ESO, the controller can always achieve better performance in different applications of the telescope. The simulation and experimental verification of the control law was conducted on a 1.2-meter ground based telescope. The results verify the necessity of adjusting the parameter of the ESO, and demonstrate better disturbance rejection ability in a large range of speed variations during the design stages of the telescope.

Various synthetic bone substitutes are not suitable for reconstructing critical-size bone defects. This study tested whether a bioglass-β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) monoblock is effective for repairing critical-size segmental bone defects if combined with a vascularized periosteal flap and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2. A femoral osteotomy with a gap size of 20 mm was created and stabilized using a plate in 40 rabbits.The defect was left untreated (group A) or repaired using a monoblock (group B), a monoblock with a vascularized periosteal flap (group C), or a monoblock with a vascularized periosteal flap and BMP-2 (group D). Bone regeneration, vascularization and monoblock degradation were analyzed after four and eight weeks using x-ray, hematoxylin-eosin, CD34 immunohistochemical and Masson's trichrome staining observation and histometric evaluation. The radiographic grading score showed a time-dependent increase from weeks 4 to 8. At 8-week postoperative, the total new regenerated bone in groups C and D was 20.0 ± 0.3 and 55.5 ± 8.0 mm2, respectively, which was significantly greater than in group B. Conversely, group D showed less residual monoblock than did group C. An increase in microvessel density was also observed in groups C and D compared with group B at 4 and 8 weeks postoperative, respectively. This study suggests that bioglass-β-TCP monoblock alone exhibits poor potential to repair a 20-mm femoral defect. However, supplementation with a vascularized periosteal flap and BMP-2 led to effective vascularization and reliable bone regeneration throughout the monoblock, with concordant material degradation in a timely manner. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 2017.

The hyporheic zone plays an important role in groundwater and stream water quality protection. To investigate the stream-groundwater interaction mechanisms in the lateral hyporheic zone, this study examined Ma’an Creek in Chongqing during the dry season from December 2015 to April 2016. The water level, water temperature, pH and Cl− concentration in the hyporheic zone and groundwater were monitored in situ . The sediment permeability coefficient, stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen and concentration of DOC were analyzed. The results show that the water level changes of hyporheic zone and the movement of hyporheic flow were influenced significantly by the permeability coefficient of sediment. The hyporheic flow approximately 10 cm from the stream bank was clearly affected by precipitation infiltration and evapotranspiration. During the study period, the groundwater recharged the stream, and the impact of groundwater on the hyporheic flow gradually decreased with the flow path. The hyporheic flow approximately 30 cm from the stream bank was still mainly affected by groundwater. Approximately 10–30 cm from the stream bank, the mixing of groundwater with precipitation and stream water intensified. Due to the sediment properties, moisture accumulated approximately 10 cm from the stream bank and drained into the stream via hyporheic flow, with potential impacts on stream water quality.

In this study, we aim to explore the effects of short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) targeting human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) on the proliferation and apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells. After the synthesis of shRNA that target hTERT, osteosarcoma cells were assigned into three experimental groups-shRNA group, scramble group and blank group. The transcription and expressions of the hTERT gene in transfected cells were measured with quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blotting. Cell proliferation in each group was detected by Cell Counting Kit-8 assay. Cell cycle and rates of apoptosis were measured by flow cytometry. Expressions of apoptosis-related proteins, caspase-9 and caspase-3, were detected by western blotting. Telomerase activity was measured by PCR enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results show that both the mRNA and protein expressions of hTERT were significantly lowered after the transfection of hTERT-shRNA. The proliferation capacity of transfected osteosarcoma MG-63, SaOS2 and U2OS cells in the shRNA group was lower than that in the blank group. We also found changes and differences in the amount of cells throughout the cell cycle. All cells in the G0/G1 phase increased in numbers, whereas the number of cells in the S phase were reduced, with elevated apoptosis rates. Expressions of apoptosis-related proteins, caspase-9 and caspase-3, were increased and telomerase activity was decreased in the transfected shRNA group (all P

Myocardial ischaemia reperfusion (I/R) injury is one of the leading causes of coronary artery disease-associated morbidity and mortality. While different strategies have been used to limit I/R injuries, cardiac functions often do not recover to the normal level as anticipated. Recent studies have pointed to important roles of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the development of myocardial I/R injury. LncRNA is a class of RNA molecules of more than 200 nucleotides in length which are not translated into proteins. I/R causes dysregulation of lncRNA expression in cardiomyocytes, thereby affecting multiple cellular functions including mitochondrial homeostasis, apoptosis, necrosis and autophagy, suggesting that manipulating lncRNAs may be of great potential in counteracting I/R injury-induced myocardial dysfunctions. In this review, we provide an updated summary on our knowledge about contributions of lncRNAs to the development of I/R injury, with an emphasis on the functional links between several well established cardiac lncRNAs and regulation of cellular outcomes post I/R.

To investigate the transcriptional regulation of transcription factor MZF-1 on acute monocytic leukemia-related gene MLAA-34.The effect of MZF-1 on the transcriptional activity of MLAA-34 gene promoter was analyzed by luciferase reporter gene detection system and site-directed mutation technique. The EMSA and ChIP assay were used to verify whether MZF-1 directly and specifically binds to the core region of MLAA-34 promoter. The over-expression vector and interference vector of MZF-1 were constructed to transfect U937 cells, and RT-PCR and Western blot were used to detect the transcription and expression changes of MLAA-34 gene.The transcription factor MZF-1 had a regulatory effect on MLAA-34 gene expression, and the relative luciferase activity was decreased after MZF-1 binding point mutation (P0.01). EMSA and ChIP experiments demonstrated that MZF-1 could directly bind to MLAA-34 promoter and play a regulatory role. In the over-expression test, the increase of MZF-1 could up-regulate the expression of MLAA-34 (P0.05). In the interference test, the decrease of MZF-1 could down-regulate the expression of MLAA-34 (P0.05).Transcription factor MZF-1 can bind to the transcriptional regulatory region on the promoter of MLAA-34 gene and promote the transcription of MLAA-34 gene in acute monocytic leukemia.转录因子MZF-1对急性单核细胞白血病新抗原基因MLAA-34的转录调控研究.探讨转录因子MZF-1对急性单核细胞白血病新抗原基因MLAA-34的转录调控作用.利用双萤光素酶报告基因检测系统及定点突变技术分析MZF-1 对MLAA-34基因启动子转录活性的影响。通过凝胶电泳迁移率变动检测（electrophoretic mobility slift assay,EMSA）和染色质免疫沉淀检测（chromatin immunoprecipitation,ChIP）实验，验证MZF-1是否与MLAA-34启动子核心区直接特异性结合。构建MZF-1真核表达载体和干涉载体，转染U937细胞，应用RT-PCR 和Western blot法检测MLAA-34基因的转录和表达变化.转录因子MZF-1对MLAA-34基因表达具有调控作用，MZF-1结合序列点突变后，相对荧光素酶活性降低（P0.01）。EMSA和ChIP实验从细胞内、外水平分别证明MZF-1可与MLAA-34启动子直接结合而发挥调控作用。在过表达试验中，MZF-1的增加可上调MLAA-34的表达（P0.05）；在干涉试验中，MZF-1的降低可下调MLAA-34的表达（P0.05）.转录因子MZF-1可与MLAA-34基因启动子上的转录调控区结合，并促进急性单核细胞白血病细胞中MLAA-34基因的转录.

We sought to unravel the role of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the development of hypertension in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The study sample included 80 patients with OSA and 45 healthy controls. All subjects underwent measurement of blood pressure (BP) and serum H2S level in the morning. Twentynine of the 39 patients with OSA and concomitant hypertension and 23 of the 41 patients with OSA but no concomitant hypertension received continuous positive alveolar pressure (CPAP) therapy for 4 weeks. Twenty-four-hour ambulatory BP and serum H2S were determined before and after CPAP. Respiratory indices including apnea hypopnea index (AHI), lowest oxygen saturation (SaO2), and length of time 0.05). Multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated that 24h systolic BP and 24h diastolic BP correlated with H2S as well as their changes after CPAP treatment. Reduction in H2S may play a role in the pathogenesis of hypertension in patients with OSA.

Because the plentiful online resources and visualized learning material are not workable for individuals with visual impairment in Chinese, they face a variety of challenges when they learn. To address this issue, a cloud-based Visually Impaired People (VIP) E-learning Platform with the course on Chinese typing method have been implemented, and the competition for visual impairment on typing and searching online information has been organized to promote and investigate their typing performance. This study aims to examine the design, course, and promotion of the VIP platform through the participants' typing performance in the competition based on their feedback annually. The data compared with ones of last year show that the number of competition participants and the users of the platform were increased by 87 users because of the competition and the courses, the typing speed of adult group performed better than that of the last year, and the accuracy rate performance above is 90%. It is higher than normal-sighted people, which indicates that the platform not only attracts more users year by year but reaches out to the visual impairments to take advantage to strengthen their information and searching abilities by self-directed learning on the Internet.

To clone the promoter sequence of acute monocytic leukemia new antigen gene.MLAA-34 and identify its promoter core region.The full-length fragment of MLAA-34 gene promoter region was amplified by PCR, then was ligated into pGL3-Basic vector, and the recombinant plasmid was cloned. Constructed a series of MLAA-34 gene promoter 5' flanking region truncated plasmid. These recombinant plasmids were transfected into U937 and HEK293 cells, and the dual luciferase reporter gene was used to detect the promoter activity of each fragment to determine the minimum active region. Transcription factor binding sites were analyzed by bioinformatics methods.The recombinant plasmid containing MLAA-34 promoter sequence and its truncated plasmid were successfully constructed, and the promoter activity was significantly increased as compared with the empty vector (P＜0.001). The minimal active region of MLAA-34 located between 402 bp and 200 bp. It contained multiple transcription factor binding sites such as E2F1, MZF-1, SP1, USF2 and STAT3.The promoter of luciferase reporter gene has been successfully constructed with different deletion fragments of MLAA-34, and its core promoter region may contain multiple transcription factor sequence.急性单核细胞白血病新抗原基因MLAA-34启动子的克隆及其核心区鉴定.克隆急性单核细胞白血病新抗原基因MLAA-34上游启动子序列并检测其活性、鉴定核心区域.PCR扩增 MLAA-34基因启动子区全长片段,将其连接至pGL3Basic 载体，克隆重组质粒; 构建一系列 MLAA-34基因启动子 5′侧翼区截短质粒; 将含MLAA-34启动子序列的重组质粒及其截短型质粒转染至U937、HEK293细胞，应用双荧光素酶报告基因检测各片段的启动子活性，确定启动子最小活性区域，并通过生物信息学方法分析转录因子结合位点.构建了含有MLAA-34启动子序列的重组质粒及其截短型质粒；与空载体相比，其启动子活性明显增加(P＜0.001) MLAA-34最小活性区域位于转录起始位点－402 bp至－200 bp之间，其中包含E2F1，MZF-1，SP1，USF2和STAT3等多个转录因子结合位点.成功构建急性单核细胞白血病新抗原基因MLAA-34不同缺失片段的启动子荧光素酶报告基因重组质粒，鉴定出核心启动子区，其中含有多个潜在的转录因子结合序列.

This study was done to understand the diel variation and factors influencing the hydrochemistry of the Lijing River in different seasons. This is a typical medium river located at Guilin City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, SW China. The Shengli site was selected for this study. Two-day monitoring work with a high resolution rate logger and high frequency sampling at 2 hour intervals was conducted at the Shengli site of the Lijiang River in summer and autumn separately. Physical and hydrogeochemical parameters including pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), water temperature (