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Purpose The calculation of the intraperitoneal organ surface area is important for understanding their anatomical structure and for conducting basic and clinical studies on diseases related to the peritoneum. To measure the intraperitoneal surface area in a living body by applying artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to the abdominal cavity using computed tomography and to prepare clinical indicators for application to the abdominal cavity. Methods Computed tomography images of ten adult males and females with a healthy body mass index and ten adults diagnosed with colon cancer were analyzed to determine the peritoneal and intraperitoneal surface areas of the organs. The peritoneal surface was segmented and three-dimensionally modeled using AI medical imaging software. In addition to manual work, three-dimensional editing, filtering, and connectivity checks were performed to improve work efficiency and accuracy. The colon and small intestine surface areas were calculated using the mean length and diameter. The abdominal cavity surface area was defined as the sum of the intraperitoneal area and the surface areas of each organ. Results The mean peritoneal surface area of all participants was measured as 10,039±241 cm2 (males 10,224±171 cm2 and females 9,854±134 cm2). Males had a 3.7% larger peritoneal surface area than females, with a statistically significant difference (P

Purpose Studies on the appropriate amount of anti-adhesive agents for preventing postoperative adhesion are lacking. This animal study aimed to investigate the distribution of an anti-adhesive agent in the abdominal cavity and estimate the necessary amount to cover the entire cavity. Methods Fluorescent dye Flamma-552 was conjugated to Guardix-sol to create Guardix-Flamma, which was laparoscopically applied to the abdominal cavity of two 10-kg pigs in different amounts: 15 mL for G1 and 35 mL for G2. After 24 hours, the distribution of Guardix-Flamma was examined under the near-infrared mode of the laparoscope, and the thickness was measured in tissues from the omentum, small, and large intestine by immunohistochemistry. Results The average area of the abdominal cavity in 10 kg pigs was 2,755 cm2. Guardix-Flamma fluorescence was detected in the greater omentum, ascites in the pelvis, and right quadrant area in G1, whereas in G2, it was detected everywhere. On average, the total thickness of G1 and G2 were 12.68±9.80 μm and 18.16±15.57 μm, respectively. Guardix-Flamma thickness applied to the omentum, small, and large intestines of G2 were 1.31-, 1.45-, and 1.49-times thicker than those of G1, respectively, and were all statistically significant (P

Abstract Cell death pathways play critical roles in organism development and homeostasis as well as in the pathogenesis of various diseases. While studies over the last decade have elucidated numerous different forms of cell death that can eliminate cells in various contexts, how certain mechanisms impact physiology is still not well understood. Moreover, recent studies have shown that multiple forms cell death can occur in a cell population, with different forms of death eliminating individual cells. Here, we aim to describe the known molecular mechanisms of entosis, a non-apoptotic cell engulfment process, and discuss signaling mechanisms that control its induction as well as its possible crosstalk with other cell death mechanisms.

During plant innate immunity ROS is produced via the NADPH oxidase RBOHD. Here, Lee et al. show that RBOHD protein abundance is regulated through phosphorylation by the PBL13 receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase and via ubiquitination by PIRE, a newly identified E3 ubiquitin ligase.

For de novo mutational signature analysis, the critical first step is to decide how many signatures should be expected in a cancer genomics study. An incorrect number could mislead downstream analyses. Here we present SUITOR (Selecting the nUmber of mutatIonal signaTures thrOugh cRoss-validation), an unsupervised cross-validation method that requires little assumptions and no numerical approximations to select the optimal number of signatures without overfitting the data. In vitro studies and in silico simulations demonstrated that SUITOR can correctly identify signatures, some of which were missed by other widely used methods. Applied to 2,540 whole-genome sequenced tumors across 22 cancer types, SUITOR selected signatures with the smallest prediction errors and almost all signatures of breast cancer selected by SUITOR were validated in an independent breast cancer study. SUITOR is a powerful tool to select the optimal number of mutational signatures, facilitating downstream analyses with etiological or therapeutic importance.

Summary: Recent genomic studies suggest that Asian breast cancer (BC) may have distinct somatic features; however, most comparisons of BC genomic features across populations did not account for differences in age, subtype, and sequencing methods. In this study, we analyzed whole-exome sequencing (WES) data to characterize somatic copy number alterations (SCNAs) and mutation profiles in 98 Hong Kong BC (HKBC) patients and compared with those from The Cancer Genome Atlas of European ancestry (TCGA-EA, N = 686), which had similar distributions of age at diagnosis and PAM50 subtypes as in HKBC. We developed a two-sample Poisson model to compare driver gene selection pressure, which reflects the effect sizes of cancer driver genes, while accounting for differences in sample size, sequencing platforms, depths, and mutation calling methods. We found that somatic mutation and SCNA profiles were overall very similar between HKBC and TCGA-EA. The selection pressure for small insertions and deletions (indels) in GATA3 (false discovery rate (FDR) corrected p < 0.01) and single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) in TP53 (nominal p = 0.02, FDR corrected p = 0.28) was lower in HKBC than in TCGA-EA. Among the 13 signatures of single-base substitutions (SBS) that are common in BC, we found a suggestively higher contribution of SBS18 and a lower contribution of SBS1 in HKBC than in TCGA-EA, while the two APOBEC-induced signatures showed similar prevalence. Our results suggest that the genomic landscape of BC was largely very similar between HKBC and TCGA-EA, despite suggestive differences in some driver genes and mutational signatures that warrant future investigations in large and diverse Asian populations.

The APOBEC mutational signature is prevalent in different tumour types. Here, using HPV16- positive cervical samples, the authors show that the signature is more prevalent in the viral genome of benign or clearing HPV16 infections compared to the viral genomes of the more advanced precancerous lesions or cervical cancer.

Abstract Background Seed location filtering is critical in DNA read mapping, a process where billions of DNA fragments (reads) sampled from a donor are mapped onto a reference genome to identify genomic variants of the donor. State-of-the-art read mappers 1) quickly generate possible mapping locations for seeds (i.e., smaller segments) within each read, 2) extract reference sequences at each of the mapping locations, and 3) check similarity between each read and its associated reference sequences with a computationally-expensive algorithm (i.e., sequence alignment) to determine the origin of the read. A seed location filter comes into play before alignment, discarding seed locations that alignment would deem a poor match. The ideal seed location filter would discard all poor match locations prior to alignment such that there is no wasted computation on unnecessary alignments. Results We propose a novel seed location filtering algorithm, GRIM-Filter, optimized to exploit 3D-stacked memory systems that integrate computation within a logic layer stacked under memory layers, to perform processing-in-memory (PIM). GRIM-Filter quickly filters seed locations by 1) introducing a new representation of coarse-grained segments of the reference genome, and 2) using massively-parallel in-memory operations to identify read presence within each coarse-grained segment. Our evaluations show that for a sequence alignment error tolerance of 0.05, GRIM-Filter 1) reduces the false negative rate of filtering by 5.59x–6.41x, and 2) provides an end-to-end read mapper speedup of 1.81x–3.65x, compared to a state-of-the-art read mapper employing the best previous seed location filtering algorithm. Conclusion GRIM-Filter exploits 3D-stacked memory, which enables the efficient use of processing-in-memory, to overcome the memory bandwidth bottleneck in seed location filtering. We show that GRIM-Filter significantly improves the performance of a state-of-the-art read mapper. GRIM-Filter is a universal seed location filter that can be applied to any read mapper. We hope that our results provide inspiration for new works to design other bioinformatics algorithms that take advantage of emerging technologies and new processing paradigms, such as processing-in-memory using 3D-stacked memory devices.

This paper proposes a dual lifting and its cooperative control system with two different kinds of floating cranes. The Mega-erection and Giga-erection in the ship building are used to handle heavier and wider blocks and modules as ships and off-shore platforms are enlarged. However, there is no equipment to handle such Tera-blocks. In order to overcome the limit on performance of existing floating cranes, the dual lifting is proposed in this research. In the dual lifting, two floating cranes are well-coordinated to add up the lift capabilities of both cranes without any loss such that virtually a single crane is lifting, maneuvering and unloading. Two main constraints for the dual lifting are as follows: First, two barges of floating cranes should be constrained as a rigid body not to cause a relative motion between two barges and main hooks of the two cranes should be controlled as main hooks of a single crane. In order words, it is necessary to develop the cooperative control of two floating cranes in order to sustain a center of gravity of the module and minimize the tilting angle during the lifting and unloading by the two floating cranes. Two floating cranes are handled as a master-slave system. The master crane is able to gather information about all working conditions and make a decision to control the individual hook speed, which communicates the slave crane by TCP/IP. The developed control system has been embedded in the real floating crane systems and the dual lifting has been demonstrated five times at SHI shipyard in 2015. The moving angles of the lifting module are analyzed and verified to be suitable for hoisting control. It is verified that the dual lifting can be applied for many heavier and wider blocks and modules to shorten the construction time of ships and off-shore platforms.

Pseudomonas syringae subverts plant immune signalling through injection of type III secreted effectors (T3SE) into host cells. The T3SE HopF2 can disable Arabidopsis immunity through Its ADP-ribosyltransferase activity. Proteomic analysis of HopF2 interacting proteins identified a protein complex containing ATPases required for regulating stomatal aperture, suggesting HopF2 may manipulate stomatal immunity. Here we report HopF2 can inhibit stomatal immunity independent of its ADP-ribosyltransferase activity. Transgenic expression of HopF2 in Arabidopsis inhibits stomatal closing in response to P. syringae and increases the virulence of surface inoculated P. syringae. Further, transgenic expression of HopF2 inhibits flg22 induced reactive oxygen species production. Intriguingly, ADP-ribosyltransferase activity is dispensable for inhibiting stomatal immunity and flg22 induced reactive oxygen species. Together, this implies HopF2 may be a bifunctional T3SE with ADP-ribosyltransferase activity required for inhibiting apoplastic immunity and an independent function required to inhibit stomatal immunity.

Background: Diesel exhaust is a complex mixture, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and nitrated PAHs (nitro-PAH), many of which are potent mutagens and possible bladder carcinogens. To explore the association between diesel exposure and bladder carcinogenesis, we examined the relationship between exposure and somatic mutations and mutational signatures in bladder tumors. Methods: Targeted sequencing was conducted in bladder tumors from the New England Bladder Cancer Study. Using data on 797 cases and 1,418 controls, two-stage polytomous logistic regression was used to evaluate etiologic heterogeneity between bladder cancer subtypes and quantitative, lifetime estimates of respirable elemental carbon (REC), a surrogate for diesel exposure. Poisson regression was used to evaluate associations between REC and mutational signatures. Results: We observed significant heterogeneity in the diesel-bladder cancer risk relationship, with a strong positive association among cases with high-grade, nonmuscle invasive TP53-mutated tumors compared with controls [ORTop Tertile vs. Unexposed, 4.8; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.2-10.5; Ptrend < 0.001; Pheterogeneity = 0.002]. In muscle-invasive tumors, we observed a positive association between diesel exposure and the nitro-PAH signatures of 1,6-dintropyrene (RR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.28-2.92) and 3-nitrobenzoic acid (RR, 1.97; 95% CI, 1.33-2.92). Conclusions: The relationship between diesel exhaust and bladder cancer was heterogeneous based on the presence of TP53 mutations in tumors, further supporting the link between PAH exposure and TP53 mutations in carcinogenesis. Future studies that can identify nitro-PAH signatures in exposed tumors are warranted to add human data supporting the link between diesel and bladder cancer. Impact: This study provides additional insight into the etiology and possible mechanisms related to diesel exhaust-induced bladder cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precise control of crack propagation at bonded interfaces is crucial for smart adhesives with advanced performance. However, previous studies have primarily concentrated on either microscale or macroscale crack propagation. Here, we present a hybrid adhesive that integrates microarchitectures and macroscopic nonlinear cut architectures for unparalleled adhesion control. The integration of these architectural elements enables conformal attachment and simultaneous crack trapping across multiple scales for high capacity, enhancing adhesion by more than 70×, while facilitating crack propagation at the macroscale in specific directions for programmable release and reusability. As adhesion strength and directionality can be independently controlled at any location, skin adhesive patches are created that are breathable, nondamaging, and exceptionally strong and secure yet remove easily. These capabilities are demonstrated with a skin-mounted adhesive patch with integrated electronics that accurately detects human motion and wirelessly transmits signals, enabling real-time control of avatars in virtual reality applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Seed location filtering is critical in DNA read mapping, a process where billions of DNA fragments (reads) sampled from a donor are mapped onto a reference genome to identify genomic variants of the donor. State-of-the-art read mappers 1) quickly generate possible mapping locations for seeds (i.e., smaller segments) within each read, 2) extract reference sequences at each of the mapping locations, and 3) check similarity between each read and its associated reference sequences with a computationally-expensive algorithm (i.e., sequence alignment) to determine the origin of the read. A seed location filter comes into play before alignment, discarding seed locations that alignment would deem a poor match. The ideal seed location filter would discard all poor match locations prior to alignment such that there is no wasted computation on unnecessary alignments. Results: We propose a novel seed location filtering algorithm, GRIM-Filter, optimized to exploit 3D-stacked memory systems that integrate computation within a logic layer stacked under memory layers, to perform processing-in-memory (PIM). GRIM-Filter quickly filters seed locations by 1) introducing a new representation of coarse-grained segments of the reference genome, and 2) using massively-parallel in-memory operations to identify read presence within each coarse-grained segment. Our evaluations show that for a sequence alignment error tolerance of 0.05, GRIM-Filter 1) reduces the false negative rate of filtering by 5.59x-6.41x, and 2) provides an end-to-end read mapper speedup of 1.81x-3.65x, compared to a state-of-the-art read mapper employing the best previous seed location filtering algorithm. Conclusion: GRIM-Filter exploits 3D-stacked memory, which enables the efficient use of processing-in-memory, to overcome the memory bandwidth bottleneck in seed location filtering. We show that GRIM-Filter significantly improves the performance of a state-of-the-art read mapper. GRIM-Filter is a universal seed location filter that can be applied to any read mapper. We hope that our results provide inspiration for new works to design other bioinformatics algorithms that take advantage of emerging technologies and new processing paradigms, such as processing-in-memory using 3D-stacked memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 512 Mb two-channel mobile DRAM (OneDRAM) is developed with 90 nm technology. It can operate on a 1.8 V power supply as two separate mobile DDR or SDR DRAMs through each channel with maximum data rate of 333 Mbps/pin because of its exclusive accessibility from each channel to memory arrays. Data exchange between two channels is also possible by sharing one common memory array, and a new control scheme of DRAM for this sharing is proposed. The new control scheme is based on direct addressing mode to achieve compatibility with normal DRAM interface together with fast data transfer speed between two channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]