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Tools for intuitive visualization of dynamic datasets are highly demanded for capturing information and revealing potential patterns, especially in understanding the trend of data changes. We propose a novel resolution-independent heuristic algorithm, termed Orthogonal Stable Treemap (OST), to implicitly display dynamic hierarchical data value changes. OST adopts a site-based method as the Voronoi treemap (VT), to preserve the layout stability for diversified data values. Meanwhile, OST partitions the whole canvas with horizontal or vertical lines, instead of the lines with arbitrary orientations in VT. Technical innovations are made in three parts: Initialization of site state to speed up the algorithm and preserve the layout; efficient computation of orthogonal rectangular diagram to partition the empty canvas; self-adaption of site state to quickly reach an equilibrium. The performance of OST is quantitatively evaluated in terms of computation complexity, computation time, convergence rate, visibility, and stability. Moreover, qualitative evaluations (use case and user study) are demonstrated on the dynamic work-in-process dataset in the wafer fab. Evaluation results show that OST combines the advantages of layout stability and tidiness, contributing to easier and faster plot understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improvement of the treatment for Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) especially the development of in situ controllable drug release is still a major concern. In this study, we developed waterborne biodegradable polyurethane (WBPU) scaffolds incorporated with redox-sensitive and RGD-decorated paclitaxel (PTX) polymer-drug conjugates (PDCs) for targeted GBM therapy in situ. The drug scaffolds could be implanted at residual GBM site post-operation. Dual-targeting PTX-PDCs were obtained through step-by-step conjugation of disulfide linked PTX, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), and arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD). The RGD-modified PTX-PDCs were spherical nanoparticles (NPs) that would be released from scaffolds and identified GBM cells actively. Internalized redox-sensitive PTX-PDCs would be decomposed and release PTX inside GBM cells under the circumstances of glutathione (GSH). The release profiles of PTX from the scaffolds with/without GSH were investigated. In vitro cytotoxicity assay revealed that the dual-targeting PTX-PDCs from scaffolds could specifically kill GBM cells and protect normal cells, suggesting that dual-targeting PTX-PDC-loaded scaffolds may have the potential to repair tumor-induced brain injury. In vivo anti-recurrence assay indicated that the PTX-PDC-scaffolds could deliver PTX-PDCs to the GBM cells followed by inhibiting tumor growth and inducing apoptosis. In general, the PTX prodrug-loaded devices exhibited significant anti-GBM effects and normal tissue protection simultaneously, indicating that the WBPU scaffolds incorporated with dual-targeting PTX-PDCs may be a promising strategy for local therapy of GBM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oscillations of solar coronal filaments have received significant interest, and the restoring force and damping mechanism are the focus of discussion. We study the basic physical principles of the multi-factor, coupled, longitudinal oscillations of a filament, including its dominant restoring force and the damping mechanism. Using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method we have performed for the first time a one-dimensional (1D) hydrodynamic numerical simulation of the longitudinal oscillation of the prominence. We modeled the process of mass uplift, that is the chromosphere mass enters the corona directly with the uplifted magnetic-flux tube. We studied multiple parameters, including the mass density, the initial perturbation velocity, and the geometry of the magnetic depression. We found that a sudden velocity disturbance can result in the oscillation of the prominence mass along the magnetic dip. Our numerical simulation analysis and theoretical study show that the oscillation period can be expressed as D − 0.616 w 0.978 v 0 0.261 (where D is the dip depth of the magnetic tube, w is half the length of the prominence magnetic dip, and v 0 is the initial velocity disturbance), which is slightly different from the previous linear pendulum theory. The particle-collision viscosity also affects the longitudinal-oscillation period. In a non-adiabatic process, the oscillation decays with time. Radiant cooling is the primary factor that causes damping. Plasma particles' collisional viscosity is also a cause of damping, which primarily occurs once the prominence moves to the farthest point from the equilibrium state. The proportional law of the attenuation time scale is deduced, that is τ ∼ l 1.194 ρ 0.615 D 0.732 ω − 1.099 v 0 − 0.412 (where l is the prominence length, and ρ is the prominence density). Compared to previous simulations, v 0 plays a more important role. The greater the amplitude, the greater the oscillation damping. The advantage of the SPH method used in this article is that it can avoid the accuracy loss caused by mesh distortion in extremely large deformations, and it can avoid the interface problem of the Euler mesh in the Euler method. Therefore, it is especially suitable for solving dynamic large deformation problems such as prominence oscillation and explosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual analytics tools are of paramount importance in handling high-dimensional datasets such as those in our turbine performance assessment. Conventional tools such as RadViz have been used in 2D exploratory data analysis. However, with the increase in dataset size and dimensionality, the clumping of projected data points toward the origin in RadViz causes low space utilization, which largely degenerates the visibility of the feature characteristics. In this study, to better evaluate the hidden patterns in the center region, we propose a new focus + context distortion approach, termed PolarViz, to manipulate the radial distribution of data points. We derive radial equalization to automatically spread out the frequency, and radial specification to shape the distribution based on user's requirement. Computational experiments have been conducted on two datasets including a benchmark dataset and a turbine performance simulation data. The performance of the proposed algorithm as well as other methods for solving the clumping problem in both data space and image space are illustrated and compared, and the pros and cons are analyzed. Moreover, a user study was conducted to assess the performance of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Malignancy following renal transplantation remains inconsistent with the reported safety of kidney donation during the long-term follow-up.Methods: We conducted searches of the published literature which included healthy participants, recipients, living kidney donors (LKDs), and the availability of outcome data for malignancy. Eight from 938 potentially relevant studies were analyzed by means of fixed-effects model or random-effects model, as appropriately.Results: In 48,950 participants, the follow-up range was 18 months to 20 years, and the mean age of the subjects was approximately 41 years. The incidence rate with 95% confidence interval (CI) for malignancy after kidney transplantation was 0.03 (0.01–0.05) in recipients and 0.03 (0.1–0.07) in LKDs, giving a pooled incidence rate of 0.03 (95% CI 0.02–0.04). LKDs contrasted nondonors by the overall odds ratio and 95% CI for total cancer of 2.80 (2.69–2.92).Conclusions: Kidney transplantation was associated with an increased risk of cancer during a long-term follow-up. Long-term risk for cancer in LKDs and kidney recipients should be monitored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of dithiocarbamate-3- epi-jaspine B hybrids have been designed and synthesized from D-xylose based on the introduction of long lipophilic alkyl dithiocarbamate moieties at the C4 position of 3- epi-jaspine B. The anticancer activities of these compounds have been evaluated against two selected tumor cell lines (MGC-803 and B16-F10 cells), with most of the synthesized compounds exhibiting moderate activity. Among them, compounds 20d and 2 0f showed the highest levels of inhibitory activity of all the compounds tested against MGC-803 and B16-F10 cells with IC values of 16.39 and 14.83 µM, respectively. This work therefore represents the first reported account of the synthesis and in vitro cytotoxic evaluation of dithiocarbamate-3- epi-jaspine B hybrids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interleukin 6 (IL-6) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that is well established as a vital factor in determining the risk of coronary heart disease and pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Moreover, accumulating evidences have shown that oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL) can promote IL-6 expression in macrophages. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanism of how ox-LDL upregulates IL-6 expression remains largely unexplained. We found that the expression of insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), and IL-6 was upregulated at both the messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein levels in a dose-dependent manner when treated with 0, 25, 50, or 100 μg/mL of ox-LDL for 48 h in THP-1 macrophages. Moreover, overexpression of IGF2 significantly upregulated NF-κB and IL-6 expressions in THP-1 macrophages. However, the upregulation of NF-κB and IL-6 expressions induced by ox-LDL were significantly abolished by IGF2 small interfering RNA (siRNA) in THP-1 macrophages. Further studies indicated the upregulation of IL-6 induced by ox-LDL could be abolished when treated with NF-κB siRNA in THP-1 macrophages. Ox-LDL might upregulate IL-6 in the cell and its secretion via enhancing NF-κB in an IGF2-dependent manner in THP-1 macrophages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors with an increasing incidence worldwide. Apolipoprotein M (apoM) is a novel apolipoprotein that is mainly expressed in liver and kidney tissues. However, the anti-tumor properties of apoM remain largely unknown. We evaluated the anti-tumor activities and mechanisms of apoM in HCC both in vivo and in vitro. Bioinformatic analysis and luciferase reporter assay results showed that apoM was a potential target of hsa-miR-573 and was downregulated after transfection with hsa-miR-573 mimics. Overexpression of apoM suppressed migration, invasion, and proliferation of hepatoma cells in vitro. Overexpression of hsa-miR-573 in hepatoma cells reduced apoM expression, leading to promotion of the invasion, migration, and proliferation of hepatoma cells in vitro. In addition, hsa-miR-573 markedly promoted growth of xenograft tumors in nude mice with an accompanying reduction in cell apoptosis. ApoM markedly inhibited growth of xenograft tumors in nude mice and promoted cell apoptosis. Moreover, Bcl2A1 mRNA and protein levels were inhibited by apoM overexpression and an increase in apoptosis rate by apoM was markedly compensated by Bcl2A1 overexpression in HepG2 cells. These results provide evidence that hsa-miR-573 promoted tumor growth by inhibition of hepatocyte apoptosis and this pro-tumor effect might be mediated through Bcl2A1 in an apoM-dependent manner. Therefore, our findings may be useful to improve understanding of the critical effects of hsa-miR-573 and apoM in HCC pathogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prestack seismic inversion methods adopt approximations of the Zoeppritz equations to describe the relation between reflection coefficients and P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity, and density. However, the error in these approximations increases with increasing angle of incidence and variation of the elastic parameters, which increases the number of inversion solutions and minimizes the inversion accuracy. In this study, we explore a method for solving the reflection coefficients by using the Zoeppritz equations. To increase the accuracy of prestack inversion, the simultaneous inversion of P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity, and density by using prestack large-angle seismic data is proposed based on generalized linear inversion theory. Moreover, we reduce the ill posedness and increase the convergence of prestack inversion by using the regularization constraint damping factor and the conjugate gradient algorithm. The proposed prestack inversion method uses prestack large-angle seismic data to obtain accurate seismic elastic parameters that conform to prestack seismic data and are consistent with logging data from wells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C-reactive protein (CRP) is an acute-phase reactant protein that not only plays a predictive role in determining atherogenesis risk but also represents an active participant in atherogenesis onset and progression. Moreover, an increasing number of studies have reported that oxidized low-density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL) plays a significant role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis. However, the effect and underlying mechanism of Ox-LDL on CRP expression remains unclear. THP-1 macrophages were treated with 0, 25, 50, or 100 μg/mL of Ox-LDL for 48 h, or 50 μg/mL of Ox-LDL for 0, 12, 24, and 48 h, respectively. Messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein levels were measured by real-time quantitative PCR and Western blot analysis, respectively. We found that Ox-LDL markedly increased insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) and CRP mRNA and protein levels in a dose- and time-dependent manner in THP-1 macrophages. Treatment with Ox-LDL increased CRP protein expression, and this effect was completely abolished by siRNA-mediated silencing of IGF2 in THP-1 macrophages. Moreover, treatment with pcDNA3.1-IGF2 significantly enhanced CRP protein expression in Ox-LDL-stimulated THP-1 macrophages. CRP expression is upregulated by Ox-LDL through the IGF2 pathway in THP-1 macrophages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]