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In this prospective, multicenter, Phase 2 clinical trial (NCT02987244), patients with peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCLs) who had responded to first-line chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin or epirubicin, vincristine or vindesine, etoposide, and prednisone (Chi-CHOEP) were treated by autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) or with chidamide maintenance or observation. A total of 85 patients received one of the following interventions: ASCT (n = 15), chidamide maintenance (n = 44), and observation (n = 26). estimated 3 PFS and OS rates were 85.6%, 80.8%, and 49.4% (P = 0.001). The two-year OS rates were 85.6%, 80.8%, and 69.0% (P = 0.075).The ASCT and chidamide maintenance groups had significantly better progression-free survival (PFS) than the observation group (P = 0.001, and P = 0.01, respectively). The overall survival (OS) differed significantly between the chidamide maintenance group and the observation group (P = 0.041). The multivariate and propensity score matching analyses for PFS revealed better outcomes in the subjects in the chidamide maintenance than observation groups (P = 0.02). The ASCT and chidamide maintenance groups had significant survival advantages over the observation group. In the post-remission stage of the untreated PTCL patients, single-agent chidamide maintenance demonstrated superior PFS and better OS than observation. Our findings highlight the potential benefit of chidamide in this patient subset, warranting further investigation through larger prospective trials. Clinical trial registration: clinicaltrial.gov, NCT02987244. Registered 8 December 2016, http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02987244. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low impurity content is crucial for graphite applications and microcrystalline graphite is an important candidate material. In this study, natural microcrystalline graphite, with a fixed carbon content of 76.65%, was purified by an alkaline autoclave-acid leaching method. The effects of the mole ratio of NaOH to Si and Al in graphite, the liquid–solid ratio of NaOH solution and graphite, alkali autoclave temperature and reaction time on the purity of microcrystalline graphite were studied. Results showed that the dissolution and phase transformation of non-carbon impurities were closely related to the purification process. During the alkali autoclave stage, complete dissolution of quartz was observed. The Si–O tetrahedra and Al–O octahedra structures in aluminosilicate minerals were damaged and [Al (OH)4]−, [H2SiO4]2− and [SiO2 (OH)3]− were released. The soluble silicate and aluminate ions underwent recrystallization, producing cancrinite and sodalite that could be dissolved by acid leaching, resulting in purified microcrystalline graphite. The purity of microcrystalline graphite was further improved due to the autoclave treatment allowed NaOH solution to penetrate into the cracks of microcrystalline graphite aggregates under high pressure. In addition, the acid solution could enter the micropores left by alkali etching to dissolve the residual impurities. The fixed carbon content of microcrystalline graphite could be increased to 99.9% through the alkaline autoclave-acid leaching method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is recognized that PCOS patients are often accompanied with aberrant follicular development, which is an important factor leading to infertility in patients. However, the relevant regulatory mechanisms of abnormal follicular development are not well understood. In the present study, by collecting human ovarian granulosa cells (GCs) from PCOS patients who underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF), we found that the proliferation ability of GCs in PCOS patients was significantly reduced. Surprisingly, PATL2 and adrenomedullin 2 (ADM2) were obviously decreased in the GCs of PCOS patients. To further explore the potential roles of PATL2 and ADM2 on GC, we transfected PATL2 siRNA into KGN cells to knock down the expression of PATL2. The results showed that the growth of GCs remarkably repressed after knocking down the PATL2, and ADM2 expression was also weakened. Subsequently, to study the relationship between PATL2 and ADM2, we constructed PATL2 mutant plasmid lacking the PAT construct and transfected it into KGN cells. The cells showed the normal PATL2 expression, but attenuated ADM2 expression and impaired proliferative ability of GCs. Finally, the rat PCOS model experiments further confirmed our findings in KGN cells. In conclusion, our study suggests that PATL2 promoted the proliferation of ovarian GCs by stabilizing the expression of ADM2 through "PAT" structure, which is beneficial to follicular development, whereas, in the ovary with polycystic lesions, reduction of PATL2 could result in the decreased expression of ADM2, subsequently weakened the proliferation ability of GCs and finally led to the occurrence of aberrant follicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In fuzzy clustering ensemble, the quality of fuzzy base clustering has an important influence on the performance of the final clustering result. Due to the performance of fuzzy clustering is affected by the initial parameters and fuzzy factors, it may cause unstable clustering results such as unsatisfactory data affiliation, and large differences with the distribution of the real data set. In addition, how to use fuzzy ensemble information to determine the similarity among samples effectively plays a crucial role in the generation of co-association matrix elements. In view of the above problems, combined with the compactness, separation and overlap in the evaluation index of fuzzy clustering, an optimized fuzzy clustering evaluation index is designed to select high quality fuzzy base clustering members to participate the final fusion. Then, the concept of sample attribution clarity is proposed, and the attribution clarity of each sample in the fuzzy base clustering set is learned actively. For samples with different attribution clarity, different full-link similarity measurement methods between samples are designed to further reduce the uncertainty of samples. Finally, the clustering results are obtained by the agglomerative hierarchical clustering. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, ten data sets are used to conduct experiments. Experiments show that the results obtained by the proposed method are closer to the real distribution structure of the data set in most experimental dataset, and are not sensitive to the diversity of base clustering members, and have good robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the limiting spectral distribution of a high-dimensional Kendall's rank correlation matrix. The underlying population is allowed to have a general dependence structure. The result no longer follows the generalized Marc̆enko-Pastur law, which is brand new. It is the first result on rank correlation matrices with dependence. As applications, we study Kendall's rank correlation matrix for multivariate normal distributions with a general covariance matrix. From these results, we further gain insights into Kendall's rank correlation matrix and its connections with the sample covariance/correlation matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new generation video coding standard Versatile Video Coding (VVC) has been officially released. Many novel technologies were utilized to improve the coding performance. In this paper, we propose an efficient intra prediction algorithm based on block correlation to improve the performance of VVC. First, since the single prediction mode sometimes does not predict very well and the high correlation of neighboring blocks is not fully used, we propose a multi-modes fusion method to merge the modes of adjacent blocks. Second, to better predict complex areas, we design an adaptive template matching method. Different weighting methods are utilized for different size blocks because they show different texture features. In addition, we combine Derived Mode (DM) with Cross-Component Linear Model (CCLM) in an adaptive way to form a new chroma mode which compensates for the shortcomings of single linear prediction. Experimental results indicated the superior performance of our algorithm. Compared with the VVC anchor (VTM 9.1), our proposed algorithm saved the bitrate of 0.78%, 0.87%, and 0.99% on average for Y, Cb, and Cr. Furthermore, the using probabilities of our designed modes were higher than that of many other traditional modes in VVC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of (4-(1,2,4-oxadiazol-5-yl) phenyl)-2-aminoacetamide derivatives showed good anti-neuroinflammation in our previous study. Some studies have proven that the anti-inflammatory compounds effective for some specific diseases could also be used to treat other inflammatory diseases. In this study, the effects of these compounds on arthritis were further analyzed. First, in-vitro anti-inflammatory activity assessment indicated that these compounds have good anti-inflammatory activity. Among them, compound f15 showed the most prominent performance, it could significantly inhibit the production of relevant inflammatory factors in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced RAW264.7 cells, with IC50 values of 1.55 ± 0.33, 3.83 ± 0.19, and 7.03 ± 0.24 μM against NO, IL-1β, and TNF-α production, respectively. Preliminary mechanism studies indicated that f15 blocked the excitation of nuclear factor κB (NF-кB) signaling pathway in a concentration-dependent manner. Furthermore, in-vivo experiment showed that f15 reduced secondary foot swelling and arthritic index in adjuvant-induced arthritis (AIA) rats and inhibited the production of TNF-α and IL-1β in serum. Histopathological analysis revealed that f15 alleviated inflammatory cell infiltration and synovial hyperplasia in rats with AIA. Thus, compound f15 could be considered to have the potential to be developed as a treatment for arthritis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the influence of imaging equipment and environmental conditions on optical remote sensing image acquisition, image resolution is generally low. Superresolution reconstruction technology is an important way to improve image quality. However, the existing optical remote sensing image superresolution reconstruction methods have some problems, such as insufficient feature extraction, blurred texture details of reconstructed images, and excessive network accumulation. To solve the above problems, a superresolution reconstruction method for optical remote sensing images based on a multiscale attention adversarial network is proposed in this paper. The method takes a generative adversarial network (GAN) as the basic framework. The generator uses four multiscale attention residual blocks (MSARBs) to extract image multiscale feature information and carries out feature fusion through a binary feature fusion structure (BFFS) to generate more realistic images. The discriminator uses a depth convolution network to distinguish the differences between real images and superresolution images. In the aspect of loss function construction, the perceptual loss and adversarial loss are combined to improve the perceptual quality of the images. Experimental results show that this method is superior to the compared algorithm in regard to the objective evaluation metrics of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM), and its reconstructed images have better visual effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatically extract lake water bodies of optical remote sensing images is a very challenging task, because there are many small lakes in such images, these small lakes have the characteristics of weak target information and are easily interfered by noise information. Regarding above problems, this paper proposes an automatic extraction method of lake water based on semantic segmentation. Firstly, a multi-scale information enhancement network is designed based on the encoder-decoder structure, and the deep dilation residual structure is used in the encoder module of the network to improve the network's ability to mine the deep feature information and the context information of the lake water bodies. Secondly, the two-way channel attention mechanism is introduced into the network, which can reduce the interference of noise information on the lake boundaries and improve the accuracy of the network to the lake boundaries segmentation. Finally, the up-sampling convolution operation is used in the decoder module of the network to reduce the information loss during the up-sampling process. In this paper, the performance of the designed network is tested by using remote sensing images of lakes of different map scales and various evaluation indexes. The experimental results show that the designed network has better segmentation accuracy than other semantic segmentation networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coral rock of biological origin exhibits distinctive mechanical behavior compared to that of conventional mineral rocks. Quasi-static and impact loading tests were conducted to investigate the mechanical properties of coral rock using a servo-hydraulic device and a split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) apparatus. The dependence of the dynamic compressive strength, elastic modulus and energy absorption were quantitatively analyzed with respect to loading strain rate. The coral rock is characterized by a high porosity of 50.99 (± 5.60)% and a low bulk density of 1.31 (± 0.07) g cm−3 because of biological sedimentary. Both the quasi-static and dynamic stress–strain curves contain more pronounced compaction portion than dense rocks due to its special porous skeleton structure. The dynamic increase factor (DIF) of strength increases from 1.88 to 3.76 with the strain rate increasing from 117 to 334 s−1, which could be expressed with a parabolic function. The dynamic elastic modulus exhibits an overall linear increasing trend with loading strain rate. The ratio of reflected energy to incident energy is positively related with the strain rate while the absorbed ratio is roughly negatively correlated with strain rate with a value less than 0.08. The specific energy absorption (SEA) is found to be proportional to the logarithm of the loading strain rate. It seems that the failure mode of coral rock under both quasi-static and dynamic compression is more dependent on inherent flaws like pre-existing pores, growth lines, weak bonding areas than loading strain rate. Nevertheless, the dominant failure mode in microscopic scale for coral rock at higher strain rate is still trans-granular fracture by means of SEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distributional properties of a multi-dimensional continuous-state branching process are determined by its cumulant semigroup, which is defined by the backward differential equation. We provide a proof of the assertion of Rhyzhov and Skorokhod (Theory Probab. Appl., 1970) on the uniqueness of the solutions to the equation, which is based on a characterization of the process as the pathwise unique solution to a system of stochastic equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Oocyte death is a severe clinical phenotype that causes female infertility and recurrent in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection failure. We aimed to identify pathogenic variants in a female infertility patient with oocyte death phenotype. Methods: Sanger sequencing was performed to screen PANX1 variants in the affected patient. Western blot analysis was used to check the effect of the variant on PANX1 glycosylation pattern in vitro. Results: We identified a novel PANX1 variant (NM_015368.4 c.86G > A, (p. Arg29Gln)) associated with the phenotype of oocyte death in a non-consanguineous family. This variant displayed an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern with reduced penetrance. Western blot analysis confirmed that the missense mutation of PANX1 (c.86G > A) altered the glycosylation pattern in HeLa cells. Moreover, the mutation effects on the function of PANX1 were weaker than recently reported variants. Conclusion: Our findings expand the inheritance pattern of PANX1 variants to an autosomal dominant mode with reduced penetrance and enrich the variational spectrum of PANX1. These results help us to better understand the genetic basis of female infertility with oocyte death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, computer simulation technology was used to design the pre-polymerization system of Tebuconazole Molecularly Imprinted Polymer (TBZ-MIPs). The simulation results illustrated that the best functional monomer was MAA, the polymerization solvent was acetonitrile, and the ratio of TBZ to MAA was 1:3. Thermodynamic analysis showed that the self-assembly process of TBZ-MAA was a non-spontaneous endothermic reaction, and the appropriate pre-polymerization temperature was 30 ℃. Based on the computer simulation results, the TBZ-MIPs nanospheres were prepared by precipitation polymerization with TBZ as template molecule, MAA as functional monomer, EGDMA as crosslinking agent, AIBN as initiator, and acetonitrile as solvent. The nanospheres had a uniform particle size, and the average diameter was 188.83 nm. Adsorption experiments indicated that the TBZ-MIPs had good specific adsorption capacity for TBZ and its structural analogs, the maximum dynamic adsorption capacity could reach to 1.8 mg/g in 60 min. Further, the TBZ-MIPs nanospheres were used as the filler of the solid phase extraction tube to pretreat the tobacco samples, and the method of TBZ-MISPE-UHPLC-MS/MS was established to detect trace tebuconazole, myclobutanil and triadimenol in tobacco leaves simultaneously. Their average recovery rates and RSD were 70.5% ~ 110.17%, and 0.78% ~ 12.71% (n = 3) respectively, which realized trace detection of triazole fungicides in tobacco leaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Naples prognostic score (NPS) is an effective inflammatory and nutritional scoring system widely applied as a prognostic factor in various cancers. We aimed to analyze the prognostic value of the NPS in patients diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We prospectively collected 395 patients diagnosed with NSCLC between January 2016 and December 2018 in two university-affiliated hospitals. Patients were divided into three groups according to their pretreatment NPS (Group 0: NPS = 0; Group 1: NPS = 1–2; Group 2: NPS = 3–4). Kaplan–Meier survival curves indicated that patients with higher NPS had a poorer overall survival (OS) and progress-free survival (PFS) (both P < 0.05). NPS was further confirmed as an independent prognostic factors of OS and PFS by multivariable survival analysis (both P < 0.05). Furthermore, stratifying by TNM stage, NPS also has significant predictive performance for OS and PFS in both early (I–IIIA) and advanced (IIIB–IV) stage NSCLC (all P < 0.05). The time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated that NPS was more superior to other prognostic factors in predicting OS and PFS. In conclusion, NPS may serve as an effective indicator to predict OS and PFS in NSCLC patients regardless of TNM stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Endometriosis is a common chronic gynecological disease greatly affecting women health. Prior studies have implicated that dysferlin (DYSF) aberration might be involved in the pathogenesis of ovarian endometriosis. In the present study, we explore the potential presence of DYSF mutations in a total of 152 Han Chinese samples with ovarian endometriosis. Methods: We analyze the potential presence of DYSF mutations by direct DNA sequencing. Results: A total of seven rare variants/mutations in the DYSF gene in 10 out of 152 samples (6.6%) were identified, including 5 rare variants and 2 novel mutations. For the 5 rare variants, p.R334W and p.G941S existed in 2 samples, p.R865W, p.R1173H and p.G1531S existed in single sample, respectively; for the two novel mutations, p.W352* and p.I1642F, they were identified in three patients. These rare variants/mutations were absent or existed at extremely low frequency either in our 1006 local control women without endometriosis, or in the China Metabolic Analytics Project (ChinaMAP) and Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) databases. Evolutionary conservation analysis results suggested that all of these rare variants/mutations were evolutionarily conserved among 11 vertebrate species from Human to Fox. Furthermore, in silico analysis results suggested these rare variants/mutations were disease-causing. Nevertheless, we find no significant association between DYSF rare variants/mutations and the clinical features in our patients. To our knowledge, this is the first report revealing frequent DYSF mutations in ovarian endometriosis. Conclusion: We identified a high frequency of DYSF rare variants/mutations in ovarian endometriosis for the first time. This study suggests a new correlation between DYSF rare variants/mutations and ovarian endometriosis, implicating DYSF rare variants/mutations might be positively involved in the pathogenesis of ovarian endometriosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Adenomyosis is a diffuse or localized disease. Our previous study has indicated that tanshinone IIA (TSIIA) inhibits the proliferation, migration, and induces apoptosis of ectopic endometrial stromal cells (EESCs) of adenomyosis. However, the complex molecular mechanism of TSIIA in adenomyosis remains unclear. The objective of this study was to explore the complex molecular mechanism of TSIIA on EESCs. Methods: In our present study, we used the proteomics approach iTRAQ (isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation) combined with LC–MS/MS (liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry) to investigate changes in the protein profile of EESCs treated with TSIIA. Differential proteins were analyzed by employing bioinformatics tools and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database. In TSIIA treated EESCs, the protein expression levels of TNFRSF10D, PLEKHM1, FECH, and TPM1A were detected by western blotting. Results: Quantitative results revealed 267 significantly differential proteins in TSIIA pretreated EESCs. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis presented an overview of dysregulated proteins in the biological process (BP), cell component (CC), and molecular function (MF) categories. Interestingly, we observed that differential proteins in the extracellular matrix (ECM)-receptor interaction pathway and estrogen signaling pathway were all involved in the focal adhesion pathway, which plays essential roles in the TSIIA-mediated inhibition of EESC proliferation and migration. Furthermore, some significantly differential proteins, which may be potential targets for the treatment of adenomyosis in the future, were validated by western blotting. Conclusions: Our study provides a useful method to detect the detailed mechanism underlying the efficacy of TSIIA on EESCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central Asia is a major emerging energy player but is also affected by global climate change. To both maintain its economic growth and cope with climate change, Central Asia is in urgent need of environmental and sustainable energy strategies, as well as effective carbon emissions mitigation. To this end, we investigated the characteristics of country-level total carbon emissions in Central Asia (i.e., Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan). Then, the logarithmic mean Divisia index method was applied to identify and quantify the driving forces behind the changes in carbon emissions. In addition, country-level long-run relationships between economic growth and carbon emissions were tested by means of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. The results are as follows. (1) There were pronounced differences in per capita gross domestic product, energy intensity, and carbon emissions structures across this region, mainly owing to the oil and gas endowment and economic development stage. (2) Impacts and influences of various drivers of carbon emissions varied across countries over the different stages. (3) During the economic recession period, carbon emissions decreases were largely driven by the decreasing economic growth effect associated with political instability. (4) During the economic transition periods, economic growth effect played a dominant positive role in accelerating carbon emissions in the five countries, followed by the population scale effect. Energy intensity effect was the most important factor in curbing carbon emissions in the five countries. Emissions increases during these periods were partly or largely compensated by the improving energy intensity in the different countries. Carbon intensity effect mostly had a negative but relatively minor effect on carbon emissions. (5) There was only an inverted U-shaped curve existing in the lower-middle-income country (Uzbekistan). Considering these differences and disparities in emissions characteristics and determinants can provide important insights for the energy sustainability and carbon mitigation in Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Microvascular invasion (MVI) is a key pathological factor that severely affects the postoperative prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, no MVI classification schemes based on standardized gross sampling protocols of HCC are available at present. Methods: 119 HCC specimens were sampled at multiple sites (3-, 7-, and 13 points) for the optimum MVI detection rate. 16,144 resected HCCs were graded as M0, M1 or M2 by adopting three-tiered MVI grading (MVI-TTG) scheme based on the seven-point sampling protocol (SPSP). Survival analyses were performed on 2573 patients to explore the advantages of MVI-TTG. Results: The MVI detection rate determined by SPSP was significantly higher than that determined by the 3-point sampling method (34.5% vs. 47.1%, p = 0.048), but was similar to that determined by the 13-point sampling method (47.1% vs. 51.3%, p = 0.517). Among 16,144 resected HCCs, the proportions of M0, M1 and M2 specimens according to SPSP were 53.4%, 26.2% and 20.4%, respectively. Postoperative survival analysis in 2573 HCC patients showed that the 3-year recurrence rates in M0, M1 and M2 MVI groups were 62.5%, 71.6% and 86.1%, respectively (p < 0.001), and the corresponding 3-year overall survival (OS) rates were 94.1%, 87.5% and 67.0%, respectively (p < 0.001). M1 grade was associated with early recurrence, while M2 grade was associated with both early and late recurrence. MVI-TTG had a larger area under the curve and net benefit rate than the two-tiered MVI grading scheme for predicting time to recurrence and OS. Conclusions: SPSP is a practical method to balance the efficacy of sampling numbers and MVI detection rates. MVI-TTG based on SPSP is a better prognostic predictor than the two-tiered MVI scheme. The combined use of SPSP and MVI-TTG is recommended for the routine pathological diagnosis of HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the failure to consider vehicle states in region of interest (ROI) prediction, we propose the use of a Kalman filter to estimate the position of vehicles relative to lanes by vehicle states on the basis of a vehicle–road micro traffic model in the world coordinate system. The central position of the ROI is determined through a combination of optimal preview time theory with the ROI prediction. The range of the ROI is determined by offsetting upward, downward, leftward, and rightward from the central position of the ROI. The left and right ROI are processed separately to detect lane lines. Simulation results show that the proposed prediction method reduces the ROI range, and the model predictive control controller can make the vehicle run smoothly from the initial position to the road centerline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a positive continuous function f satisfying some standard conditions, we study the f-moments of continuous-state branching processes with or without immigration. The main results give criteria for the existence of the f-moments. The characterization of the processes in terms of stochastic equations plays an essential role in the proofs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective drought prediction can be conducive to mitigating some of the effects of drought. Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used for developing drought prediction models due to their high efficiency and accuracy. This study explored the ability of several machine learning models based on penalized linear regression and decision tree (DT)-based ensemble methods to predict drought conditions represented by the Standardized Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in Northeast China. We compared the forecasting performance of the penalized linear regression models based on ridge regression (RR) and lasso regression (LR) with the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model. In addition, the AdaBoost and Random Forests (RF) models were also used to explore the suitability of ensemble methods for improving the forecasting performance. The SPEI was forecast at the different timescales of 3, 6, 12, and 24 months using the aforementioned machine learning models and the indices were used to predict short-term and long-term drought conditions. The prediction results indicated that the penalized linear regression models provided better prediction results and the ensemble methods consistently outperformed the DT model. Overall, the LR models were the optimum models for forecasting the SPEI at different timescales in Northeast China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate properties of nuclear matter and examine possible correlations with neutron star observables for a set of microscopic nuclear equations of state derived within the Brueckner–Hartree–Fock formalism employing compatible three-body forces. We find good candidates for a realistic nuclear EOS up to high density and confirm strong correlations between neutron star radius, tidal deformability, and the pressure of betastable matter. No correlations are found with the saturation properties of nuclear matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/objectives: The assessment of nutritional status and the quality of life in patients with gastric cancer has become one of the important goals of current clinical treatment. The purpose of this study was to assess the nutritional status in hospitalized gastric cancer patients by using patient-generated subjective global assessment (PG-SGA) and to analyze the influence of nutritional status on the patients' quality of life (QOL).Methods: We reviewed the pathological diagnosis of gastric cancer for 2322 hospitalized patients using PG-SGA to assess their nutritional status and collected data on clinical symptoms, the anthropometric parameters (height, weight, body mass index (BMI), mid-arm circumference (MAC), triceps skin-fold thickness (TSF), and hand-grip strength (HGS). We also collected laboratory data (prealbumin, albumin, hemoglobin) within 48 h after the patient was admitted to the hospital. The 30-item European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Core Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) was used for QOL assessment in all patients.Results: By using PG-SGA, we found 80.4% of the patients were malnourished (score ≥ 4) and 45.1% of the patients required urgent nutritional support (score ≥ 9). In univariate analysis, old age (> 65 years, p < 0.001), female (p = 0.007), residence in a village (p = 0.004), a lower level of education (p < 0.001), and self-paying (p < 0.001) were indicated as risk factors of patients with gastric cancer to be suffering from severe malnutrition. There was a negative correlation between PG-SGA and various nutritional parameters (p < 0.05). The quality of life was significantly different in gastric cancer patients with different nutritional status (p < 0.01).Conclusion: Malnutrition of hospitalized patients with gastric cancer in China is common and seriously affects the patients' quality of life. The nutritional status should be evaluated in a timely manner and reasonable nutritional intervention should be provided as soon as possible. The PG-SGA was fit for using as a clinical nutrition assessment method, being worthy of clinical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to test the expression and biological function of miR-140-5p in osteoarthritis (OA), and identify its target gene and explore its mechanism in OA. Methods: Differential genes were screened and analyzed by gene microarray and WGCNA analysis. The normal human chondrocytes C28/I2 were induced by IL-1β to construct the OA cell model. The expression of miR-140-5p and high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) was quantified by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) in OA tissues and IL-1β-induced chondrocytes. Western blotting was performed to evaluate the expression of HMGB1 and PI3K/AKT pathway activation. The concentrations of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-6, MMP-1 and MMP-3 were determined by ELISA. CCK-8 and flow cytometry were conducted to determine the cellular capabilities of proliferation and cell apoptosis. Results: Bioinformatics analysis demonstrated that HMGB1 was highly expressed in OA and activated PI3K/AKT pathway. Also, HMGB1 was predicted as a target of miR-140-5p. The levels of miR-140-5p were negatively correlated with HMGB1 in OA tissues and IL-1β-induced chondrocytes. The overexpression of miR-140-5p reduced the expression of HMGB1 protein, p-AKT (Ser473) and p-PI3K in IL-1β-induced chondrocytes. Besides, the expression of p-AKT (Ser473) and p-PI3K was significantly upregulated by employing miR-140-5p inhibitor, but retrieved after treating with LY294002. Furthermore, miR-140-5p inhibited inflammation, matrix metalloprotease expression and apoptosis in IL-1β-induced chondrocytes through regulating HMGB1. Conclusion: MiR-140-5p was down-regulated while HMGB1 was upregulated in OA. MiR-140-5p could inhibit the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and suppress the progression of OA through targeting HMGB1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering that the foundation soil (calcareous sand) of offshore platforms is subjected to wave loadings of different heights in a long time, cyclic triaxial tests are conducted on the Nanhai Sea calcareous sand under different loading conditions, i.e., amplitude, initial effective confining pressure, frequency, and waveform. Test results indicate that the failure of Nanhai Sea calcareous sand under cyclic loading is not only governed by the gradual development of excess pore water pressure but also by the accumulation of axial strain. There is a dilative tendency in loose or dense Nanhai Sea calcareous sand inhibiting the full liquefaction, which leads to the failure type of cyclic liquefaction. The effect of loading conditions on the excess pore water pressure, the axial strain, the secant modulus, and the cycle numbers to failure was investigated. The effect of loading amplitude, effective confining pressure, and waveform is profound, while the effect of frequency is not obvious. The cycle numbers to failure at different cyclic stress ratios demonstrated that the liquefaction resistance of Nanhai Sea calcareous sand is larger than that of calcareous sand in other sea areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal and oil shale are two common sedimentary energy sources which are often symbiotically developed in Mesozoic–Cenozoic continental fault basins. However, the mechanisms and characteristics of the symbiotic development are not yet clearly known. In this research study, the typical continental fault basins of eastern China were chosen as examples for the purpose of conducting an examination of the coal and oil shale symbiotic assemblage types, genetic environmental differences, and transformation mechanisms, as well as the development and occurrence characteristics of different assemblage types. Through a large number of investigations, systematic experimental testing, and sequence stratigraphy studies, the following conclusions were obtained: (1) There were five types of coal and oil shale symbiotic assemblages observed in the continental fault basins, (2) The development of coal and oil shale deposits requires a warm and humid climate, stable structure, abundant organic matter supply, a certain water depth, and a lower terrestrial source debris supply. The observed differences were that the water depth conditions were diversified in the study area, as well as the sources, types, and content of the organic matter. (3) The rapid transformations of the coal and oil shale genetic environments were mainly controlled by the tectonic settings and climatic conditions, which were determined to control the changes in the water depths, salinity, redox conditions, and lake productivity of the genetic environments. Also, in the symbiotic assemblages, genetic environment changes had induced the development of oil shale deposits, which gradually evolved into coal genetic environments. (4) In the isochronous sequence stratigraphic framework of the coal and oil shale symbiotic assemblages, the lake expansion system tracts (EST) were determined to be the most beneficial to the growth of all the types of assemblages and were characterized by more assemblage development phases and smaller bed thicknesses. From the early to the late stages of the EST, and from the lakesides to lake centers, the thicknesses of the coal seams in the symbiotic assemblages showed trends of thinning, while the thicknesses of the oil shale deposits exhibited increasing trends. The early stages of high stand system tracts were found to be beneficial to the development of the symbiotic assemblages of coal seams overlying the oil shale. This tract type generally presented large bed thicknesses and distribution ranges. The low stand system tract and the late high stand system tract were determined to be unconducive to the development of the symbiotic assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producing heterologous enzymes in the animal digestive tract to improve feed utilization rate is a new research strategy by transgenic technology. In this study, transgenic pigs specifically expressing β-glucanase gene in the intestine were successfully produced by somatic cell nuclear transfer technology in order to improve digestibility of dietary β-glucan and absorption of nutrients. The β-glucanase activity in the intestinal juice of 4 transgenic pigs was found to be 8.59 ± 2.49 U/mL. The feeding trial results showed that the crude protein digestion of 4 transgenic pigs was significantly increased compared with that of the non-transgenic pigs. In order to investigate the inheritance of the transgene, 7 G1 transgenic pigs were successfully obtained. The β-glucanase activity in the intestinal juice of 7 G1 transgenic pigs was found to be 2.35 ± 0.72 U/mL. The feeding trial results showed the crude protein digestion and crude fat digestion were significantly higher in 7 G1 transgenic pigs than in non-transgenic pigs. Taken together, our study demonstrated that the foreign β-glucanase expressing in the intestine of the transgenic pigs could reduce the anti-nutritional effect of β-glucans in feed. In addition, β-glucanase gene could be inherited to the offsprings and maintain its physiological function. It is a promising approach to improve feed utilization by producing transgenic animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning-based speech enhancement approaches like deep neural networks (DNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) have already demonstrated superior results to classical methods. However, these methods do not take full advantage of temporal context information. While DNN and LSTM consider temporal context in the noisy source speech, it does not do so for the estimated clean speech. Both DNN and LSTM also have a tendency to over-smooth spectra, which causes the enhanced speech to sound muffled. This paper proposes a novel architecture to address both issues, which we term a conditional generative model (CGM). By adopting an adversarial training scheme applied to a generator of deep dilated convolutional layers, CGM is designed to model the joint and symmetric conditions of both noisy and estimated clean spectra. We evaluate CGM against both DNN and LSTM in terms of Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) and Short-Time Objective Intelligibility (STOI) on TIMIT sentences corrupted by ITU-T P.501 and NOISEX-92 noise in a range of matched and mismatched noise conditions. Results show that both the CGM architecture and the adversarial training mechanism lead to better PESQ and STOI in all tested noise conditions. In addition to yielding significant improvements in PESQ and STOI, CGM and adversarial training both mitigate against over-smoothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethylene and ethyne are among the simplest two-carbon building blocks. However, quite limited methods can be applied to incorporate ethylene or ethyne into fine chemicals. Here we demonstrate a cobalt-catalyzed dehydrogenative C–H/N–H [4+2] annulation of aryl/vinyl amides with ethylene or ethyne by using an electrochemical reaction protocol. Significantly, this work shows an example of electrochemical recycling of cobalt catalyst in oxidative C–H functionalization reactions, avoiding the use of external chemical oxidants and co-oxidants. The electrochemical method provides a reliable and safe way for incorporating gas-phase ethylene or ethyne into fine chemicals. High reaction efficiency and good functional group tolerance are observed under divided electrolytic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pollution by heavy metals limits the area of land available for cultivation of food crops. A potential solution to this problem might lie in the molecular breeding of food crops for phytoremediation that accumulate toxic metals in straw while producing safe and nutritious grains. Here, we identify a rice quantitative trait locus we name cadmium (Cd) accumulation in leaf 1 (CAL1), which encodes a defensin-like protein. CAL1 is expressed preferentially in root exodermis and xylem parenchyma cells. We provide evidence that CAL1 acts by chelating Cd in the cytosol and facilitating Cd secretion to extracellular spaces, hence lowering cytosolic Cd concentration while driving long-distance Cd transport via xylem vessels. CAL1 does not appear to affect Cd accumulation in rice grains or the accumulation of other essential metals, thus providing an efficient molecular tool to breed dual-function rice varieties that produce safe grains while remediating paddy soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Maternal diet with a high glycemic index (GI) is associated with fetal overgrowth and higher infant body adiposity. Effects of low-GI diet on maternal and newborn outcomes have been assessed in both healthy pregnancy and gestational diabetes mellitus, but the results remain inconclusive. This meta-analysis aimed to examine the effects of low-GI diets on maternal and newborn outcomes.Methods: PubMed, Clinical Trials, and Cochrane Library databases were searched for relevant randomized trials up to January 2016. Random- or fixed-effects models were used to calculate combined treatment effects.Results: A total of 11 trials involving 1985 women were eligible for analysis. This meta-analysis assessed 7 maternal and 11 newborn outcomes. Of these, gestational weight gain (GWG), fasting blood glucose (FBG), newborn birth weight, ponderal index (PI), proportion of macrosomia, and large for gestational age (LGA) were investigated in more than 8 trials. Compared with control diets, low-GI diets significantly reduced FBG (weight mean differences (WMD) = −0.18 mmol/L, 95 % CI: −0.33, −0.02), 2-h postprandial glucose level (WMD = −0.33 mmol/L, 95 % CI: −0.54, −0.12), and the proportion of LGA (RR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.31, 0.89). A lower GWG (WMD = −0.69 kg, 95 % CI: −1.74, 0.36) and birth weight (WMD = −0.10 kg, 95 % CI: −0.23, 0.03) were also observed without significant differences. Heterogeneity was observed in the GWG, FBG, and birth weight analyses. Low-GI diets did not affect other maternal and newborn outcomes. In subgroup and sensitivity analyses, the intervention effects of low GI on GWG and FBG varied.Conclusions: Low-GI diets may have beneficial effects on maternal outcomes for those at risk of developing high glucose levels, without causing adverse effects on newborn outcomes. However, results should be interpreted with caution because of the evidence of heterogeneity and limited number of studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the geometrical, electronic structure and optical properties of P-doped ZnO under high pressures have been investigated using first-principles methods. The pressure effects on the lattice parameters, electronic band structures, and partial density of states of crystalline P-doped ZnO are calculated up to 8GPa. Moreover, the evolution of the dielectric function, absorption coefficient (α(ω)), reflectivity (R(ω)), and the real part of the refractive index (n(ω)) at high pressure are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Cheese contains a high content of saturated fatty acids but also lists of potentially beneficial nutrients. How long-term cheese consumption affects the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is unclear. A meta-analysis of prospective observational studies was conducted to evaluate the risks of total CVD, coronary heart disease (CHD), and stroke associated with cheese consumption. Methods: Potentially eligible studies were identified by searching PubMed and EMBASE databases and by carefully reviewing the bibliographies of retrieved publications and related reviews. The summary relative risks (RRs) with 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using the random-effects model. Results: The final analyses included 15 prospective studies. Most of the studies excluded prevalent CVD at baseline (14/15) and had a duration >10 years (13/15). The summary RR for high vs. low cheese consumption was 0.90 (95 % CI 0.82-0.99) for total CVD (7 studies, 8076 events), 0.86 (95 % CI 0.77-0.96) for CHD (8 studies, 7631 events), and 0.90 (95 % CI 0.84-0.97) for stroke (7 studies, 10,449 events), respectively. The restricted cubic model indicated evidence of nonlinear relationships between cheese consumption and risks of total CVD ( P < 0.001) and stroke ( P = 0.015), with the largest risk reductions observed at the consumption of approximately 40 g/d. Conclusions: This meta-analysis of prospective studies suggests a nonlinear inverse association between cheese consumption and risk of CVD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producing aflatoxin-detoxifizyme (ADTZ) in pigs to control the AFT contamination of pig feed is a new research strategy by transgenic technology. In this study, transgenic pigs specifically expressing ADTZ gene in the parotid gland were successfully produced by somatic cell nuclear transfer technology. The ADTZ activity in saliva of 6 transgenic pigs was found to be 7.11 ± 2.63 U/mL. The feeding trial with aflatoxin (AFT) results showed that there were significant difference about the serum biochemical index such as total protein (TP), albumin (ALB), globulin (GLB) contents and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) activity and AFT residues in serum and liver between the pigs in the test treatment (transgenic pigs) producing ADTZ and those in the positive control ( P < 0.05). In order to investigate the inheritance of the transgene, 11 G1 transgenic pigs were successfully obtained. The ADTZ activity in saliva of 11 G1 transgenic pigs was found to be 5.82 ± 1.53 U/mL. The feeding trial with AFT results showed that the serum biochemical index containing TP, ALB and GLB contents and ALT and AST activity and AFB1 residues in serum and liver of the pigs in the test treatment (transgenic pigs) producing ADTZ were significantly different than those in the positive control ( P < 0.05). The above results demonstrated that ADTZ produced in transgenic pigs could improve the effect of the AFT contamination of feed on pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qinghai Lake is a major migratory-bird breeding site that has experienced several highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (AIV) epizootics. Plateau pikas ( Ochotona curzoniae) have previously been implicated in the ecology of avian influenza virus in this region. We first isolated an H9N2 AIV (A/Pika/Menyuan/01/2008) from plateau pikas between November 2008 and October 2009. Sequence analysis showed that the A/Pika/Menyuan/01/2008 AIV was closely related to the H9N2 AIV strain (A/Turkey/Wisconsin/ 1/1966). Our findings suggested that plateau pikas may contribute to AIV epidemiology in the Qinghai Lake region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An open source software (OSS) ecosystem refers to an OSS development community composed of many software projects and developers contributing to these projects. The projects and developers co-evolve in an ecosystem. To keep healthy evolution of such OSS ecosystems, there is a need of attracting and retaining developers, particularly project leaders and core developers who have major impact on the project and the whole team. Therefore, it is important to figure out the factors that influence developers' chance to evolve into project leaders and core developers. To identify such factors, we conducted a case study on the GNOME ecosystem. First, we collected indicators reflecting developers' subjective willingness to contribute to the project and the project environment that they stay in. Second, we calculated such indicators based on the GNOME dataset. Then, we fitted logistic regression models by taking as independent variables the resulting indicators after eliminating the most collinear ones, and taking as a dependent variable the future developer role (the core developer or project leader). The results showed that part of such indicators (e.g., the total number of projects that a developer joined) of subjective willingness and project environment significantly influenced the developers' chance to evolve into core developers and project leaders. With different validation methods, our obtained model performs well on predicting developmental core developers, resulting in stable prediction performance (0.770, F-value). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

β-Glucan is the predominant anti-nutritional factors in monogastric animal feed. Although β-glucanase supplementation in diet can help to eliminate the adverse effects, enzyme stability is substantially modified during the feed manufacturing process. To determine whether the expression of endogenous β-glucanase gene (GLU) in vivo can improve digestibility of dietary β-glucan and absorption of nutrients, we successfully produced transgenic pigs via nuclear transfer which express the GLU from Paenibacillus polymyxa CP7 in the parotid gland. In three live transgenic founders, β-glucanase activities in the saliva were 3.2, 0.07 and 0.03 U/mL, respectively, and interestingly the enzyme activities increased in the pigs from 178 days old to 789 days old. From the feed the amount of gross energy, crude protein and crude fat absorbed by the transgenic pigs was significantly higher than the non-transgenic pigs. Meanwhile the moisture content of the feces was significantly reduced in transgenic pigs compared with the non-transgenic pigs. Furthermore, in all positive G1 pigs, β-glucanase activity was detectable and the highest enzyme activity reached 3.5 U/mL in saliva. Also, crude protein digestion was significantly higher in G1 transgenic pigs than in control pigs. Taken together, our data showed that the transgenic β-glucanase exerted its biological catalytic function in vivo in the saliva, and the improved performance of the transgenic pigs could be accurately passed on to the offspring, indicating a promising alternative approach to improving nutrient availability was established to improve utilization of livestock feed through transgenic animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of somatotypes has important significance for medical and physical anthropology as well as sports science. The aim of this study was to understand the somatotype components of the Han population in Xi'an and compare the somatotypes of the Han and five other nationalities in China. The study sample consisted of 429 people of Han nationality (207 males, 222 females) from Xi'an, China, aged ≥20 years old. The Heath-Carter anthropometric method was employed. We evaluated the differences in age and sex by one-way ANOVA and t test. A comparison of somatotypes between the Han and other nationalities was made using the U test. The results showed that the male and female samples all could be classified as having a mesomorphic endomorph profile. The difference in endomorphy was strongest between sexes in all age groups ( P < 0.01). There were prominent differences in mesomorphy and ectomorphy between males and females in the 50-59- and ≥60-year-old age groups. In females, the differences in somatotype components appeared to be distinguished between ages ( P < 0.01 or P < 0.05). However, in males, there were prominent differences in somatotype components between the 20-29 year olds and all other age groups ( P < 0.01 or P < 0.05) except for between those 20-29 and ≥60 years old in endomorphy. Compared with the other five nationalities, there were prominent differences in somatotype components between males and females. These results suggest that the somatotype of the Han population in Xi'an, China, has a predominantly mesomorphic endomorph profile. The endomorphic component shows distinct differences between ages and genders, respectively. Additionally, there are distinct differences in the somatotype components between Xi'an Han and five other nationalities in China in males and females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) and osteochondral autograft transplantation (OAT or mosaicplasty) are two effective surgeries for the treatment of large cartilage defects for more than two decades. But there are always some controversies about which one has the better outcomes for the patients. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to compare the outcomes of these two surgeries and give an advice to the clinical practices. The literature search was performed on multiple electronic databases with specific included criteria. After the assessments, five Randomized controlled trials (level II) were included and two of them were in the same cohort. The continuous data of outcomes were categorized into ranked ones (excellent, good, fair and poor) for comparisons. In the six comparisons of excellent or good results and poor results, the outcomes of ACI were significantly better than OAT in only one comparison (RR 2.57, 95 % CI 1.09-6.07, P = 0.03) while others had no significant differences. We may reach a primary conclusion that there is no significant different outcome between ACI and OAT in a short-term follow-up but it may indicate that the patients with OAT may be more likely to have worse condition than that with ACI for a long-term period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new secure quantum proxy multi-signature scheme using seven-qubit entangled quantum state as quantum channels, which may have applications in e-payment system, e-government, e-business, etc. This scheme is based on controlled quantum teleportation. The scheme uses the physical characteristics of quantum mechanics to guarantee its anonymity, verifiability, traceability, unforgetability and undeniability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aflatoxin-detoxifizyme (ADTZ) gene derived from Armillariella tabescens was cloned into parotid gland-specific expression vector (pPSPBGPneo) to construct the parotid gland-specific vector expressing ADTZ (pPSPBGPneo-ADTZ). Transgenic mice were generated by microinjection and identified by using PCR and Southern blotting analysis. PCR and Southern blotting analysis showed that total six transgenic mice carried the ADTZ gene were generated. RT-PCR analysis indicated that the expression of ADTZ mRNA could be detected only in parotid glands of the transgenic mice. The ADTZ activity in the saliva was found to be 3.72 ± 1.64 U/mL. After feeding a diet containing aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) for 14 days, the effect of ADTZ on serum biochemical indexes and AFB1 residues in serum and liver of mice were evaluated. The results showed that total protein and globulin contents in the test treatment (transgenic mice) produced ADTZ were significantly higher than that of the positive control, while alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase activity in serum of the test treatment (transgenic mice) were remarkably lower compared to that of the positive control ( P < 0.05). Moreover, AFB1 residues in serum and liver of the test treatment (transgenic mice) were significantly lower compared with that of the positive control ( P < 0.05). These results in the study confirmed that ADTZ produced in transgenic mice could reduce, even eliminate the negative effects of AFB1 on mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]