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Background: The scapula is a small irregular-shaped flat bone, which may suffer from a variety of tumors or tumor-like lesions. As the imaging manifestations are complex and changeable, correct imaging diagnosis is difficult. Introduction: At present, there are few related radiology literatures, and it is necessary to fully analyze the imaging signs of different types of benign and malignant tumors in scapula to guide clinical treatment. This study was to investigate clinical and imaging presentations of tumors and tumor- like lesions in the scapula so as to increase the diagnostic accuracy of diseases in the scapula. Methods: Patients with scapular tumors confirmed by pathology were enrolled. The imaging and clinical data were analyzed. Result: Among 108 patients, benign tumors were in 53 (49.1%) cases, intermediate in seven (6.5%), and malignant in 48 (44.4%) involving 16 diseases. Osteochondroma was the first benign tumors in 45 cases accounting for 84.9% of all benign scapular tumors, followed by chondroma in four cases (7.5%). The intermediate tumors were mainly eosinophilic granuloma in four cases. Metastatic tumors were the commonest malignant tumor (27 cases or 56.2% of all malignant tumors), followed by chondrosarcoma (in 13 cases). Except for the one case of chondroblastoma in which the lesion involved the glenoid cavity, all the other cartilaginous tumors were located in the scapular body and processes. The type of lesions in the bony processes is the same as in the scapular body, the common lesions in the central area of the body were malignant tumors, and the commonest lesions in the glenoid area were metastasis. Common imaging features of malignant scapular tumors were ill-defined margins, cortical destruction and soft tissue involvement. The imaging features of chondrosarcoma lack specificity except for calcification. Benign lesions usually had a clear boundary and marginal sclerosis. Conclusion: A wide variety of benign and malignant tumors may occur in the scapula with mostly cartilaginous and metastatic tumors, and the location and distribution of lesions are similar in the scapula to those in the long bones.

Flash memory has been developed with bit density improvement, technology scaling, and 3D stacking. With this trend, its reliability has been significantly degraded. Error correction code (ECC), such as low-density parity-code (LDPC), which has strong error correction capability, has been deployed to solve this problem. However, one of the critical issues of LDPC is that it would introduce a long decoding latency on devices with low reliability. In this case, tail latency would happen, which will significantly impact the quality of service (QoS). In this work, a set of smart refresh schemes is proposed to optimize the tail latency. The basic idea of the work is to refresh data when the accessed data has a long decoding latency. Two smart refresh schemes are proposed for this work: The first refresh scheme is designed to refresh data with a long access latency when they are accessed several times; The second refresh scheme is designed to periodically check data with an extremely long access latency and refresh them. To further optimize the refresh overhead caused by the above refresh schemes, a dual-ECC based refresh scheme is proposed. Besides, a mathematical model for all proposed schemes is constructed to clarify the benefit of each scheme. Experimental results show that the proposed schemes can significantly improve the tail latency with acceptable overhead. What’s more, the access performance is well maintained compared with the state-of-the-art work.

TRIM is a recommended command to deliver data invalidation information of the file system to flash storage. It is issued on both system level and device level. Since it can reduce the number of data copies during device-level garbage collection (DGC), TRIM has been widely used to improve the endurance and performance of mobile devices. Contrary to the common belief, this work identifies that the default TRIM scheme has both merit and drawback to the performance of mobile devices, especially in flash-friendly file system (F2FS), which is a commonly used file system in mobile devices. On one hand, TRIM can reduce garbage collection migration to prolong the flash lifetime as well as improving I/O throughput; On the other hand, TRIM may induce I/O contentions. This article proposes a new TRIM scheme, iTRIM, to distribute the timing overheads to system idle time. To further reduce I/O contention and improve I/O performance, the design of iTRIM considers the TRIM size, and the logical addresses’ pattern of victim invalidated data. Experimental results show that iTRIM can minimize I/O contentions while retaining the benefits of the default TRIM scheme for endurance and performance.

Objective To explore whether or not the changes in body surface resistance at yuan-source points of three yin meridians of foot can specifically responds the onset of primary dysmenorrhea (PD) in females of menstrual period and the before and after, so as to provide the evidence for acupoint selection in clinic. Methods A total of 90 cases of PD were recruited in a PD group and 90 healthy female undergraduates were recruited in a normal group. The yuan-source of points of three yin meridians of foot were selected, i.e. Taibai (太白SP3), Taichōng (太冲LR3) and Taixī (太溪KI3). The acupoints for control were Xuehai (血海SP10), the non-special acupoint, Xuanzhōng (悬钟GB39), the acupoint not on the relevant meridian, as well as a non-meridian point. Successively, before menstruation, on Day 1 during menstruation and on Day 3 after menstruation, the body surface resistance at the above-mentioned test sites was detected in the participants of two groups each day. The resistance imbalance degree (RID) of the bilateral acupoints was taken as the outcome indicator. The observation lasted one menstrual cycle. Results (1) Intra-group comparison: at LR3, the RID was lower on Day 1 during menstruation than that before menstruation significantly in the normal group (P ≤ 0.05). There was no significant change in RID at the same time points, but RID on Day 3 after menstruation was lower significantly than that before menstruation in the PD group (P ≤ 0.05). At SP3, KI3, SP10, GB39 and sham acupoint, there were no significant differences in RID among different time points within the same group (all P > 0.05). (2) Inter-group comparison: there were no significant differences in RID among different time points at the same point. (all P > 0.05). Conclusion RID at yuan-source points of three yin meridians of foot cannot specifically respond to PD. However, at LR3, before and after menstruation, RID changes are different between PD patients and healthy female undergraduates, which needs a further study in the future.

Objectives Achondroplasia and hypochondroplasia are the most common forms of disproportionate short stature, of which the vast majority of cases can be attributed to the hotspot missense mutations in the gene FGFR3. Here we presented cases with a novel cryptic splicing variant of FGFR3 gene and aimed to interrogate the variant pathogenicity. Case presentaiton In whole exome sequencing of two patients with hypochondroplasia-like features, a de novo intronic variant c.1075 + 95C>G was identified, predicted to alter mRNA splicing. Minigene assay showed that this intronic variant caused retention of a 90-nucleotide segment of intron 8 in mRNA, resulting in a 30-amino acid insertion at the extracellular domain of the protein. This is the first likely pathogenic splicing variant identified in the FGFR3 gene and was detected in one additional patient among 26 genetically unresolved patients. Conclustions Our results strongly suggest that c.1075 + 95C>G is a recurrent mutation and should be included in genetic testing of FGFR3 especially for those patients with equivocal clinical findings and no exonic mutations identified.

Background This study reports five cases of subpial lipomas via a new grouping method with respect to the cases’ distinctive magnetic resonance imaging characteristics to provide insight into the management of this entity. Method From January 2013 to December 2014, five cases of pathologically diagnosed subpial lipomas that received surgical treatment in our department were included. The clinical histories and medical records were carefully reviewed, and the radiological characteristics were periodically inspected after surgery. The preoperative radiology and symptoms were reviewed with regard to outcome. Results All five patients were confirmed as having lipomas based on their histological results. Total removal was achieved in one patient only, with partial removal in the other four patients. Neurological deterioration was observed in all patients immediately after surgery, with a typically lower McCormick score. Two of the patients returned to preoperative level one year later. Based on radiological traits, the lipomas could be divided into “simple” and “invasive.” The syrinx formation and neurological recovery were different between these two kinds of lipoma. Conclusion Surgery for subpial lipomas without dysraphisms is frequently accompanied by neurological deterioration, temporally or permanently. Thus, this new classification of subpial lipomas into “simple” and “invasive” based on radiological traits may be valuable for making better surgical decisions.

To review the systematic reviews of acupuncture for diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) and to provide evidence for clinical decisions. Published systematic reviews targeting acupuncture treatment of DPN were searched using computer through both Chinese and English databases till July 1, 2019. Two researchers screened the papers based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and conducted report quality evaluation, methodological quality assessment and evidence quality grading using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA), assessment of multiple systematic review 2 (AMSTAR 2) and grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation (GRADE). Ten systematic reviews were included, involving 11 outcome measures. According to PRISMA, 6 items were sufficiently reported while 1 item was not; AMSTAR 2 appraised that all the included systematic reviews were of low quality in the methodological evaluation; according to GRADE, of the 30 clinical evidences, only 5 were graded moderate while the remained were graded low or extremely low. Descriptive analysis showed that acupuncture can significantly improve DPN symptoms, accelerate the conduction velocities of sensory and motor nerves, and up-regulate the content of plasma nitric oxide (NO), while the adverse reaction rate was low. Acupuncture can produce satisfactory clinical efficacy in treating DPN, but the existing problems, such as low-quality evidence, unitary outcome measures, poor methodological quality of systematic reviews and nonstandard reporting, need to be treated cautiously; meanwhile, more high-quality clinical trials are required to elevate the level of evidence.

The ability to present three-dimensional (3D) scenes with continuous depth sensation has a profound impact on virtual and augmented reality, human–computer interaction, education and training. Computer-generated holography (CGH) enables high-spatio-angular-resolution 3D projection via numerical simulation of diffraction and interference1. Yet, existing physically based methods fail to produce holograms with both per-pixel focal control and accurate occlusion2,3. The computationally taxing Fresnel diffraction simulation further places an explicit trade-off between image quality and runtime, making dynamic holography impractical4. Here we demonstrate a deep-learning-based CGH pipeline capable of synthesizing a photorealistic colour 3D hologram from a single RGB-depth image in real time. Our convolutional neural network (CNN) is extremely memory efficient (below 620 kilobytes) and runs at 60 hertz for a resolution of 1,920 × 1,080 pixels on a single consumer-grade graphics processing unit. Leveraging low-power on-device artificial intelligence acceleration chips, our CNN also runs interactively on mobile (iPhone 11 Pro at 1.1 hertz) and edge (Google Edge TPU at 2.0 hertz) devices, promising real-time performance in future-generation virtual and augmented-reality mobile headsets. We enable this pipeline by introducing a large-scale CGH dataset (MIT-CGH-4K) with 4,000 pairs of RGB-depth images and corresponding 3D holograms. Our CNN is trained with differentiable wave-based loss functions5 and physically approximates Fresnel diffraction. With an anti-aliasing phase-only encoding method, we experimentally demonstrate speckle-free, natural-looking, high-resolution 3D holograms. Our learning-based approach and the Fresnel hologram dataset will help to unlock the full potential of holography and enable applications in metasurface design6,7, optical and acoustic tweezer-based microscopic manipulation8–10, holographic microscopy11 and single-exposure volumetric 3D printing12,13. A deep-learning-based approach using a convolutional neural network is used to synthesize photorealistic colour three-dimensional holograms from a single RGB-depth image in real time, and termed tensor holography.

Background ALK rearrangement is a very rare subset of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and one of the clinical features in patients is lack of data. Here, we report eight patients diagnosed with SCC of the lung harboring ALK rearrangement. Methods We collected primary NSCLC samples at the Beijing Chest Hospital between January 2012 and December 2018 for Ventana (D5F3) immunohistochemical detection. Among the 148 patients was diagnosed ALK‐rearranged non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), only eight cases was SCC. We collected patients information from electronic patent records (EPRs). Results The eight cases of SCC were diagnosed by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Two were given crizotinib as second‐line therapy. One patient had stable disease (SD) and progression‐free survival (PFS) of six months. The other patient had progressive disease (PD) but PFS was only one month. The side effects were tolerable. This report identified 31 cases of ALK rearrangement in SCC patients from a literature search (including the eight patients in this study). These fusion genes are often seen in a younger age group (mean age: 55.6 years) and non‐smokers (18/31, 58.1%). A total of 20 cases received an ALK inhibitor as first‐ or second‐line treatment which included 11 with a partial response (PR), four with SD, and five with PD. The DCR and ORR was 75.0% (15/20) and 55.0% (11/20), respectively. The median duration time of therapy was 6.4 ± 4.4 months. Conclusions Patients with ALK‐rearranged SCC obtained clinical benefit from ALK‐inhibitor therapy, especially those who were non‐smokers and whose tumors had been identified by IHC+/FISH+., Clinical benefit was obtained from ALK‐inhibitor treatment in ALK‐rearranged SCC especially in non‐smokers and patients whose tumors had been identified by IHC+/FISH+.

Objective: The study used the optimized nuclear regression reconstruction algorithm to explore the value of three-dimensional perineal ultrasound evaluation of the effect of caesarean delivery and caesarean section on the anal sphincter complex of primipara. Methods: This study performed three-dimensional perineal ultrasound scanning of the anal sphincter complex of 157 primiparas 42 days after delivery. Among them, 77 were in caesarean delivery (spontaneous delivery group) and 80 were in caesarean section (caesarean delivery group) from September 2018 to December 2020 in our hospital. The thickness of the end plane, the middle plane, the distal plane and the distal plane of the external anal sphincter at 3, 6, 9, 12 o’clock direction, and measure the thickness of the central plane of the pubic rectum muscle at 4, 8 o’clock direction. At the same time, the study used tomography and volume contrast imaging to observe the morphology and integrity of the anal sphincter complex. Results: The thickness of the distal anal sphincter at the 12 o’clock direction, the proximal anal sphincter at 6, 12 o’clock, and the central plane at 9 and 12 o’clock in the obstetric group were smaller than those in the caesarean section group (all P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in the thickness of the remaining anal internal and external anal sphincter and puborectalis muscles between the two groups in different directions (all P>0.05). In the obstetric group, a perineal sphincter defect was found via three-dimensional perineal ultrasound. Conclusion: The delivery method has a certain influence on the shape of the anal sphincter complex. The thickness of the internal and external anal sphincter of the primiparous women in a certain direction is significantly smaller than that of caesarean section. Transperineally three-dimensional ultrasound can clearly show the morphological characteristics and integrity of the anal sphincter complex, and diagnose the defect of the anal sphincter complex. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.6-WIT.4859 How to cite this:He N, Shi L. The effect of vaginal delivery and Caesarean section on the anal Sphincter complex of Primipara based on optimized three-dimensional ultrasound image and nuclear regression Reconstruction Algorithm. Pak J Med Sci. 2021;37(6):1641-1646. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.6-WIT.4859 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Read-ahead schemes have been widely used in page cache to improve read performance of Linux systems. As the Android system inherits the Linux kernel, the traditional read-ahead scheme is directly transplanted to mobile devices. However, request sizes and page cache sizes on mobile devices are much smaller, which may degrade read-ahead efficiency and therefore hurt user experience. This article first observes that many pages pre-fetched by read-ahead are unused, which causes frequent page cache eviction. And these evict operations could induce extra access latency, especially when write-back is conducting. Then, this article proposes a new analysis model to characterize the factors that closely relate to the access latency. It is found that there exists a trade-off between read-ahead size and access latency. Finally, this article proposes two optimized read-ahead schemes to exploit this trade-off under different situations. Size-tuning scheme aims to find the proper maximum size of read-ahead according to the characteristics of mobile devices. While MobiRA scheme improves the read-ahead efficiency by dynamically tuning read-ahead size and stop-settings. Experimental results on real mobile devices show that the proposed schemes can increase the efficiency of read-ahead scheme and improve the overall performance of mobile devices.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common male reproductive tract malignant tumor, accurate evaluation of PCa characterization and prognostic prediction at diagnosis are vital for the effective administration of the disease, especially at the molecular level. In this study, 48 CpG sites with differential methylation associated with overall survival (OS) were screened out between PCa and normal adjacent tissues. 16 CpG sites were selected by the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and the risk score formula for methylated-based classifier was established. For 16-lncRNAs-CpG-classifier, the area under the curve (AUC) were 0.890, 0.917, and 0.932 at 3 years, 5 years and 7 years, respectively. Kaplan–Meier curves indicated that patients with high-risk scores had worse OS than those with low-risk scores. Prognostic methylation model of lncRNAs was identified from the whole genome in patients with PCa. This novel finding provides a novel insight for screening biomarkers of a prognosis for PCa., Graphical abstract

To observe the blood perfusion volume variation pattern in the body surface microcirculation at the Yuan-Primary and the Xi-Cleft points during the menstrual cycle in female college students with moderate constitution under normal physiological state of the uterus; to explore the specific laws of the body surface microcirculation at the Yuan-Primary and Xi-Cleft points in response to the uterine qi and blood changes under normal physiological conditions, and to provide the experimental basis for the specificity of acupoints reflecting the uterine function. Forty-three healthy and moderate constitution female college students with regular menstrual cycles, without dysmenorrhea and not yet giving birth were recruited. Bilateral Yuan-Primary points [Taichong (LR 3), Taibai (SP 3) and Taixi (KI 3)] and Xi-Cleft points [Zhongdu (LR 6), Diji (SP 8) and Shuiquan (KI 5)], belonging to the three yin meridians of foot and adjacent to the spinal cord segment of the uterus, were selected as the detection acupoints; the crossing point of the three yin meridians of foot [Sanyinjiao (SP 6)], the uterus-related meridian acupoint [Xuehai (SP 10)], the uterus-non-related meridian acupoint [Xuanzhong (GB 39)], and the non-meridian non-acupoint point were selected as the control points. The laser speckle blood flow imaging technique was used to monitor the blood perfusion volume in skin microcirculation at the above points at the menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, and luteal phases of the subjects. The blood perfusion volume in the body surface microcirculation at the right Zhongdu (LR 6) at the ovulatory phase was higher than that at the menstrual, follicular and luteal phases (all P

App caching is important for mobile devices, which enables fast switching and state restoration of apps by caching all the pages in memory. Memory swapping can improve app caching capability by evicting pages to the secondary storage. However, enabling memory swapping could induce jitters in interactions, which significantly degrades the user experience. As a result, storage-based swapping is disabled by default in most mobile devices. This article proposes a novel swap framework, SEAL, a user experience-aware two-level swapping, which maximizes the benefits of memory swapping and minimizes the negative impact on user experience in interactions. Inspired by a study on the access characteristics of a set of popular apps on mobile devices, the framework adopts compressed memory as the first swap level (SL1) and secondary storage as the second swap level (SL2). To optimize user experience comprehensively, three schemes are proposed. First, a novel page identification scheme is proposed to guide the page placement between these two levels. Second, a hidden page loading (HPL) scheme is proposed to load pages from SL2 to SL1 for optimized user experience during app execution. Finally, an app-granularity swapping scheme is proposed to swap data in the unit of apps. Experiments on real devices show that app caching capability is improved by $2.43\times $ on average when enabling SEAL while minimizing the negative impact on user experience.

Objectives The molecular profiles and prognosis of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) fusion and resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remain unclear. This study aimed to explore the distribution of ALK fusion variants and prognostic factors in patients with surgically resected NSCLC. Material and methods Among the 93 ALK positive surgical patients screened by immunohistochemistry (IHC) or real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), 63 patients were confirmed as ALK rearrangement by next-generation sequencing (NGS), including 55 cases of stage I-III and 8 cases of stage IV. Medical records were retrospectively reviewed, the distribution of ALK fusion variants and prognostic factors were analyzed. Results All of the 55 early stage patients were histological adenocarcinoma. No other fusion types were found except for echinoderm microtubule-associated protein-like 4- anaplastic lymphoma kinase (EML4-ALK). EML4-ALK variant 1 (E13:A20; 25/55, 45.5 %) was the predominant variant type, followed by EML4-ALK variant 3 (E6:A20; 19/55, 34.5 %) and variant 2 (E20:A20; 8/55, 14.5 %). Concomitant mutations occurred in 22 patients (22/55, 40.0 %), which involved in 32 co-mutations from 12 kinds of mutated genes. TP53 mutations were most common in coexisting mutations (13/32, 40.6 %). TP53 mutations were less frequently occurred in variant 1 group (3/25, 12.0 %) than in non-variant 1 group (10/30, 33.3 %, P = 0.064). The median disease-free survival (DFS) of the 55 patients was 22.1 months, and the median overall survival (OS) was not mature at the time of analysis. Multivariable analysis showed that stage T3 and EML4-ALK variant 3 were independent prognostic factors for shorter DFS. Neither TP53 mutations nor any coexisting mutations were related to prognosis. Conclusions This study illustrated the patterns of EML4-ALK fusion variants and gene profiles in patients with resected NSCLC. Advanced T stage and EML4-ALK variant 3 were associated with worse prognosis. The role of TP53 mutations in prognosis is worthy of further study.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have been widely adopted in embedded systems, data centers, and cloud storage due to its well-identified advantages. Inside SSD, random access memory (RAM) is adopted as the built-in cache for achieving better performance. However, due to the volatility characteristic of RAM, data loss may happen when sudden power interrupts. In order to solve this issue, a capacitor has been equipped inside emerging SSDs as an interim power supplier. But due to the capacitor aging issue, which will result in capacitance decreases over time, there still may exist data loss when power interruption occurs. Once the remaining capacitance drops to the threshold value where all dirty pages in the cache can not be written back to flash memory, data loss happens. To solve the above issue, an efficient cache management scheme for capacitor equipped SSDs is proposed in this article. The basic idea of this scheme is to bound the number of dirty pages in a cache within the capability of the equipped capacitor. The proposed scheme includes three steps: 1) a periodical dirty page budget detection (DPBD) scheme is proposed to acquire the maximal number of dirty pages that can be written back within current capability of equipped capacitor; 2) a smart dirty page synchronizing scheme is proposed during normal run time to bound the number of dirty pages in the cache; and 3) when power supply interrupts, an efficient writing back method is applied to further reduce the capacitance consumption of capacitor. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves encouraging improvement on lifetime and performance while power interruption induced data loss is avoided.

Background Epidemiological and experimental studies suggest that preeclampsia has a negative impact on maternity and offspring health. Previous studies report that dysregulation in utero-environment increases risk for elderly disease such as cardiovascular disease. However, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Specific microRNAs (miRNAs) are packaged in exosomes may regulate microvascular dysfunction in offspring of mothers with preeclampsia. The present study aimed to identify the differential expression profiles of microRNAs in the serum exosomes between patients with preeclampsia and normal pregnancies. Methods A comprehensive miRNA sequence-based approach was performed to compare exosomes carry miRNAs (Exo-miRNAs) expression levels in umbilical serum between normal and preeclampsia patients. Exosomes were isolated using the ExoQuick precipitation kit. Serum exosomes were then viewed under electron microscopy, and their characteristics determined by western blotting and nanoparticle-tracking analysis. Illumina platform was used to perform sequencing. Bioinformatics analysis was used to explore differentially expressed Exo-miRNAs in umbilical serum. Results Based on sequence similarity, 1733 known miRNAs were retrieved. Furthermore, 157 mature miRNAs in serum exosomes were significantly differential expressed between PE and those control groups (P2|FC| > 1). Out, of the 157 miRNAs, 96 were upregulated miRNAs whereas 61 miRNAs were downregulated. The 157 differentially expressed miRNAs targeted 51,424 differentially expressed genes. Functional analysis through KEGG pathway and Gene Ontology results uncovered that target genes of miRNAs with differential expression were significantly linked to several pathways and biological processes. Conclusion The findings of this study showed differential expression of umbilical serum Exo-miRNAs in normal compared with PE patients, implying that these Exo-miRNAs may associate with microvascular dysfunction in offspring of mothers with preeclampsia.

Introduction: COVID-19 has become a global health security issue, it has caused more than half a million deaths worldwide so far, the treatment strategies are the most concerned issues for clinicians. In this study, the treatments and outcomes in 40 pediatric patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and treated with different drugs were evaluated. Methodology: All cases were diagnosed with COVID-19 nucleic acid positive by using RT-PCR or clinical manifestations, imaging specific characteristics and epidemiological clinical diagnosis. The biological information and first symptom of all cases were collect. A variety of treatments were employed and the outcomes were evaluated by Cox regression analysis. Multivariable analysis was performed to evaluate cure rate at 14 days with different drug treatment. Results: The average length of hospital stay was 10.4 days. The cure rate was increased with the treatment time extended and 90% of pediatric patients were cured and discharged after 14 days’ treatment. And multivariable analysis results proved that none of the covariates were related to the cure rate at 14 days with different drug treatment since p values were over 0.05. Conclusions: Multivariable analysis suggested that the present drug treatments cannot significantly shorten the clinical cure time and improve the cure rate of children with COVID-19.

While the computing power of mobile devices has been quickly evolving in recent years, the growth of mobile storage capacity is, however, relatively slower. A common problem shared by budget-phone users is that they frequently run out of storage space. This article conducts a deep inspection of file usage of mobile applications and their potential implications on user experience. Our major findings are as follows: First, mobile applications could rapidly consume storage space by creating temporary cache files, but these cache files quickly become obsolete after being re-used for a short period of time. Second, file access patterns of large files, especially executable files, appear highly sparse and random, and therefore large portions of file space are never visited. Third, file prefetching brings an excessive amount of file data into page cache but only a few prefetched data are actually used. The unnecessary memory pressure causes premature memory reclamation and prolongs application launching time. Through the feasibility study of two preliminary optimizations, we demonstrated a high potential to eliminate unnecessary storage and memory space consumption with a minimal impact on user experience.

Objective. To investigate the effects of Apatinib on the “stemness” of lung cancer cells in vivo and to explore its related mechanisms. Methods. A xenograft model of lung cancer cells A549 was established in nude mice and randomized into a control group (n = 4) and an Apatinib group (n = 4). Tumor tissues were harvested after 2 weeks, and mRNA was extracted to detect changes in stemness-related genes (CD133, EPCAM, CD13, CD90, ALDH1, CD44, CD45, SOX2, NANOG, and OCT4) and Wnt/β-catenin, Hedgehog, and Hippo signal pathways. Results. Compared with the control group, the volume and weight of nude mice treated with Apatinib were different and had statistical significance. Apatinib inhibited the expressions of ABCG2, CD24, ICAM-1, OCT4, and SOX2 and upregulated the expressions of CD44, CD13, and FOXD3. Apatinib treatment also inhibited the Wnt/β-catenin, Hedgehog, and Hippo signaling pathways. Conclusion. Apatinib suppressed the growth of non-small-cell lung cancer cells by repressing the stemness of lung cancer through the inhibition of the Hedgehog, Hippo, and Wnt signaling pathways.

Pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) has become the cornerstone of atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation, but long-term success rates remains suboptimal, due in large part to late PV reconnection and insufficient ostial substrate modification. To evaluate whether ablation index (AI)–guided PVI with electrical isolation and quantified ostial substrate modification improves clinical outcomes when compared with contact force (CF)–guided ablation in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF). The PAF-AI trial (ChiCTR1900022041) is a prospective, multi-center, randomized controlled clinical trial enrolling patients with PAF with an indication for catheter ablation. Patients are randomized into a 2:1 fashion to two treatment arms: AI-guided PVI (n = 151) and CF-guided PVI (n = 75). In the AI-guided PVI group, real-time automated display of radiofrequency applications (Visitag™) is used with AI ≥ 500 recommended at the anterior/superior/inferior walls and 350–400 at the posterior wall. In CF-guided PVI group, the value and direction of CF are displayed, with the lesion dots manually annotated. The primary endpoint is the freedom from AF recurrence at 12 months following ablation, without antiarrhythmic drug. The primary pre-specified secondary endpoints include intraprocedural efficiency and peri-procedural complications. PAF-AI trial compares the effectiveness and safety of two different strategies of PVI in patients with PAF, AI-guided PVI versus more established CF-guided PVI. This prospective, multi-center, randomized controlled trial, with comparative data evaluating procedural and long-term follow-up results, aims to evaluate the impact of AI-guided strategy on AF ablation compared with the current standard of care RF ablation approach.

Objective: Investigating the application of CT images when diagnosing lung cancer based on finite mixture model is the objective. Method: 120 clean healthy rats were taken as the research objects to establish lung cancer rat model and carry out lung CT image examination. After the successful CT image data preprocessing, the image is segmented by different methods, which include lung nodule segmentation on the basis of Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization – Gaussian mixture model (APSO-GMM), lung nodule segmentation on the basis of Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization – gamma mixture model (APSO-GaMM), lung nodule segmentation based on statistical information and self-selected mixed distribution model, and lung nodule segmentation based on neighborhood information and self-selected mixed distribution model. The segmentation effect is evaluated. Results: Compared with the results of lung nodule segmentation based on statistical information and self-selected mixed distribution model, the Dice coefficient of lung nodule segmentation based on neighborhood information and self-selected mixed distribution model is higher, the relative final measurement accuracy is smaller, the segmentation is more accurate, but the running time is longer. Compared with APSO-GMM and APSO-GaMM, the dice value of self-selected mixed distribution model segmentation method is larger, and the final measurement accuracy is smaller. Conclusion: Among the five methods, the dice value of the self-selected mixed distribution model based on neighborhood information is the largest, and the relative accuracy of the final measurement is the smallest, indicating that the segmentation effect of the self-selected mixed distribution model based on neighborhood information is the best. Keywords: FMM, CT, Lung cancer, Segmentation of pulmonary nodules, Adaptive particle swarm optimization

With the rapid development of technology scaling and cell density improvement for capacity increase and cost reduction, nand flash memory is confronted with degraded reliability. On one hand, while low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have been deployed in today's nand flash memories to enhance reliability, flash read latency has still been a performance bottleneck with the increased raw bit error rates (RBER). On the other hand, significant process variations (PV) have been found on existing nand flash memories, which introduce great reliability variations among different flash blocks. Recent studies have proposed to exploit PV to improve endurance by better wear leveling or to improve write performance. These approaches are prone to allocate read data to blocks with low reliability, which further degrades read performance. This paper proposes to enhance read performance of LDPC-equipped nand flash memory by exploiting the reliability variations from PV. The paper consists of three parts. First, a block grouping approach is presented to categorize flash blocks according to their reliability. Second, according to the grouping scheme, a data placement scheme is proposed, which allocates read-hot data to flash blocks with high reliability. At the same time, the read-cold data is moved to blocks with low reliability. As a result, the read performance is enhanced. However, allocating high reliable blocks for read-hot data collides with previous PV-based wear leveling methods. To address the issue, the third part is a grouping partition scheme which limits the amount of high reliable blocks occupied by read-hot data. Therefore, read performance enhancement can be achieved and the wear leveling schemes will be impacted slightly. Experiment results present that, the proposed approach can provide significant read performance improvement on LDPC-equipped nand flash memory and is compatible with the previous PV-based wear leveling.

Given the importance of the communication energy consumption of multiple autonomous underwater vehicle cooperative systems in practical work, this work optimizes the network topology to reduce total energy consumption. In accordance with the characteristics of underwater communication, the energy consumption of communication links is obtained, thereby obtaining the total communication energy consumption of multiple autonomous underwater vehicle cooperative systems. Taking the all-terminal reliability of the communication network as a constraint and the total energy consumption of network communication as the optimization goal, this work puts forward an optimization model for the communication network topology of multiple autonomous underwater vehicle cooperative systems. Furthermore, this work creatively describes the network topology optimization problem as a special path optimization problem suitable for the ant colony optimization algorithm presented to solve the optimization problem and shown to be effective and efficiency on this problem.

PURPOSE: To prospectively investigate accelerated aging and its association with total mortality and breast-cancer specific mortality/recurrence among breast cancer survivors. METHODS: This study included 4,218 female breast cancer patients enrolled into a population-based cohort study approximately 6-months post-diagnosis. Information on aging related symptoms (i.e., self-rated overall health condition, energy level, depression, sleep difficulty and quality) was collected at 18- and 36-month post-diagnosis surveys. Information on overall health, daily function impairments, survival status and recurrence was collected at 10-year post-diagnosis survey. Record linkages with vital statistics were conducted to collect mortality information. Cox proportional hazards model was applied. RESULTS: Among 3,041 10-year survivors with a mean age of 63.7±9.7 years, respectively 52.3%, 19.0% and 27.6% reported poor health, limitation in daily activity and climbing floors. Age-specific prevalence revealed that breast cancer survivors reached similar prevalence of the functional limitations 5–10 years earlier than cancer-free women. At the 18-month post-diagnosis survey, respectively 47.0%, 72.5% and 25.1% of survivors reported unsatisfied overall health condition, reduced energy level and depression symptoms. After a median follow-up of 10.9 years, low self-rated overall health, low energy level and depression were significantly associated with increased total mortality, with hazard ratios (HRs; 95% confidence intervals [CI]) of 3.14 (2.43, 4.06), 1.49 (1.20, 1.84) and 1.59 (1.21, 2.09), respectively. Low self-rated health was associated with breast-cancer specific mortality/recurrence (HR=1.85, 95% CI: 1.30, 2.65). No significant association was found for sleep difficulty and quality. CONCLUSIONS: Aging related physical changes/symptoms are commonly presented at 18-months after breast cancer diagnosis and are associated with worse prognosis. IMPACT: Our findings highlight the concern of accelerated aging among breast cancer survivors.

Merging technique is widely adopted by I/O schedulers to maximize system I/O throughput. However, I/O merging could increase the latency of individual I/O, thus incurring prolonged I/O latencies and enlarged performance variations. Even with better system throughput, higher worst-case latency experienced by some requests could block the SSD storage system, which violates the QoS (Quality of Service) requirement. In order to improve QoS performance while providing higher I/O throughput, this paper proposes a reinforcement learning based I/O merging approach. Through learning the characteristic of various I/O patterns, the proposed approach makes merging decisions adaptively based on different I/O workloads. Evaluation results show that the proposed scheme is capable of reducing the standard deviation of I/O latency by 19.1 percent on average, worst-case latency by 7.3-60.9 percent at the 99.9th percentile compared with the latest I/O merging scheme, while maximizing system throughput.

Read-ahead schemes of page cache have been widely used to improve read performance of Linux systems. As Android system inherits the Linux kernel, traditional read-ahead schemes are directly applied in mobile devices. However, read request sizes and page cache sizes in mobile devices are much smaller than other platforms, which may decrease read-ahead efficiency and hurt user experience. The read-ahead efficiency is defined as hit pages / all pre-fetched pages in a sequential read. To study the efficiency of traditional read-ahead in mobile devices, this paper first observes that many pre-fetched pages are unused in page cache, which causes high page cache eviction ratio with high extra access latency. Then, this paper analyzes the factors that closely relate to the access latency. It is found that there exists a trade-off between read-ahead size and access latency. A size-tuning scheme is then proposed to explore this trade-off. Experimental results on real mobile devices have shown that the proposed scheme can reduce the number of pre-fetched pages and improve the efficiency of read-ahead without decreasing the page cache hit ratio.

Background: Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) rarely occur in the mediastinum and their etiology and pathogenesis are still unclear. Objectives: This study assessed inherited or de novo mutations in familial mediastinal NETs. Method: DNA samples from 4 patients were subjected to the whole-exome sequencing, and Sanger sequencing was used to identify Deleted in malignant brain tumor 1 (DMBT1) mutations in all 45 family members. Results: All patients showed a germline DMBT1 mutation at 4971C. Sanger sequencing data showed that 4 NETs and 2 carriers in the first patient’s family and 2 NETs and 4 carriers in the second patient’s family, respectively, had this DMBT1 mutation. The in vitro data showed that the ectopic expression of DMBT1 reduced tumor cell viability and migration by arresting the G1/S phase of the cell cycle. Conclusions: We identified a germline missense mutation in DMBT1D1657E as a susceptibility gene for familial mediastinal NETs.

This paper presents MobileSwap, a cross-device memory swapping scheme for mobile devices. It exploits the unbalanced utilization of memory resources across devices. MobileSwap achieves comparable-to-local swapping performance based on existing network infrastructure. This is realized by two novel approaches: resource dedicated swapping for fast swapping among devices and app aware swapping for network connectivity considerations. MobileSwap is implemented and deployed on real mobile devices. Experimental results show that MobileSwap can enhance app caching capability by 2x compared with no swapping, and improve performance by 2.3x compared with state-of-the-art remote swapping. More importantly, local swapping induced read-write conflicts are largely removed.

Background: Peripheral biomarkers may be affected by various factors, their reliability in reflecting local cardiac inflammatory status in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) needs further exploration. This prospective study was aimed to investigate the relationship between circulating biomarkers and local cardiac inflammation measured by epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) activity via18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) imaging in AF patients.Methods: From 2017 to 2018, 83 AF patients [43 persistent AF (PsAF) and 40 paroxysmal AF (PAF)] referred for radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) were recruited. Pre- and post-RFCA blood samples were collected to measure IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-18, TNF-α, Hsp27, Hsp60, Hsp70, PDGF-BB, MMP-2, MMP-9, MPO, TGF-β1, Gal-3, and sST2. Pre-RFCA FDG images were obtained to assess EAT activity. Sixty-seven patients (35 PAF and 32 PsAF) received RFCA were regularly followed for 27 (24, 29) months.Results: Higher hsCRP and IL-6 and lower TGF-β1 were demonstrated in PsAF patients compared with PAF patients. Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that Gal-3 (OR: 1.221, 95% CI: 1.024–1.456, P = 0.026) and MPO (OR: 1.002, 95% CI: 1.001–1.003, P = 0.027) were independently correlated with EAT activity. The percentage decrease of Hsp60 linearly correlated with that of EAT activity post-RFCA (Spearman rs = 0.455, P = 0.019). Seventeen patients (10 PsAF and 7 PAF) had AF recurrence, but none of the selected biomarkers were predictive of post-RFCA recurrence.Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated that in patients with AF, Gal-3 correlated with local cardiac inflammation, and Hsp60 was associated with the alleviation of cardiac inflammation after RFCA.

Background: Shufeng Jiedu capsule has been widely used in China for acute upper respiratory tract infections (AURTIs). The aim of this study was to evaluate its effectiveness and safety for AURTIs.Methods: Randomized controlled trials comparing SFJD with conventional drug for patients with AURTIs were included. Eight databases were searched from their inceptions to February 2021. Data was synthesized using risk ration (RR) or mean difference (MD) with their 95% confidence interval (CI). The primary outcome was resolution time of typical symptoms.Results: Twenty-five RCTs involving 3410 patients were included. SFJD in combination with conventional drug was associated with; in common cold shortening the duration of fever (MD −1.54 days, 95% CI [−2.15,−0.92], I2 = 80%, n = 385, 3 trials) and cough (MD −1.22 days, 95% CI [−1.52, −0.93]); in herpangina, shortening the duration of fever (MD -0.68 days, 95% CI [−1.15, −0.21], I2 = 68%, n = 140, 2 trials) and blistering (MD −0.99 days, 95% CI [−1.23, −0.76], n = 386, 3 trials); in acute tonsillitis and acute pharyngitis shortening the duration of fever (MD −1.13 days, 95% CI [−1.36, −0.90], I2 = 33%, n = 688, 7 trials) and sore throat (MD −1.13 days, 95% CI [−1.40, −0.86], I2 = 84.1%, n = 1194, 10 trials). SFJD also improving their cure rate with a range (1–5 days). No serious adverse events were reported.Conclusion: Low certainty evidence suggests that SFJD appears to shorten the duration of symptoms in AURTIs, improve cure rate and seems safe for application. However, high quality placebo controlled trials are warranted to confirm its benefit.

Objective This study aims to investigate the efficacy of modified Ginseng Yangrong decoction (GSYRD) promoting angiogenesis after ischemic stroke. Methods In an in vivo study, rats that survived surgery were allocated into four groups: the control group and model group were treated with normal saline, the GSYRD group was treated with 18.9 mg/kg of GSYRD daily, and the positive control group was treated with Tongxinluo (TXL) (1 g/kg/d). At the end of the seven‐day treatment, the area of cerebral infarction, the expression changes of miRNA‐210 and ephrin A3 were determined. In an in vitro study, HUVECs were divided into a normal control serum group (NC group), normal control serum OGD group (Oxygen Glucose Deprivation group) (OGD group), OGD + drug‐containing serum group (OGD+GSYRD group), and OGD + drug‐containing serum + ES group (Endostatin group) (OGD+GSYRD+ES group). The cells in all groups except the NC group were cultured in a sugar‐free DMEM medium under hypoxia for 48 h. Cell proliferation, angiogenic structure formation ability, the expression changes of miRNA‐210, ephrin A3, and the HIF/VEGF/Notch signaling pathway‐related molecules were determined. Results In vivo, GSYRD significantly reduced infarct size (p, This study aims to investigate the efficacy of modified Ginseng Yangrong decoction (GSYRD) promoting angiogenesis after ischemic stroke. GSYRD promotes cerebral protection following angiogenesis and ischemic brain injury. The specific mechanism was activating the HIF/VEGF/Notch signaling pathway via miRNA‐210.

Background Preeclampsia and gestational hypertension can cause vascular function impairment in offspring. In our previous work, we described the protein expression profiles of umbilical artery tissues from patients with preeclampsia. Methods To gain insights into the mechanisms of vascular dysfunction in adult rats born to preeclamptic dams, we analyzed thoracic aorta tissues by using iTRAQ isobaric tags and 2D nano LC-MS/MS. Results By using the iTRAQ method, we analyzed 1825 proteins, of which 106 showed significantly different expression in the thoracic aortic. Ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA) showed that the majority of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were associated with cardiovascular function. Further analysis indicated that glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), which is inhibited by miR-423-5p and activated by TP53, had the strongest effect on cardiovascular function. The expression of G6PD was upregulated in thoracic aorta tissues, as confirmed by Western blotting. The expression of two other vascular function-related proteins, cysteine- and glycine-rich protein 2 (CSRP2) and tubulin alpha-4 A (TUBA4A), was upregulated, as demonstrated by mass spectrometry (MS). Conclusions Although the results require further functional validation, these data provide novel findings related to vascular function impairment in the adult offspring of preeclamptic mothers.

The structure displacement of the raft of vibration isolation for ships is an important factor that affects shafting alignment accuracy and the safety of the equipment on the raft. In order to realize real-time monitoring of the raft structure displacement, which is the uncertain loadings and complex in shape, a measuring point placement strategy and an online monitoring method based on the displacement parameters to identify the displacement of the raft are proposed. FEM-based simulations for a prototyped raft have been conducted to obtain the displacement contour map. According to the displacement contour map based on displacement gradient and index evaluation, the measuring points have been combined and optimized. Displacement reconstruction principle based on a surface spline interpolation function method has been elaborated and derived. Structure displacement at any point can be obtained by a few measuring points. Finally, a case study of a certain type of floating raft is analyzed by the simulation analysis, and experimental research. The simulation and experimental results verify the validity of the measuring point placement strategy and the average of relative error with a value of less than 4% under different uncertain loadings. This method can effectively solve the problem of online monitoring of floating raft structure displacement under different changing loadings.

Unsupervised ensemble learning aims to estimate ground-truth labels via integrating noisy and unreliable labeling results from multiple annotators. Although many techniques have been proposed to deal with this challenging task, there still exists some "tough" instances with noisy labels that are misclassified after the integration, which significantly affect the classification performance. This paper introduces a novel approach to improve the label accuracy based on unsupervised ensemble learning. First, we apply the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to aggregate labels for all the instances. Then we identify instances that are most likely to be "tough" through a two-stage filtering method. Finally, an ensemble of AdaBoost-based classification models is trained on the high-quality dataset, and predicts new labels for these "tough" instances. The results of empirical investigation on binary classification task show that: (1) our approach can identify "tough" instances from the input dataset effectively; (2) our approach achieves a better performance on improving the accuracy of labels produced by unsupervised ensemble algorithms.

Currently, most of the Flash-based storage systems reduce the performance gap between the main memory and storage by data prefetching. However, conventional prefetching techniques perform well on hard disk drives but have limited effectiveness and efficiency on Flash. It is because the complicate data access patterns in modern systems have not been well considered. In this paper, we propose SFP, a smart file-aware prefetching scheme for Flash-based storage systems. SFP demonstrates that prefetching accuracy and efficiency can be improved comprehensively in a file-aware approach. Furthermore, three schemes are proposed: file access pattern learning, dynamic window-based file prefetching, and learning model size optimization. Experiments on the real server show that SFP reduces the access latency by up to 40% compared with the state-of-the-art with low memory and computation cost.

Racetrack memory (RM) has high access performance comparable to SRAM. It is a kind of non-volatile memory (NVM), which consists of data block clusters (DBCs) and access ports. However, data accessing on RM is based on shift operations, which will decrease the performance of RM. This paper proposes techniques by using SRAM to reduce the shifts and improve the accessing performance of RM. The key idea is to place randomly accessed data on SRAM ahead of time to relax the data placement on RM. First, a greedy scheduling strategy is proposed to reduce the requirement of SRAM. Second, to further reduce shifts, data with similar association degree are grouped and allocated to each DBC. Experimental results show that the proposed techniques reduce the shifts by 72.3% with only 256-byte SRAM compared to pure RM.

Introduction Ablation index (AI)-guided radiofrequency ablation has been increasingly used for the treatment of drug-resistant paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF)，but the optimal AI targets remain to be determined. We aimed to examine the efficacy and safety of catheter ablation guided by moderate AI values but more strict procedural endpoints in patients with paroxysmal AF. Methods We conducted a retrospective review of a consecutive series of patients who received their first AI-guided ablation for paroxysmal AF from 2017 to 2018. The standard procedural protocol recommends AI targets as follows: anterior: 400-450; posterior: 280-330; and roof/inferior wall: 380-430. After circumferential pulmonary vein isolation (PVI), we performed bipolar pacing along the ablation line, adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-provocation, and waited for 30 min to verify PVI. The primary clinical outcome was the rate of freedom from AF recurrence at 12 months. Results A total of 140 consecutive patients were included. The mean procedure and ablation times were 132.2 ± 30.2 min and 24.2 ± 7.9 min, respectively. The first-pass isolation and final isolation rates were documented in 49.3% and in 100% of the patients, respectively. At 12 months, single-procedure freedom from atrial tachyarrhythmias was observed in 92.1% of patients. No major procedure-related complications were encountered. Conclusions Moderate AI-guided catheter ablation is highly effective for the treatment of drug-refractory paroxysmal AF in real-world settings. Over 90% of patients achieved single-procedure arrhythmia-free survival at 1 year. The outcome was obtained without major complications and the procedure involved relatively short procedure and ablation times.

Background We designed this study to share our management experiences on spinal extradural arachnoid cysts (SEACs) to add more to the body of evidence for their treatment. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 41 patients who underwent microsurgery for thoracolumbar SEACs at our hospital from June 2009 to June 2019. All clinical data, including medical history, clinical features, imaging manifestation, operative findings, and prognosis, were extracted from medical records and databases. Perioperative differences of the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), the Oswestry disability index (ODI) score, and postoperative Odom’s criteria were used to assess the surgical outcome. Results The most common and very first clinical symptom in the 41 patients was pain (VAS = 2.82 ± 0.89), and the mean ODI value was 61.7 ± 8.9%. Imaging revealed that the cystic lesions in the thoracolumbar spine involved an average of 2.85 segments. Of the 41 patients, 39 underwent total cyst excisions, and 36 had their dural defect repaired by one of three methods. The mean postoperative follow-up time was 52.3 months. Postoperatively, one case developed kyphoscoliosis and two cases experienced a recurrence. The majority of patients showed excellent outcomes according to Odom’s criteria, the postoperative VAS (0.80 ± 1.08), and the ODI (15.4 ± 9.3%). Conclusions The most common clinical symptoms of thoracolumbar SEACs included progressive discomfort and pain around the involved spinal segments. Early surgical intervention relieved the patients from their symptoms. Microsurgery was recommended to resect the complete cyst and to repair the dural defect, but resection of the complete cyst is more necessary than just repairment of the dural defect for providing promising outcomes.

Ulcerative colitis (UC), a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, substantially impacts patients' health-related quality of life. In this study, an effective strategy for discovering high-efficiency probiotics has been developed. First, in order to survive in the conditions of the stomach and intestine, high bile salt-resistant and strong acid-resistant strains were screened out from the fecal flora of healthy adults. Next, the probiotic candidates were rescreened by examining the induction ability of IL-10 (anti-inflammatory factor) production in dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis mice, and Lactobacillus sakei 07 (L07) was identified and selected as probiotic P. In the end, fourteen bifidobacterium strains isolated from stools of healthy males were examined for their antimicrobial activity. Bifidobacterium bifidum B10 (73.75% inhibition rate) was selected as probiotic B. Moreover, the colonic IL-6 and TNF-α expression of the DSSinduced colitis mice treated with L. sakei 07 (L07) - B. bifidum B10 combination (PB) significantly decreased and the IL-10 expression was up-regulated by PB compared to the DSS group. Furthermore, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria decreased and Firmicutes increased in the DSS group mice, significantly. More interestingly, the intestinal flora biodiversity of DSS colitis mice was increased by PB. Of those, the level of B. bifidum increased significantly. The Bacteriodetes/Firmicutes (B/F) ratio increased, and the concentration of homocysteine and LPS in plasma was down-regulated by PB in the DSS-induced colitis mice. Upon administration of PB, the intestinal permeability of the the DSS-induced colitis mice was decreased by approximately 2.01-fold. This method is expected to be used in high-throughput screening of the probiotics against colitis. In addition, the L. sakei 07 - B. bifidum B10 combination holds potential in UC remission by immunomodulatory and gut microbiota modulation.

Background: Expression of the programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) has been rarely reported. In this study, we evaluated PD-L1 positivity in MTC and analyzed its c...

To report a case of a child with strabismus and delayed discovery of a metallic intraocular foreign body with good recovery of visual acuity and stereopsis with 36-month follow-up. A 4-year-old girl was evaluated due to exotropia of right eye initiated 9 months before with progressive worsening. Visual acuity was 1.00 logMAR (20/200) in the right eye and 0.00 logMAR (20/20) in the left eye. Anterior segment evidenced a small paracentral corneal leukoma, posterior synechia and mild lens opacity in the temporal quadrant only in the right eye. Fundus examination in the right eye identified the presence of an intraocular foreign body, with appearance of metallic components surrounded by retinal pigmented endothelial cells atrophy. Full-field electroretinography (ERG) showed reduced amplitudes and delayed implicit times for both rods and cones in the affected eye. All tests were normal in the fellow eye. Pars plana vitrectomy was promptly performed in the right eye, followed by phacoemulsification with intraocular lens implantation 4 months later due to worsening of the lens opacification. The full-field ERG was repeated after the surgical procedures. The ERG showed mild worsening of all responses in the right eye. After 36 months of follow-up, visual acuity was 0.20 logMAR (20/32) with improvement of the ocular misalignment and with 60 s of arc stereopsis with ERG responses unchanged. In this young girl perforating ocular trauma with metallic material was lately diagnosed with strabismus as a sign of alert. Prompt surgical intervention and proper management were essential to provide reasonable visual function including some degree of stereopsis, even though retinal dysfunction characterized by ERG was persistent.

Activating mutation of KIT or PDGFRA is the primary molecular mechanism for gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). Although imatinib has a revolutionary effect on GIST therapeutics, the benefits are not durable. Increasing reports have demonstrated that cell cycle checkpoint plays critical roles in GIST. Here, we explore the role of WEE1 kinase in GIST progression. Oncomine public database, western blotting, and immunohistochemistry were used to analyze WEE1 expression in GISTs. Using MTT assays, colony formation analysis, and flow cytometry, we examined the role of WEE1 in GIST cells and the antitumor activity of the inhibitor MK1775 alone, or in combination with imatinib. Cycloheximide chase assay and pharmacological inhibition of autophagy and proteasome pathway were performed to analyze KIT expression. Additionally, autophagic markers Beclin1 and LC3B were detected by western blotting. Upregulated WEE1 expression was observed in GIST tissues and correlated with tumor size, mitotic count, and risk grade. Inhibition of WEE1 significantly suppressed GIST cell proliferation, induced apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. Imatinib and MK1775 co-treatment markedly enhanced the antitumor activity. Targeting WEE1 decreased the expression of KIT expression. Moreover, WEE1 stabilized KIT protein and KIT reduction observed upon WEE1 inhibition could be reversed by pharmacological inhibition of autophagy, but not proteasome pathway. WEE1 inhibition also increased Beclin1 expression and LC3B II/I ratio in GIST cells. Our data suggest that WEE1 plays a pivotal role in GIST proliferation. WEE1 inhibition could promote KIT autophagic degradation and, therefore, targeting WEE1 might represent a novel strategy for GIST therapies.

A major obstacle for treatment of HCC is the inadequate efficacy and limitation of the available therapeutic options. Despite the recent advances in developing novel treatment options, HCC still remains one of the major causes of cancer morbidity and mortality around the world. Achieving effective treatment and eradication of HCC is a challenging task, however recent studies have shown that targeting Natural Killer cells, as major regulators of immune system, can help with the complete treatment of HCC, restoration of normal liver function and subsequently higher survival rate of HCC patients. Studies have shown that decrease in the frequency of NK cells, their dysfunction due to several factors such as dysregulation of receptors and their ligands, and imbalance of different types of inhibitory and stimulating microRNA expression is associated with higher rate of HCC progression and development, and poor survival outcome. Here in our review, we mainly focused on the importance of NK cells in HCC development and treatment.

Semiconductor materials have become competitive candidates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates; however, their limited SERS sensitivity hinders the practical applications of semiconductors. Here, we develop a hybrid substrate by integrating anatase/rutile TiO2 heterostructure with dense plasmonic hotspots of Ag nanoparticle (AgNPs) for efficient photoinduced enhanced Raman spectroscopy (PIERS). The PIERS mechanism is systematically investigated by means of a portable Raman instrument. When ultraviolet (UV) light irradiates the substrate, the TiO2-Ag hybrid arrays produce remarkable charge-transfer enhancement, which can be ascribed to the highly efficient charge separation driven by heterojunction and transfer from TiO2 heterostructure to AgNPs. This platform allows for the rapid detection of multifold organic species, including malachite green (MG), crystal violet (CV), rhodamine 6G (R6G), thiram, and acephate, and as high as 27.8-fold enhancement over the normal SERS is achieved, representing the highest PIERS magnification up to the present time. The intensive PIERS enhancement makes it ultrasensitively detect analyte concentration of an order of magnitude lower than that of SERS method. The improved sensitivity and resolution can be readily realized by simple UV irradiation, which represents a major advantage of our PIERS methodology. Besides, the integration of uniform TiO2 heterostructure arrays with AgNPs generates superior signal reproducibility with relative standard deviation (RSD) value of less than 14%. In addition, the detected molecules on the substrate can be eliminated by photocatalytic degradation after PIERS measurements by using UV irradiation, which makes the substrate reusable for 15 cycles. The ultrahigh sensitivity, superior reproducibility, and excellent recyclability displayed by our platform may provide new opportunities in field detection analysis coupled with a portable Raman instrument.