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Despite issues related to dendrite formation, research on Li metal anodes has resurged because of their high energy density. In this study, graphene oxide (GO) layers are decorated onto Li metal anodes through a simple process of drop-casting and spray-coating. The self-assembly of GO is exploited to synthesize coatings having compact, mesoporous, and macroporous morphologies. The abilities of the GO coatings to suppress dendrite formation are compared through Li|Li symmetrical cell charging at a current density of 5 mA cm-2 for 2000 cycles-a particularly abusive test. The macroporous structure possesses the lowest impedance, whereas the compact structure excels in terms of stability. Moreover, GO exhibits a low nucleation overpotential and is transformed into reduced GO with enhanced conductivity during the operation of the cells; both factors synergistically mitigate the issue of dendrite formation. Li-S batteries incorporating the GO-decorated Li anodes exhibit an initial capacity of 850 mA h g-1 and maintain their stability for 800 cycles at a C-rate of 1 C (1675 mA h g-1), suggesting the applicability of GO in future rechargeable batteries.

Background/Purpose: Task-oriented functional walking is important in stroke patients. We aimed to investigate effects of a quad-cane with auxiliary laser illuminator (laser-cane) among stroke patients. Methods: This was a randomized-prospective study. Patients in the experimental group (EG) received 15-min of walking training with laser-cane and 15-min of traditional physical therapy. Patients in the control group (CG) received the same rehabilitation without laser-cane. The rehabilitation lasted for 4 weeks, twice per week. Primary outcome were gait parameters. Secondary outcomes were Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Timed Up and Go Test (TUG), and Barthel index (BI). Outcomes were measured at baseline, at the end of the rehabilitation (visit-1), and 4 weeks later (visit-2). Results: Both the groups (both n = 15) showed improvement of cadence, relative stance and swing phase duration of non-paretic side, BBS, and TUG at both visits. In the intragroup comparison, the EG additionally improved at stride length, relative stance and swing phase duration of paretic side, and gait speed at both visits; temporal swing symmetry, and toe-off angle of non-paretic side at the visit-2. Intergroup comparing for changing of outcomes with the CG, stride length and gait speed increased, relative stance phase duration of the non-paretic site decreased, and the temporal swing symmetry improved at the visit-1; relative stance phase duration of the paretic side decreased and the temporal stance symmetry improved at the visit-2 in the EG. Conclusion: Rehabilitation with laser-cane improved the balance, activity of daily living, gait symmetry and gait parameters of stroke patients.

Abstract Purpose Due to lumbar spinal surgery is frequently accompanied with moderate-to-severe postoperative pain, it is necessary to find an effective postoperative analgesia for patients with this surgery. This study aimed to observe the analgesic effect of dexmedetomidine combined with ropivacaine erector spinae plane block (ESPB) used in posterior lumbar spine surgery. Methods In this clinical trial, patients undergoing posterior lumbar spine surgery were recruited and randomly divided into two groups: intervention and control. The intervention group (Group E) received 0.375% ropivacaine with 1 µg/kg dexmedetomidine in a total of 20 ml for ESPB; the control group (Group C) received 20 ml ropivacaine 0.375% for ESPB. US-guided ESPB was performed preoperatively in all patients. Demographics, anesthesia time, surgery time, and ASA grade from the participants were recorded at baseline. The primary clinical outcome measures were 2-, 4-, 8-, 12-, 24-and 48-h visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores after surgery at rest and movement state. Other end points included opioid consumption, number of PCIA presses, flurbiprofen-axetil consumption, quality of recovery and pain management after surgery. Results One hundred twenty patients were enrolled in the study (mean [SD] ages: Group E, 54.77 [8.61] years old; Group C,56.40 [7.87] years old; P = 0.280). The mean anesthesia time was 152.55 (15.37) min in Group E and 152.60 (16.47) min in Group C (P = 0.986). Additionally, the surgery time was 141.70 (15.71) min in Group E compared to 141.48 (17.13) min in Group C (P = 0.943). In addition, we found that the VAS pain scores in the resting state during the postoperative period at 8–48 h were lower in Group E than in Group C. However, the VAS pain scores in the active state were lower in Group E at 12–48 h (P

Abstract Background This study aims to investigate thrombospondin 2 (TSP2) expression levels in gastric cancer (GC) and determine the relationship between TSP2 and clinical characteristics and prognosis. Methods The online database Gene Expression Profile Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) was used to analyse TSP2 mRNA expression levels in GC. The Kaplan–Meier plotter prognostic analysis tool was used to evaluate the influence of TSP2 expression on clinical prognosis in GC patients. TSP2 expression levels were analysed in paraffin-embedded GC samples and adjacent normal tissues by immunohistochemistry. The relationship between the clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of GC patients was assessed. Transwell experiments were used to evaluate the effect of TSP2 on HGC27 and AGS cell invasion and migration. The EdU experiment was used to detect the effect of transfection of TSP2 on cell proliferation, and the flow cytometry experiment was used to detect the effect of TSP2 on cell apoptosis and the cell growth cycle. Western blotting (Wb) technology was used to detect MMP, E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Vimentin, Snail, AKT, PI3K, and VEGF protein expression in HGC27 cells. Results Compared with normal tissues, TSP2 mRNA expression in GC was significantly upregulated and was closely related to the clinical stage of GC. High TSP2 expression significantly affected the OS, FP and PPS of patients with GC. Among these patients, TSP2 expression levels did not affect the prognosis of patients with GC in the N0 subgroup but significantly affected the prognosis of patients with GC in the N (1 + 2 + 3) subgroup. TSP2 protein expression levels were significantly higher in GC tissue compared with normal tissues (P

Abstract Background For treating distal femur fractures, minimally invasive plating techniques with indirect reduction of the metadiaphysis while minimizing the damage to the peripheral soft tissue has gradually become the standard. However, all the current approaches use a straight or lazy curved incision adjacent to the patella or along the lateral side of the femur, which allows for easier proximal extension but increases the incision length. Methods In order to achieve a more physiological and esthetic outcome while leaving the metadiaphysis untouched, we developed an approach using a lambda-shaped incision, which sacrifices the potential for proximal extension but preserves much more peripheral soft tissue. Here, we describe our technique and our experience with it in 19 patients (12 men and 7 women). Results Fractures healing by first intention was observed in all patients. The postoperative knee range of motion can reach up to 90° in most of the patient. Clinically, 9 patients had excellent results, 6 had good results, 3 had fair results, and 2 had loss of follow-up. Conclusions Our minimally invasive lambda-incision approach allows sufficient visual access to almost the entire joint surface, including the entire lateral femoral condyle, trochlear surface, and distal medial condyle, where reduction is required. The lambda incision provides a much larger window than that offered by a same-length straight incision. The vertical turn at the mid-patellar level parallels the skin crease and geniculate artery, reducing soft tissue damage and resulting in a smooth healing wound. Moreover, plate and distal screw insertion is easier than that through a straight incision. Because the metadiaphysis region is mostly left untouched, ideal fracture-healing environment is preserved.

Background: The purpose of this Mendelian randomization (MR) study was to assess the causal relationship between circulating cytokines and periodontitis.Materials and methods: Based on the aggregated statistics of the largest publicly available genome-wide association study (GWAS), we applied a bidirectional two-sample MR. MR analyses were conducted using Inverse variance weighted (IVW), Robust Adjusted Profile Score (RAPS), Maximum likelihood (ML), Weighted median and MR-Egger, and results obtained from IVW served as the primary outcome. Cochran Q test was used to test the heterogeneity. MR-Egger intercept test and MR polymorphism residual and outlier test (MR-PRESSO) were used for polymorphism analysis. Leave-one-out sensitivity and funnel plots were used for sensitivity analysis.Results: The IVW method indicated that interleukin 9 (IL9) had a positive causal relationship with periodontitis [odds ratio (OR) = 1.199, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.049–1.372, p = 0.008], and interleukin 17 (IL17) had a negative causal relationship with periodontitis (OR = 0.847, 95% CI = 0.735–0.976, p = 0.022). In bidirectional MR, periodontitis was not causally related to any of the cytokines in our study.Conclusion: Our findings provided evidence in support of potential causal associations between circulating IL9/IL17 and periodontitis.

Purpose Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a major healthcare threat worldwide. Since it was first identified in November 2021, the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of SARS-CoV-2 has evolved into several lineages, including BA.1, BA.2–BA.4, and BA.5. SARS-CoV-2 variants might increase transmissibility, pathogenicity, and resistance to vaccine-induced immunity. Thus, the epidemiological surveillance of circulating lineages using variant phenotyping is essential. The aim of the current study was to characterize the clinical outcome of Omicron BA.2 infections among hospitalized COVID-19 patients and to perform an immunological assessment of such cases against SARS-CoV-2. Patients and Methods We evaluated the analytical and clinical performance of the BioIC SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin (Ig)M/IgG detection kit, which was used for detecting antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in 257 patients infected with the Omicron variant. Results Poor prognosis was noted in 38 patients, including eight deaths in patients characterized by comorbidities predisposing them to severe COVID-19. The variant-of-concern (VOC) typing and serological analysis identified time-dependent epidemic trends of BA.2 variants emerging in the outbreak of the fourth wave in Taiwan. Of the 257 specimens analyzed, 108 (42%) and 24 (9.3%) were positive for anti-N IgM and IgG respectively. Conclusion The VOC typing of these samples allowed for the identification of epidemic trends by time intervals, including the B.1.1.529 variant replacing the B.1.617.2 variant. Moreover, antibody testing might serve as a complementary method for COVID-19 diagnosis. The combination of serological testing results with the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction cycle threshold value has potential value in disease prognosis, thereby aiding in epidemic investigations conducted by clinicians or the healthcare department.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging is used to identify ships, which is a vital task in the maritime industry for managing maritime fisheries, marine transit, and rescue operations. However, some problems, like complex background interferences, various size ship feature variations, and indistinct tiny ship characteristics, continue to be challenges that tend to defy accuracy improvements in SAR ship detection. This research study for multiscale SAR ships detection has developed an upgraded YOLOv5s technique to address these issues. Using the C3 and FPN + PAN structures and attention mechanism, the generic YOLOv5 model has been enhanced in the backbone and neck section to achieve high identification rates. The SAR ship detection datasets and AirSARship datasets, along with two SAR large scene images acquired from the Chinese GF-3 satellite, are utilized to determine the experimental results. This model’s applicability is assessed using a variety of validation metrics, including accuracy, different training and test sets, and TF values, as well as comparisons with other cutting-edge classification models (ARPN, DAPN, Quad-FPN, HR-SDNet, Grid R-CNN, Cascade R-CNN, Multi-Stage YOLOv4-LITE, EfficientDet, Free-Anchor, Lite-Yolov5). The performance values demonstrate that the suggested model performed superior to the benchmark model used in this study, with higher identification rates. Additionally, these excellent identification rates demonstrate the recommended model’s applicability for maritime surveillance.

ABSTRACT Most microbiome studies regarding the ruminant digestive tract have focused on the rumen microbiota, whereas only a few studies were performed on investigating the gut microbiota of ruminants, which limits our understanding of this important component. Herein, the gut microbiota of 30 Caprinae animals (sheep and goats) from six provinces in China was characterized using ultradeep (>100 Gbp per sample) metagenome shotgun sequencing. An inventory of Caprinae gut microbial species containing 5,046 metagenomic assembly genomes (MAGs) was constructed. Particularly, 2,530 of the genomes belonged to uncultured candidate species. These genomes largely expanded the genomic repository of the current microbes in the Caprinae gut. Several enzymes and biosynthetic gene clusters encoded by these Caprinae gut species were identified. In summary, our study extends the gut microbiota characteristics of Caprinae and provides a basis for future studies on animal production and animal health. IMPORTANCE We constructed a microbiota catalog containing 5,046 MAGs from Caprinae gut from six regions of China. Most of the MAGs do not overlap known databases and appear to be potentially new species. We also characterized the functional spectrum of these MAGs and analyzed the differences between different regions. Our study enriches the understanding of taxonomic, functional, and metabolic diversity of Caprinae gut microbiota. We are confident that the manuscript will be of utmost interest to a wide range of readers and be widely applied in future research.

ObjectiveElderly individuals in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) have a higher prevalence of sarcopenia than those in the community. Exercise is the gold standard for preventing and treating sarcopenia. Regarding exercise, multicomponent exercises, including progressive resistance training (PRT), are beneficial. However, developing routine, structured exercise programs for the elderly in LTCFs is difficult because of a shortage of healthcare providers, particularly in rural regions. Exergame-based exercises can increase a player’s motivation and reduce staff time for an intervention. Nintendo Switch RingFit Adventure (RFA) is a novel exergame that combines resistance, aerobic, and balance exercises. In this study, we aim to investigate the clinical effectiveness of RFA on muscle and functional performance parameters among the elderly in LTCFs.MethodsThe EXPPLORE (using EXergame to Prevent and Postpone the LOss of muscle mass, muscle strength, and functional performance in Rural Elders) trial is a single-center randomized controlled trial involving elderly individuals (≥60 years) living in LTCFs in rural southern Taiwan. The participants will be equally randomized to the intervention group (exergame-based exercise plus standard care) or the control group (standard care alone). Both groups will receive standard care except that the intervention group will receive exergame-based exercises at the time previously scheduled for sedentary activities in the LTCFs. The exergame-based exercise will be performed using RFA in the sitting position with a specialized design, including arm fit skills and knee assist mode. Each session of the exercise lasts 30 mins and will be performed two times per week for 12 weeks. The primary outcomes will be the osteoporotic fracture index, appendicular skeletal muscle mass index, dominant handgrip strength, and gait speed. Meanwhile, the secondary outcomes will be the dexterity and agility, muscle strength and thickness, range of motion of the joints of the dominant upper extremity, Kihon checklist, Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey, and Brain Health Test.DiscussionThis trial will provide valuable knowledge on whether exergames using RFA can counteract physical decline and improve quality of life and cognition among the elderly in LTCFs.Clinical trial registration[www.ClinicalTrials.gov], identifier [NCT05360667].

Detailed management of the coastline is critical to the development of coastal states. However, the current classification of the coastline is relatively weak. This study proposed an automatic method to detect coastlines with category attributes based on multi-scale segmentation and multi-level inheritance classification. Fully integrating the advantages of multi-scale segmentation and multi-level classification, it solved the problems that traditional methods could not solve, such as extracting coastlines with categorical attributes, cultivation ponds that are easily affected by tidal flats, and complex coastal terrain. The Chinese GF-2 satellite images are used to extract various types of coastlines in Jiaozhou Bay and its surrounding areas such as the harbor-wharf coastline, silt coastline, pond coastline, rocky coastline, and sandy coastline. Compared with the human interpretation, it is found that the coastline extracted by our proposed method is different by 10.104 km in the harbor-wharf coastline, 0.099 km in the silt coastline, 2.677 km in the pond coastline, 8.831 km in the rocky coastline, and 0.218 km in the sandy coastline. Furthermore, compared to the object-based region growing integrating edge detection (OBRGIE) method, it is increased by 13.52%, 2.16%, 14.48%, 52.57%, and 22.97%, respectively. The results show that our proposed method is algorithmically more reasonable, accurate, and powerful. It can provide data support for refined coastline management.

Sennae Folium (SF) has been consumed as a fat-reducing tea throughout the world due to its laxative effect. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of the specification grade classification on its quality. The present work aims to verify the rationality of the specification grade classification of SF and investigate the quality markers for distinction of different SF grades. Based on the use of ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS) method, and with the help of molecular networking, 60 compounds of the SF extracts were tentatively identified. 22 differential compounds were screened via chemometrics for distinguishing different grades of SF, including 8 sennosides and anthraquinones, 11 flavonoids, and 3 benzophenones. The strongest lipase inhibitory activity was identified in the extract taken from the green leaves. Correlation analysis of their chemical compositions and lipase inhibitory activity indicated that SF of the green leaf contained the highest amount of sennosides and showed the strongest lipid-lowering effect. In conclusion, the combination of molecular networking and spectrum-effect relationships showed that the specification grade classification of SF according to green leaf, yellow leaf, and diseased leaf was reasonable, and sennosides could serve as quality markers for distinguishing different grades of SF.

The outbreaks of green tide have caused severe harm to the marine environment and human society. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) plays an important role in green tide monitoring by virtue of its high resolution and cloud-free nature. The existing green tide extraction methods still face challenges in identifying multi-scale green tide patches due to noise interference, uneven greyscale and blurred boundaries in SAR images. Meanwhile, the practical application of deep learning methods with high precision is limited due to the complexity of the model and the large amount of computation. Therefore, we propose a multi-scale context-aware and batch-independent lightweight green tide extraction network called MBL-Net. A novel lightweight heterogeneous backbone is designed to extract multi-scale discriminative features and improve segmentation efficiency by using multi-scale selection kernel (MSK) modules and lightweight stages. Meanwhile, Triplet attention module is introduced to improve the internal consistency of the green tide region and suppress the effect of speckle noise. Then, the mixed pooling-based channel prior module (MCPM) is used to expand the receptive field of the network and extract the fine green tide structure by fusing multi-scale features. In addition, Filter Response Normalisation (FRN) is innovatively applied for feature normalization in the decoding stage, eliminating batch dependency. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, a dataset is built using the Sentinel-1 images of the Yellow Sea, China, from 2019 to 2021. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves an overall accuracy of 98.59% with 0.970 G FLOPs and 3.525 M parameters, which ensures high precision and improves green tide detection efficiency. Compared with several representative networks, this method can capture more details of green tide with fewer parameters and faster calculation speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autophagy is a self‐recycling machinery to maintain cellular homeostasis by degrading harmful materials in the cell. Autophagy‐related gene 5 (Atg5) is required for autophagosome maturation. However, the role of Atg5 in tumorigenesis under autophagy deficient conditions remains unclear. This study focused on the autophagy‐independent role of Atg5 and the underlying mechanism in tumorigenesis. We demonstrated that knockout of autophagy‐related genes including Atg5, Atg7, Atg9, and p62 in mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF) cells consistently decreased cell proliferation and motility, implying that autophagy is required to maintain diverse cellular functions. An Atg7 knockout MEF (Atg7−/− MEF) cell line representing deprivation of autophagy function was used to clarify the role of Atg5 transgene in tumorigenesis. We found that Atg5‐overexpressed Atg7−/‐MEF (clone A) showed increased cell proliferation, colony formation, and migration under autophagy deficient conditions. Accordingly, rescuing the autophagy deficiency of clone A by overexpression of Atg7 gene shifts the role of Atg5 from pro‐tumor to anti‐tumor status, indicating the dual role of Atg5 in tumorigenesis. Notably, the xenograft mouse model showed that clone A of Atg5‐overexpressed Atg7−/− MEF cells induced temporal tumor formation, but could not prolong further tumor growth. Finally, biomechanical analysis disclosed increased Wnt5a secretion and p‐JNK expression along with decreased β‐catenin expression. In summary, Atg5 functions as a tumor suppressor to protect the cell under normal conditions. In contrast, Atg5 shifts to a pro‐tumor status under autophagy deprivation conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a study of vibration characteristics of the double-beam structures combined with the concept of the acoustic black hole (ABH), which is an effective technique for vibration and noise control. In the proposed double-beam structure, the ABH beam as the vibration damper is attached to the primary uniform beam by a range of translational and rotational springs. We formulate the closed-form spectral element matrix of the double-beam structure and calculate the natural frequencies and mode shapes of the system. The results demonstrate the ABH effect of increasing the modal damping ratios. We also study the power flow and mechanical intensity of the system to offer physical insight into the vibration suppression mechanism of the ABH. A detailed parametric analysis of both translational and rotational springs is carried out. The investigation contributes to the exact dynamic modelling and analysis of the double-beam system containing ABH elements. Furthermore, the proposed ABH double-beam structure shows great potential for vibration control and energy harvesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines EFL students' metacognitive strategy use in a university flipped classroom and the underlying factors of metacognitive strategy use. The participants in our study were students enrolled in an elective English course at a university in Taiwan, where they had to watch online course videos outside of class and participate in activities that required knowledge application. Students' metacognitive strategy use and factors affecting their use were elicited through written accounts, class observations, and semi-structured interviews. Findings show that factors affecting their metacognitive strategy use include students' expected learning outcome and peer learning. Students' greater control over learning in a flipped classroom context further facilitates their metacognitive strategies. Finally, possible directions for metacognitive instruction are discussed.

Abstract. Background:. Twin pregnancies continue to increase worldwide; however, the current clinical prenatal evaluation for the intrauterine growth of twins still relies on the growth standards of singletons. We attempted to establish a set of fetal biometric references for Chinese twin pregnancies, stratified by chorionicity and conception mode as spontaneously conceived monochorionic diamniotic (SC-MCDA), spontaneously conceived dichorionic diamniotic (SC-DCDA), and assisted reproductive technology dichorionic diamniotic (ART-DCDA) twins. Methods:. From 2016 to 2019, the ultrasonographic fetal biometric measurements were longitudinally collected in pregnant women, including fetal weight, biparietal diameter, head circumference, abdominal circumference, femur length, and humerus length. The linear mixed models were used to test the difference of growth patterns between groups, and the growth curve of each biometric parameter was modeled by a generalized additive model for location scale and shape. Results:. A total of 929 twin pregnant women and 2019 singleton pregnant women, met the inclusion criteria. Among twin pregnancies, 148 were SC-MCDA, 215 were SC-DCDA, and 566 were ART-DCDA twins. Overall, SC-DCDA twins grew faster than SC-MCDA twins, while slower than ART-DCDA twins (all P

Abstract Background The fabella is a sesamoid bone in the posterolateral capsule of the human knee joint. In quadrupedal mammals, the fabella is believed to have a role similar to the patella in redirecting extension forces of the knee joint from one point to another. In bipeds, the fabella is not touching the back of the bent knee, and therefore the role in redirecting forces declines. Posterolateral knee pain can be associated with the irritation between the fabella and lateral femoral condyle, a phenomenon also known as fabella syndrome. In cases that are unresponsive to conservative management, surgical fabellectomy can be a successful treatment option. Among the surgical approaches, open resection is most commonly seen. There are also literature reporting arthroscopic-assisted open resection, but seldom mentioned the all-arthroscopic fabellectomy. Case presentation We present 3 patients with a long history (> 12 month) of posterolateral knee pain under suspicion of different pain origins. The diagnosis of fabella impingement was eventually made by ruling out of other causes. All the patients underwent all-arthroscopic fabellectomy for diagnosis and treatment. Investigations of the resected fabella suggested chronic impingement with apparent osteophyte formation and cartilage wearing of the articular side. All patients have been continually followed up at our outpatient department and reported to be pain free after the procedure. Conclusions In the patients presenting posterolateral pain, fabella syndrome cannot be ignored due to its relative higher presence in Asian population. In our experience, the all-arthroscopic fabellectomy offers a smaller wound size, less post-operative pain, fewer days of hospitalization and quicker time to rehabilitation for the patients with chronic posterolateral knee pain caused by fabella syndrome.

Background Facet tropism is defined as the asymmetry between the left and right facet joints relative to the sagittal plane. Published clinical studies have found that facet tropism is associated with cervical disc herniation. However, the relationship between the facet orientation and the side of cervical disc herniation remains controversial. Therefore, this study used the finite-element technique to investigate the biomechanical effects of the sagittal angle of the cervical facet joints on the cervical intervertebral disc. Objective The biomechanical effects of the sagittal angle of the cervical facet joint on the cervical disc and facet joint were investigated using the finite-element technique. Methods The finite-element model was constructed using computed tomography scans of a 26-year-old female volunteer. First, a cervical model was constructed from C3 to C7. The model was verified using data from previously published studies. Second, the facet orientation at the C5–C6 level was altered to simulate different sagittal angles of cervical facet joints. Five models, F70, F80, F90, F100, and F110, were simulated with different facet joint orientations (70°, 80°, 90°, 100°, and 110° facet joint angles at the left side, respectively, and 90° facet joint angles at the right side) at the C5–C6 facet joints. In each model, annular fibres stress and facet cartilage pressure were studied under six pure moments and two combined moments. Results Comparing the stress of the annulus fibres in flexion combined with right axial rotation and in flexion combined with left axial rotation in the same model, no difference in the maximum stress of the annulus fibres was noted between these two different moments in the F90 model, whereas differences of 12.80%, 8.84%, 14.95% and 33.32% were noted in the F70, F80, F100 and F110 models, respectively. The same trend was observed when comparing the maximum stress of the annulus fibres in each model during left and right axial rotation. No differences in annular fibres stress and facet cartilage pressure were noted among the five models in flexion, extension, lateral bending, left axial rotation, and flexion combined with left axial rotation in this study. However, compared with the F70 model in flexion combined with right axial rotation, the annulus fibres stress of the F80, F90, F100, and F110 models increased by 5.53%, 13.03%, 35.04%, and 72.94%, respectively, and the pressure of the left facet joint of these models decreased by 5.65%, 12.10%, 18.41%, and 25.74%, respectively. The same trend was observed in the right axial moment. Conclusion Facet tropism leads to unbalanced stress distribution on the annulus fibres at the cervical intervertebral disc. The greater the sagittal angle of the facet joint, the greater the annular fibres stress on this side. We hypothesised that the side with the larger sagittal angle of the facet joint exhibits a greater risk of disc herniation.

Existing marker-based methods of minimal residual disease (MRD) determination in neuroblastoma do not effectively enrich for the circulating disease cell population. Given the relative size differential of neuroblastoma tumor cells over normal hematogenous cells, we hypothesized that cell size-based separation could enrich circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples and disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) from bone marrow aspirates (BMA) of neuroblastoma patients, and that their gene expression profiles could vary dynamically with various disease states over the course of treatment. Using a spiral microfluidic chip, peripheral blood of 17 neuroblastoma patients at 3 serial treatment timepoints (diagnosis, n=17; post-chemotherapy, n=11; and relapse, n=3), and bone marrow samples at diagnosis were enriched for large intact circulating cells. Profiling the resulting enriched samples with immunohistochemistry and mRNA expression of 1490 cancer-related genes via NanoString, 13 of 17 samples contained CTCs displaying cytologic atypia, TH and PHOX2B expression and/or upregulation of cancer-associated genes. Gene signatures reflecting pro-metastatic processes and the neuroblastoma mesenchymal super-enhancer state were consistently upregulated in 7 of 13 samples, 6 of which also had metastatic high-risk disease. Expression of 8 genes associated with PI3K and GCPR signaling were significantly upregulated in CTCs of patients with bone marrow metastases versus patients without. Correspondingly, in patients with marrow metastases, differentially-expressed gene signatures reflected upregulation of immune regulation in bone marrow DTCs versus paired CTCs samples. In patients who later developed disease relapse, 5 genes involved in immune cell regulation, JAK/STAT signaling and the neuroblastoma mesenchymal super-enhancer state (OLFML2B, STAT1, ARHGDIB, STAB1, TLR2) were upregulated in serial CTC samples over their disease course, despite urinary catecholamines and bone marrow aspirates not indicating the disease recurrences. In summary, using a label-free cell size-based separation method, we enriched and characterized intact circulating cells in peripheral blood indicative of neuroblastoma CTCs, as well as their DTC counterparts in the bone marrow. Expression profiles of pro-metastatic genes in CTCs correlated with the presence of bone marrow metastases at diagnosis, while longitudinal profiling identified persistently elevated expression of genes in CTCs that may serve as novel predictive markers of hematogenous MRD in neuroblastoma patients that subsequently relapse.

Preeclampsia (PE) is a pregnancy complication characterized by severe hypertension and multiple organ damage. Gut microbiota has been linked to PE by previous amplicon sequencing studies. To resolve the PE gut microbiota in a higher taxonomy resolution, we performed shotgun metagenomic sequencing on the fecal samples from 40 early-onset PE and 37 healthy pregnant women. We recovered 1,750 metagenome-assembled genomes (representing 406 species) from the metagenomic dataset and profiled their abundances. We found that PE gut microbiota had enriched in some species belonging to Blautia, Pauljensenia, Ruminococcus, and Collinsella and microbial functions such as the bacitracin/lantibiotics transport system, maltooligosaccharide transport system, multidrug efflux pump, and rhamnose transport system. Conversely, the gut microbiome of healthy pregnant women was enriched in species of Bacteroides and Phocaeicola and microbial functions including the porphyrin and chlorophyll metabolism, pyridoxal-P biosynthesis, riboflavin metabolism, and folate biosynthesis pathway. PE diagnostic potential of gut microbial biomarkers was developed using both species and function profile data. These results will help to explore the relationships between gut bacteria and PE and provide new insights into PE early warning.