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Evidence supports a carcinogenic role of Escherichia coli carrying the pks island that encodes enzymes for colibactin biosynthesis. We hypothesized that the association of the Western-style diet (rich in red and processed meat) with colorectal cancer incidence might be stronger for tumors containing higher amounts of pks + E coli. Western diet score was calculated using food frequency questionnaire data obtained every 4 years during follow-up of 134,775 participants in 2 United States-wide prospective cohort studies. Using quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we measured pks + E coli DNA in 1175 tumors among 3200 incident colorectal cancer cases that had occurred during the follow-up. We used the 3200 cases and inverse probability weighting (to adjust for selection bias due to tissue availability), integrated in multivariable-adjusted duplication-method Cox proportional hazards regression analyses. The association of the Western diet score with colorectal cancer incidence was stronger for tumors containing higher levels of pks + E coli (P heterogeneity =.014). Multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (with 95% confidence interval) for the highest (vs lowest) tertile of the Western diet score were 3.45 (1.53–7.78) (P trend = 0.001) for pks + E coli -high tumors, 1.22 (0.57–2.63) for pks + E coli -low tumors, and 1.10 (0.85–1.42) for pks + E coli -negative tumors. The pks + E coli level was associated with lower disease stage but not with tumor location, microsatellite instability, or BRAF , KRAS , or PIK3CA mutations. The Western-style diet is associated with a higher incidence of colorectal cancer containing abundant pks + E coli , supporting a potential link between diet, the intestinal microbiota, and colorectal carcinogenesis. [Display omitted] A Western-style diet (rich in red and processed meat and sugar) increased the risk of colorectal cancer containing high amounts of specific toxin-producing Escherichia coli bacterium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • S-shaped reinforced cores are designed by flattening hexagonal honeycomb cores. • S-shaped reinforced structures can effectively change the deformation mode of cores. • The peak load of S-shaped reinforced core can be 86.12% greater than plain core. • Theoretical prediction model of S-shaped reinforced honeycomb cores is proposed. • The design capabilities of cores are expanded because of S-shaped structure. Honeycomb structures serve as the core of sandwich structures in various industries, such as aerospace and rail transit. In this study, a novel design was introduced where hexagonal honeycomb cores were flattened in specific areas to form S-shaped reinforced cores. Compression tests were conducted on S-shaped reinforced honeycomb cores with different rotational structures – left-hand, right-hand, and mixed rotation. The deformation process of these cores was thoroughly investigated. Additionally, a theoretical prediction model was proposed to determine the Young's modulus and peak load of S-shaped reinforced honeycomb cores. The experimental data was compared with the theoretical model to validate its accuracy. Moreover, the study examined the effects of changing the relative density and cell wall angle of S-shaped reinforced honeycomb cores on the peak and specific peak loads. The results demonstrated that the use of S-shaped reinforced structures successfully altered the deformation mode of the honeycomb cores. In particular, the peak loads of S-LL and S-LR specimens were 29.14% and 86.12% higher than that of plain honeycomb, respectively. In summary, increasing the relative density of S-shaped reinforced honeycomb cores proved to enhance the peak load and specific peak load, thereby augmenting the design capabilities of these cores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, honeycomb cores with periodic tight zones were proposed for carbon-fiber and aluminum-honeycomb sandwich panels by flattening hexagon-shaped cells of honeycomb walls. In-plane compression tests were performed for sandwich panels with three types of local-tight honeycomb cores to evaluate the effects of the local-tight configurations on mechanical properties and failure modes. Experimental results indicated that the mechanical properties of sandwich specimens were effectively increased by using the proposed local-tight honeycomb cores. In particular, the specific energy absorption of sandwich specimens with a local-orthogonal-tight core was increased by 400.46%. In addition, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was employed to further investigate the compressive behaviors of the sandwich specimens with and without local-orthogonal-tight honeycomb cores. The experimental measurements and detailed DIC observations indicated that the local-orthogonal-tight honeycomb core sandwich structures, which provided improved load transferring paths and reduced mismatch between the high-stiffness face sheets and low-stiffness core, exhibited progressive crushing failure modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grid structures have great potential for engineering application, inspired by the leaf texture, the rectangular grid is innovatively added to the honeycomb to form the grid-honeycomb hybrid core. The low-velocity impact response of the composite sandwich structure with grid–honeycomb hybrid core was investigated by experimental and numerical simulation. Low-velocity impact tests with 30 J energy were conducted of the sandwich panel to analyze the mechanical response and damage morphology at typical locations (intersection, rib, and center). The results show that the impact resistance at the intersection was the strongest, the peak load, damage threshold load, and initial stiffness at the intersection were 14.74%, 15.54%, and 16.06% higher, and the maximum displacement and residual displacement were 12.09% and 33.71% lower, respectively than those at the rib, and the center was the weakest. Compared with honeycomb sandwich panel, the impact resistance of unit mass at the intersection and rib was stronger and the internal damage was smaller. In addition, the parametric study of the structural parameters of sandwich panel was conducted. The grid thickness had a significant effect on the impact resistance, while the effects of honeycomb wall thickness and honeycomb unit cell diameter were smaller and had almost no effect on initial stiffness and energy absorption. Finally, the impact resistance efficiency analysis was performed to obtain the optimal design area of structural parameters to provide design guidance. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fibrosis is an inevitable stage in the development of chronic liver disease and has an irreplaceable role in characterizing the degree of progression of chronic liver disease. Histopathological diagnosis is the gold standard for the interpretation of fibrosis parameters. Conventional hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining can only reflect the gross structure of the tissue and the distribution of hepatocytes, while Masson trichrome can highlight specific types of collagen fiber structure, thus providing the necessary structural information for fibrosis scoring. However, the expensive costs of time, economy, and patient specimens as well as the non-uniform preparation and staining process make the conversion of existing H&E staining into virtual Masson trichrome staining a solution for fibrosis evaluation. Existing translation approaches fail to extract fiber features accurately enough, and the decoder of staining is unable to converge due to the inconsistent color of physical staining. In this work, we propose a prior-guided generative adversarial network, based on unpaired data for effective Masson trichrome stained image generation from the corresponding H&E stained image. Conducted on a small training set, our method takes full advantage of prior knowledge to set up better constraints on both the encoder and the decoder. Experiments indicate the superior performance of our method that surpasses the previous approaches. For various liver diseases, our results demonstrate a high correlation between the staging of real and virtual stains (ρ = 0. 82 ; 95% CI: 0.73-0.89). In addition, our finetuning strategy is able to standardize the staining color and release the memory and computational burden, which can be employed in clinical assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]