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The primary goal of Chinese agricultural development is to guarantee national food security and supply of major agricultural products. Hence, the scientific work on agricultural monitoring and early warning as well as agricultural outlook must be strengthened. In this study, we develop the China Agricultural Monitoring and Early-warning System (CAMES) on the basis of a comparative study of domestic and international agricultural outlook models. The system is a dynamic and multi-market partial equilibrium model that integrates biological mechanisms with economic mechanisms. This system, which includes 11 categories of 953 kinds of agricultural products, could dynamically project agricultural market supply and demand, assess food security, and conduct scenario analysis at different spatial levels, time scale levels, and macro-micro levels. Based on the CAMES, the production, consumption, and trade of the major agricultural products in China over the next decade are projected. The following conclusions are drawn: i) The production of major agricultural products will continue to grow steadily, mainly because of the increase in yield. ii) The growth of agricultural consumption will be slightly higher than that of agricultural production. Meanwhile, a high self-sufficiency rate is expected for cereals such as rice, wheat, and maize, with the rate being stable at around 97%. iii) Agricultural trade will continue to thrive. The growth of soybean and milk imports will slow down, but the growth of traditional agricultural exports such as vegetables and fruits is expected to continue.

This paper establishes a short-term prediction model of weekly retail prices for eggs based on chaotic neural network with the weekly retail prices of eggs from January 2008 to December 2012 in China. In the process of determining the structure of the chaotic neural network, the number of input layer nodes of the network is calculated by reconstructing phase space and computing its saturated embedding dimension, and then the number of hidden layer nodes is estimated by trial and error. Finally, this model is applied to predict the retail prices of eggs and compared with ARIMA. The result shows that the chaotic neural network has better nonlinear fitting ability and higher precision in the prediction of weekly retail price of eggs. The empirical result also shows that the chaotic neural network can be widely used in the field of short-term prediction of agricultural prices.

The paper studies the relationship, adjustment ability, path, efficiency and intensity of price transmission in the swine industry chain in China, which consists of the prices of corn, compound feed for fattening pig, piglet, pig and pork. Monthly prices covering a period of 18 yr (1994-2011) are analyzed using a Market-Chain Cooperated Model (MCM). The empirical results show that there exists a stable long-term cointegration and short-term dynamic relationship in the price system. First, the adjustment speed of each price series is very slow and the transmission path is top-down and one-way significantly. Second, the price from upstream to downstream lags about 2 mon, while there is no lag in price transmission from midstream to downstream. Third, in terms of price transmission intensity, the price of pig impacted greatly on pork price, not only in the current period but also through the whole period. Besides, the price of corn has the largest lagged effects on pork price. According to the above empirical results, we suggest that government should strengthen monitoring and early warning of the swine industry chain, especially the upstream and midstream, attach great importance to the timely adjustment of feed prices and perfect the measures of price subsidy.

This paper studies how the price movements of pork, chicken and egg respond to those of related cost factors in short terms in Chinese market. We employ a linear quantile approach not only to explore potential data heteroscedasticity but also to generate confidence bands for the purpose of price stability study. We then evaluate our models by comparing the prediction intervals generated from the quantile regression models with in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts. Using monthly data from January 2000 to October 2010, we observed these findings: (i) the price changes of cost factors asymmetrically and unequally influence those of the livestock across different quantiles; (ii) the performance of our models is robust and consistent for both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts; (iii) the confidence intervals generated from 0.05th and 0.95th quantile regression models are good methods to forecast livestock price fluctuation.

Introduction: Malignant pleural effusion (MPE) is a frequent complication of advanced malignancies. In this pilot study, we characterized the immune landscapes of MPEs, compared them to their primary tumor (PT) samples from breast carcinoma (BC) and lung adenocarcinoma (LADC), and tested the utility of multiplexed image technology in cytological samples., Materials and Methods: We evaluated the immune contexture of 6 BC and 5 LADC MPEs and their PTs using 3 multiplex immunofluorescence panels. We explored the associations between sample characteristics and pleural effusion-free survival., Results: No MPE samples had positive programmed death-ligand 1 expression in malignant cells, although 3 of 11 PTs has positive programmed death-ligand 1 expression (more than 1% expression in malignant cells). Overall, in LADC samples, cluster of differentiation 3 (CD3)+ T cells and CD3+CD8+ cytotoxic T cells predominated (median percentages for MPEs versus PTs: 45.6% versus 40.7% and 4.7% versus 6.6%, respectively) compared with BC. CD68+ macrophages predominated in the BC samples (medians for MPEs 61.2% versus PTs for 57.1%) but not in the LADC samples. Generally in PTs, CD3+CD8+ forkhead box P3+ T cells and the median distances from the malignant cells to CD3+CD8+Ki67+ and CD3+ programmed cell death protein 1 + T cells correlated to earlier MPE after PT diagnosis., Conclusions: The immune cell phenotypes in the MPEs and PTs were similar within each cancer type but different between BC versus LADC. An MPE analysis can potentially be used as a substitute for a PT analysis, but an expanded study of this topic is essential., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Sclerosing epithelioid fibrosarcoma (SEF) is an uncommon malignant fibroblastic neoplasm. The diagnosis is typically made on core needle biopsy or resection specimens. Cytomorphologic characterization of SEF has been limited to rare case reports in the literature. The goal of this study was to review a series of cases of SEF and to determine the feasibility of cytologic diagnosis of this rare tumor., Material and Methods: Eight SEF cases from 2009 to 2019 were identified in a retrospective review of 3 participating institutions. Cytomorphologic and corresponding histologic, immunophenotypic, molecular, and clinical data were examined and described., Results: Patients were of median age 41 years old at diagnosis with a median follow-up of 35.5 months. These tumors, with a median greatest dimension of 13.4 cm, were located in the lower extremities, abdomen, retroperitoneum, head, groin, sacrum, and lung. The tumor cells ranged from small round, medium-sized ovoid/short spindle, to epithelioid/plasmacytoid cells. A sclerotic, fibrous to myxoid stroma was seen. Most samples revealed low-grade cytology. Two cases showed tumor necrosis. Only 3 cases with cell block/positive MUC4 immunostain were diagnostic. Corresponding molecular testing for EWSR1 gene rearrangement and/or EWSR1-CREB3L1 fusion were positive in 5 of 8 cases on biopsy or surgical samples. An additional case was positive for FUS-CREB3L2 fusion., Conclusions: Diagnosis of SEF based solely upon cytologic features remains challenging. Epithelioid or plasmacytoid morphology mimics common malignancies. A supportive clinical history, MUC4 immunohistochemistry, and characteristic molecular result should be used to aid the diagnosis., (Copyright © 2020 American Society of Cytopathology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Emphasis on the use of small specimens for biomarker testing to provide prognostic and predictive information for guiding clinical management for patients with advanced-stage cancer has been increasing. These biomarker tests include molecular analysis, cytogenetic tests, and immunohistochemical assays. Owing to the limited nature of the cellular material procured in these small specimens, which are collected using minimally invasive techniques (ie, fine needle aspiration and core needle biopsy), pathologists have been required to triage these samples judiciously and provide the clinically relevant genomic information required for patient care. Awareness of the advantages and limitations of these specimen preparations and the specific preanalytic requirements for the testing methods will help pathologists to develop optimal strategies to maximize the chances of effectively using these samples for comprehensive diagnostic and relevant biomarker testing., (Copyright © 2020 American Society of Cytopathology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Subclassification of atypia of undetermined significance/follicular lesion of undetermined significance (AUS/FLUS) is encouraged in the Bethesda System. In our practice, we subclassified AUS/FLUS into 3 subcategories: atypical follicular cells of undetermined significance (ACUS) for cases with cytologic atypia; follicular lesion (FL) for cellular cases with follicular cells with-minimal or no atypia, arranged in a macro- and micro-follicular pattern with scant colloid; and indeterminate follicular lesion, favor benign (IFL-FB) for cases with few clusters of follicular cells without atypia associated with minimal or no colloid. The objective of our study was to evaluate the prevalence, clinical management, and risk of malignancy for each subcategory., Materials and Methods: We retrospectively identified ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (US-FNA) of thyroid cases that were subcategorized as ACUS, IFL-FB, and FL at our-institution during 2014-2016. The results of US-FNA were correlated with clinical outcome in the subsequent 2 years including repeat US-FNA, thyroid surgery, and clinical/imaging follow-up., Results: Of 3207 thyroid US-FNA cases, 718 (22.4%) cases were included in the study. Of these 718 cases, 104 (14.5%) were subcategorized as ACUS, 166 (23.1%) as FL, and 448 (62.4%) as IFL-FB. The surgery rate was 39.4% (41 of 104) for ACUS, 13.6% (61 of 448) for IFL-FB, and 27.1% (45 of 166) for FL. The risk of malignancy (ROM) was 25% (26 of 104) for ACUS, and 2.9% (13 of 448) for IFL-FB, 6.0% (10 of 166) for FL. The surgery rate and ROM was significantly higher for ACUS in comparison to IFL-FB (P < 0.05) and FL (P < 0.05)., Conclusions: Subclassification of AUS/FLUS into 3 groups based on cytopathologic findings alone not only improved the triage of patients for subsequent clinical management but also effectively stratified the risk of malignancy., (Copyright © 2019 American Society of Cytopathology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The adhesion and internalization between African green monkey kidney epithelial (Vero) cells (before and after oxidative damage by hydrogen peroxide) and calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM) nanocrystals (97±35nm) were investigated so as to discuss the molecular and cellular mechanism of kidney stone formation. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to observe the Vero-COM nanocrystal adhesion; the nanocrystal-cell adhesion was evaluated by measuring the content of malonaldehyde (MDA), the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), the expression level of cell surface osteopontin (OPN) and the change of Zeta potential. Confocal microscopy and flow cytometry were used for the observation and quantitative analysis of crystal internalization. In the process of adhesion, the cell viability and the SOD activity declined, the MDA content, Zeta potential, and the OPN expression level increased. The adhesive capacity of injured Vero was obviously stronger than normal cells; in addition the injured cells promoted the aggregation of COM nanocrystals. The capacity of normal cells to internalize crystals was obviously stronger than that of injured cells. Cell injury increased adhesive sites on cell surface, thereby facilitating the aggregation of COM nanocrystals and their attachment, which results in enhanced risk of calcium oxalate stone formation., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Calcium oxalate crystals in urine often differ in size and crystal phase between healthy humans and patients with kidney stones. In this work, calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM) and dihydrate (COD) with sizes of about 50 nm, 100 nm, 1 μm, 3 μm, and 10 μm were prepared by varying reactant concentration, reaction temperature, solvent, mixing manner, and stirring speed. These crystals mainly had a smooth surface and no obvious pore structure, except COM-1 μm. In cell culture medium, the zeta potential of crystals became increasingly negative with increasing size, and the absolute value of zeta potential of COD was greater than the same-sized COM. Results of cell viability and PI staining assays showed that the order of injury degree in African green monkey renal epithelial (Vero) cells caused by different sizes of COD was COD-50 nm>COD-100 nm>COD-1 μm>COD-3 μm>COD-10 μm, and that of different sizes of COM was COM-1 μm>COM-50~COM-100 nm>COM-3 μm>COM-10 μm. COM-1 μm presented the highest cytotoxicity in Vero cells, which was associated with its rougher surface, larger specific surface area (SBET), and larger pore volume. Overall, these findings indicated that the physical properties of crystals play an important role in their cytotoxicity., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)