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This paper presents a strategy for extracting three-dimensional (3D) mining deformation from a single-geometry synthetic aperture radar (SAR) dataset. In light of the directionality of horizontal displacement caused by underground mining, we first re-model the proportional relationship between horizontal displacement and horizontal gradient of subsidence. Afterward, to improve the stability of the re-model, a solution strategy is proposed by setting different solution starting points and directions. The proposed method allows hiring of arbitrary single-geometry SAR data (e.g., air-borne, space-borne, and ground-borne SAR data) to reconstruct 3D displacements of mining areas. The proposed method has been validated through simulation and in-site data. The simulation data monitoring results indicate that the root mean square errors (RMSE) of the 3D displacements extracted by the proposed strategy are 0.45, 0.5, and 2.98 mm for the vertical subsidence, east–west, and north–south horizontal displacements, respectively. The in-site data monitoring results indicate that the RMSE of vertical subsidence compared with the leveling data are 7.3 mm. Furthermore, the MSBAS method was employed to further validate the reliability of the proposed method, the results show that the proposed method is effective to obtain the 3D deformation of the mining area, which greatly improves the applicability of SAR interferometry in the 3D deformation monitoring of the mining areas.

Abstract Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are regarded as crucial regulators in tumor progression. Potassium two pore domain channel subfamily K member 15 and WISP2 antisense RNA 1 (KCNK15-AS1) has been confirmed to inhibit the migration and invasion of pancreatic cancer (PC) cells. However, its downstream mechanism and effect on other cellular functions in PC remain unknown. This study probed the function and potential mechanism of KCNK15-AS1 in PC cell growth. RT-qPCR and western blot were employed to measure gene expression in PC cells. ISH was applied to analyze KCNK15-AS1 expression in PC tissues. Functional assays were utilized to evaluate PC cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration and EMT. Mechanical experiments were adopted to detect gene interaction in PC cells. The obtained data indicated that KCNK15-AS1 was down-regulated in PC cells and tissues. Overexpressing KCNK15-AS1 hindered cell proliferation, migration and EMT while facilitated cell apoptosis in PC. Mechanically, alkylation repair homolog protein 5 (ALKBH5) was verified to induce m6A demethylation of KCNK15-AS1 to mediate KCNK15-AS1 up-regulation. KCNK15-AS1 combined with KCNK15 5’UTR to inhibit KCNK15 translation. Moreover, KCNK15-AS1 recruited MDM2 proto-oncogene (MDM2) to promote RE1 silencing transcription factor (REST) ubiquitination, thus transcriptionally upregulating phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) to inactivate AKT pathway. In conclusion, our study first confirmed that KCNK15-AS1 hinders PC cell growth by regulating KCNK15 and PTEN, suggesting KCNK15-AS1 as a potential biomarker of PC.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a significant worldwide health crisis. Breast cancer patients with COVID-19 are fragile and require particular clinical care. This study aimed to identify the clinical characteristics of breast cancer patients with COVID-19 and the risks associated with anti-cancer treatment. Methods: The medical records of breast cancer patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were collected among 9559 COVID-19 patients from seven designated hospitals from 13th January to 18th March 2020 in Hubei, China. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess risk factors for COVID-19 severity. Results: Of the 45 breast cancer patients with COVID-19, 33 (73.3%) developed non-severe COVID-19, while 12 (26.7%) developed severe COVID-19, of which 3 (6.7%) patients died. The median age was 62 years, and 3 (6.7%) patients had stage IV breast cancer. Univariate analysis showed that age over 75 and the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) score were associated with COVID-19 disease severity (P

The low flexoelectric coefficients of polymers are the key problem that limit their application. In this paper, electret-like PDMS/metal conductive layer/PDMS laminated structures have been prepared, an internal electric field are applied on the metal conductive layer aimed at improving electromechanical response. Experiments on the flexoelectric responses of polymer laminated structures under impact are performed based on SHPB, in-layer voltage supply system and polarization voltage measuring system. Numerical simulations are also conducted to investigate the dynamic stress-strain relationship and polarization characteristics of polymer laminated structure under different in-layer voltages. The results show that maximum stress increases with decreasing in-layer voltage; the maximum polarization voltage increases first and then decreases with absolute value of in-layer voltage; the minimum polarization voltage decreases with absolute value of in-layer voltage. Specimen with negative voltage has advantage of conversing electric energy and transferring charges. The impact induced strain gradients have been investigated based on numerical simulation and the related flexoelectricity coefficients are obtained. Addition of metal conductive layer and application of in-layer voltage are effective ways to enhance flexoelectricity.

Abstract Preoperative staging of suspicious axillary lymph nodes (ALNs) allows patients to be triaged to ALN dissection or to sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (FNA) and cytology of ALN is moderately sensitive but its clinical utility relies heavily on the cytologist’s experience. We proposed that the 5-h automated GeneXpert system-based prototype breast cancer detection assay (BCDA) that quantitatively measures DNA methylation in ten tumor-specific gene markers could provide a facile, accurate test for detecting cancer in FNA of enlarged lymph nodes. We validated the assay in ALN-FNA samples from a prospective study of patients (N = 230) undergoing SLNB. In a blinded analysis of 218 evaluable LN-FNAs from 108 malignant and 110 benign LNs by histology, BCDA displayed a sensitivity of 90.7% and specificity of 99.1%, achieving an area under the ROC curve, AUC of 0.958 (95% CI: 0.928–0.989; P

To effectively monitor the spatio–temporal dynamics of the surface water extent (SWE) in Lake Victoria, this study introduced a novel methodology for generating a seamless SWE time series with fine resolution by integrating daily a Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat imagery. In the proposed methodology, daily normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series data with 30 m resolution were first generated based on the constructed pixel-by-pixel downscaling models between the simultaneously acquired MODIS-NDVI and Landsat-NDVI data. In the compositing process, a Minimum Value Composite (MinVC) algorithm was used to generate monthly minimum NDVI time series, which were then segmented into a seamless SWE time series of the years 2000–2020 with 30 m resolution from the cloud background. A comparison with the existing Landsat-derived JRC (European Joint Research Centre) monthly surface water products and altimetry-derived water level series revealed that the proposed methodology effectively provides reliable descriptions of spatio–temporal SWE dynamics. Over Lake Victoria, the average percentage of valid observations made using the JRC’s products was only about 70% due to persistent cloud cover or linear strips, and the correlation with the water level series was poor (R2 = 0.13). In contrast, our derived results strongly correlated with the water level series (R2 = 0.54) and efficiently outperformed the JRC’s surface water products in terms of both space and time. Using the derived SWE data, the long-term and seasonal characteristics of lake area dynamics were studied. During the past 20 years, a significant changing pattern of an initial decline followed by an increase was found for the annual mean SWE, with the lowest area of 66,386.57 km2 in 2006. A general seasonal variation in the monthly mean lake area was also observed, with the largest SWE obtained during June–August and the smallest SWE observed during September–November. Particularly in the spring of 2006 and the autumn of 2020, Lake Victoria experienced intense episodes of drought and flooding, respectively. These results demonstrate that our proposed methodology is more robust with respect to capturing spatially and temporally continuous SWE data in cloudy conditions, which could also be further extended to other regions for the optimal management of water resources.

Abstract Background The relationship between cancer and COVID‐19 has been revealed during the pandemic. Some anticancer treatments have been reported to have negative influences on COVID‐19‐infected patients while other studies did not support this hypothesis. Methods A literature search was conducted in WOS, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI and VIP between Dec 1, 2019 and Sept 23, 2020 for studies on anticancer treatments in patients with COVID‐19. Cohort studies involving over 20 patients with cancer were included. The characteristics of the patients and studies, treatment types, mortality, and other additional outcomes were extracted and pooled for synthesis. RRs and forest plots were adopted to present the results. The literature quality and publication bias were assessed using NOS and Egger's test, respectively. Results We analyzed the data from 29 studies, with 5121 cancer patients with COVID‐19 meeting the inclusion criteria. There were no significant differences in mortality between patients receiving anticancer treatment and those not (RR 1.17, 95%CI: 0.96–1.43, I2=66%, p = 0.12). Importantly, in patients with hematological malignancies, chemotherapy could markedly increase the mortality (RR 2.68, 95% CI: 1.90–3.78, I2=0%, p

Aiming at the problem of loss imbalance in operation of three-level active neutral point clamped (ANPC) converter switching devices, this article provides an improved balancing strategy. Take phase as an example. The reasons for the loss of the three-level ANPC converter′s unbalanced loss were analyzed, and the space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) strategy was used to reduce switch action to achieve loss balance by reasonably selecting the same transition state. Compared with the traditional SVPWM strategy, this method reduced the unbalance of the bridge arm switch from 23.12% to 6.37%, and the unbalance of the clamp switch from 11.19% to 4.71%. It can be used to increase the capacity and service life of converters in places such as motor frequency conversion speed regulation and high-voltage power transmission.

Aluminum honeycomb framework reinforced Al/PTFE material is a kind of high inert energetic material, which has higher strength and structure advantages than that of pure Al/PTFE material. In order to meet the requirements of special penetration/blasting performance, this paper adds aluminum honeycomb framework with arm length of 1.5 mm into the traditional formula Al/PTFE (mass percentage of Al and PTFE is 26.5% and 73.5%). The energetic material reinforced by aluminum honeycomb framework (20.5% Al/73.5% PTFE/6% aluminum honeycomb) is obtained by cold pressing sintering，and the experimental evaluation of release energy generated by high velocity impact in vacuum was performed by using two-stage light gas gun loading system, transient optical fiber pyrometer measurement system, overpressure measurement system and infrared thermal imager measurement system. Experimental results show that the impact reaction temperature is about 700 °C in vacuum in the velocity range of 0.96–1.5 km/s, and the energy release of the specimen increases with the increase of impact velocity. When the impact velocity is greater than 1.5 km/s, the specimen fully reacts, and the energy released by the complete reaction of the specimen does not exceed 8.3 kJ/g.

The structures composed by metal fiber and auxiliary elastomer are stretchable and have potential application under larger strain. Nowadays, interfacial failure is still the key problem affecting practicability of the structures. The result of typical pull-out test indicates that three stages exist in this pull-out process: elastic deformation, interfacial debonding and interfacial friction. For the sake of determination of interfacial parameters, a numerical method has been proposed to characterize the damage initiation point by using the slope of force-displacement curve of pull-out experiment. Furthermore, based on the basic material and interfacial parameters, extensive simulations have been conducted to study parametric effect on the general mechanical behavior of structures, including interfacial elastic modulus, failure strength and damage evolution law and friction. The results indicate both interfacial cohesive and friction contribute to the force increasing after damage initiation points.

To investigate the dynamic compressive behavior of zirconium filaments/aluminum/polytetrafluoroethylene (mass fraction of Zr fiber/Al/PTFE of 3%/23.5%/73.5%) active materials, traditional formula Al/PTFE active materials (Al/PTFE mass fraction of 26.5%/73.5%) and Al/Zr/PTFE active materials were prepared by cold pressing sintering process. The microscopic morphology and impact reaction behavior of the material by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high-speed camera are observed. The dynamic compressive experiments of the two materials are carried out by using separate Hopkinson bar (SHPB) test system. The results show that the Al/PTFE by adding active metal zirconium (Zr) filaments can improve the dynamic compressive properties of conventionally Al/PTFE. The failure strength of active material is increased from 32 MPa to 110 MPa comparing with conventionally Al/PTFE active materials, and the increase is about 243.75%. When the strain rate is 2500–4000 s−1, Al/Zr/PTFE specimens exhibit the same elastic–plastic mechanical behavior as conventionally Al/PTFE specimens. The behavior of the two specimens can also be divided into three stages: compressive deformation, crack generation and hot spot initiation (there are microscopic holes around Zr fibers, and the collapse and expansion of holes is the main reason for the formation of hot spots).

To profoundly reveal the protective performance of CFRP/aluminum foam sandwich structure, the high-speed impact simulation models of CFRP, aluminum foam and their sandwich structures are built by ABAQUS/Explicit module. The VUMAT user material subroutine is written for CFRP panel, and Hashin damage criterion is introduced. The elastic constitutive model and macro modeling method for the aluminum foam are chosen. The impact process under different working conditions is numerically simulated and the reliability of the model is verified by one-stage light gas gun loading experiment at the corresponding simulation conditions. At the same time, the protective performance of CFRP/ aluminum foam sandwich structure under different steel projectile shapes, impact velocities and impact angles (the angle between the ballistic and the target normal line) are simulated. The results show that the Mises stress nephogram of CFRP panel is peanut-like with obvious directivity. The stress wave propagates fastest in the direction perpendicular to the fiber. In the impact velocity range of 172−450 m/s, with the increase of impact velocities, the loss of kinetic energy will increase, but the increase of kinetic energy loss will decrease with the increase of impact velocities, and the contact force between the projectile and the sandwich structure will also increase. Thus the sandwich structure will have more serious delamination and fiber breakage, which will consume more kinetic energy. When the velocity of the projectile is greater than 300 m/s, the impact capability of the sandwich structure tends to the upper limit of impact capacity. In the impact velocity range of 170∼300m/s, the sandwich structure has stronger protective performance than ball-nosed projectile when the flat-nosed projectile impact, and the difference of the residual velocity between the two kinds of projectiles is larger. The shape of the projectile has a great influence on the protective performance of the CFRP/ aluminum foam sandwich structure. When the impact velocity is greater than 300m/s, the residual velocities of the two kinds of projectiles are almost the same, and the shapes of the projectile have a gradual effect on the performances of the CFRP/ aluminum foam sandwich structure. The anti-shock performance of sandwich structure under oblique impact is stronger than that of vertical impact. With the increase of impact angles, the transverse deformation of sandwich structure increases, and the anti-shock performance of sandwich structure also increases.

Abstract Background The disease burden caused by pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in Sichuan province still persisted at a high level, and large spatial variances were presented across regional distribution disparities. The socio-economic factors were suspected to affect the population of TB notification, we aimed to describe TB case notification rate (CNR) and identify which factors influence TB epidemic are necessary for the prevention and control of the disease in Sichuan province. Methods A retrospective cross-sectional study and an ecological spatial analysis was conducted to quantify the presence and location of spatial clusters of TB by the Moran’s I index and examined these patterns with socio-economic risk factors by hierarchical Bayesian spatio-temporal model. Results A total of 630,009 pulmonary TB cases were notified from 2006 to 2015 in 181 counties of Sichuan province. The CNR decreased year by year since 2007, from 88.70 to 61.37 per 100,000 persons. The spatial heterogeneities of CNR were observed during the study periods. Global Moran’s I index varied from 0.23 to 0.44 with all P-value

Images acquired using vision sensors are easily affected by environmental limitations, especially rain streaks. These streaks will seriously reduce image quality, which, in turn, reduces the accuracy of the algorithms that use the resulting images in vision sensor systems. In this paper, we proposed a method that combined the bilateral filter with the generative adversarial network to eliminate the interference of rain streaks. Unlike other methods that use all the information in an image as the input to the generative adversarial network, we used a bilateral filter to preprocess and separate the high frequency part of the original image. The generator for the high-frequency layer of the image was designed to generate an image with no rain streaks. The high-frequency information of the image was used in a high-frequency global discriminator designed to measure the authenticity of the generated image from multiple perspectives. We also designed a loss function based on the structural similarity index to further improve the effect of removal of the rain streaks. An ablation experiment proved the validity of the method. We also compared images in synthetic and real-world datasets. Our method could retain more image information, and the generated image was clearer.

Medium chain carboxylic acids (MCCAs, e.g., caproic acid, caprylic acid, etc.) with 6–12 carbon atoms are valuable platform chemicals produced from organic waste via microbial chain elongation metabolism named as reversed β-oxidation and fatty acid-biosynthesis cyclical pathway. Recently, many articles reported that electricity could not only serve as the external electron donor and provide the reduction equivalent required for chain elongation but also regulate the microbiome structure and metabolic behaviors to promote MCCAs formation. Electricity-steering MCCAs bioproduction has become an appealing technique to valorize low-value organic waste, paving an alternative pathway for net-zero carbon emission energy systems and sustainable socio-economic development. However, the MCCAs’ bioproduction from organic waste steered by electric field has not been comprehensively reviewed. From a systematical analysis of publicly available literature, we first covered the basic working principle, fermentation architecture, functional microflora, and metabolic pathway of MCCAs production driven by electricity. The strategies of substrate modulation, applied voltage/current regulation, electrode optimization, and microbial cooperation and stimulation for boosting electricity-driven MCCAs bioproduction are then scrutinized and extensively discussed. Ultimately, the pressing knowledge gaps and the potential path forward are proposed to provide pointers for consistently higher MCCAs yield and the transition from laboratory to market.

A new ɛ-Keggin polyoxometalate based metal-organic framework, [TBA]3[H4PMo8VMo4VIO40Zn4](HTPT)2 (1) (H3TPT = 1,1′:4′,1″-terphenyl-3,4″,5-tricarboxylic acid, TBA+ = tetrabutylammonium ion) was synthesized under hydrothermal conditions. The tetrahedral Zn4-ε-Keggin is connected through angular HTPT2− to form a 2D entangled structure with 2-fold interpenetration. The whole network displays a staggered layer structure in AB/CD/EF/GH/AB/CD/EF/GH arrangement with extensive hydrogen bonding and intermolecular interactions. More interestingly, compound 1 exhibited good hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity in an acidic medium, with a Tafel slope of 68 mV·dec−1 and an η10 of 417 mV. It showed an excellent long-term stability, which could maintain its catalytic activity after 1000 cycles.

Aluminum/Polytetrafluoroethylene (Al/PTFE) reactive material occurs chemical reaction and release a large amount of energy under the impact load, which has the dual characteristics of strength and energy release, so it can be applied to the attack of confined space targets to enhance the damage effect on the target. In order to study the dynamic strength of enhanced Al/PTFE and the real-time impact release energy, based on the traditional formula Al/PTFE (26.5%/73.5%), enhanced Al/PTFE reactive material specimens were prepared by cold pressing and rapid cooling processes, and the dynamic mechanical properties of the specimens were tested by the Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) testing system. The experiments have been conducted by using two-stage light gas gun loading system combining with the impact release energy related testing system under vacuum condition. Meanwhile, the evolutionary process of reaction product was numerically simulated by ANSYS/Fluent, and the boundary conditions of the numerical simulation were defined by self-programmed UDF subroutine. Experiments, theoretical analysis and numerical simulation were adopted to obtain the real time energy release of Al/PTFE reactive materials at different impact velocities. The results show that the maximum dynamic failure strength of the enhanced Al/PTFE reactive projectile is 126 MPa, and the strain rate hardening phenomenon and viscoelastic effect are exhibited when the strain rate is in the range of 1500 ∼ 3000 s−1. When the strain rate is in the range of 3000 ∼ 4000 s−1, the specimen is insensitive to strain rate. When the impact velocities are 2.30 km/s and 2.54 km/s, the energies that the reactive projectiles release are 8.36 kJ/g and 8.38 kJ/g, respectively, and the reactive material reacts completely. When the impact velocities are 1.64 km/s, 1.80 km/s and 1.94 km/s, the projectiles have not fully reacted. The reactive degree of the reactive projectile increases with the increase of the impact velocity. For the complete reaction of Al/PTFE reactive projectile, the critical impact velocity of the enhanced reactive material is between 1.94 km/s and 2.30 km/s.

Following cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), the ensuing cardiac and cerebral injuries contribute to the poor outcome of cardiac arrest (CA) victims, in which the pathogenetic process is possibly driven by cell pyroptosis and ferroptosis. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been shown to be a promising strategy for post-resuscitation cardiac and cerebral protection in rat, but its effectiveness in the clinically relevant swine model and the potential protective mechanism remain unknown. The present study was designed to investigate whether MSCs administration could alleviate post-resuscitation cardiac and cerebral injuries through the inhibition of cell pyroptosis and ferroptosis in swine. Twenty-four male domestic swine were randomly divided into three groups: sham, CPR, and MSC. A dose of 2.5×106/kg of MSCs derived from human embryonic stem cells was intravenously infused at 1.5, and 3 days prior to CA. The animal model was established by 8 min of CA and then 8 min of CPR. After resuscitation, cardiac, cerebral function and injury biomarkers were regularly evaluated for a total of 24 h. At 24 h post-resuscitation, pyroptosis-related proteins (NLRP3, ASC, cleaved caspase-1, GSDMD), proinflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-18), ferroptosis-related proteins (ACSL4, GPX4) and iron deposition in the heart, cortex and hippocampus were measured. Consequently, significantly greater cardiac, cerebral dysfunction and injuries after resuscitation were observed in the CPR and MSC groups compared with the sham group. However, the severity of cardiac and cerebral damage were significantly milder in the MSC group than in the CPR group. In addition, the expression levels of NLRP3, ASC, cleaved caspase-1, GSDMD and ACSL4, the contents of IL-1β and IL-18, and the level of iron deposition were significantly higher while the expression level of GPX4 was significantly lower in the heart, cortex and hippocampus in all resuscitated animals compared with the sham group. Nevertheless, MSCs administration significantly decreased post-resuscitation cardiac, cerebral pyroptosis and ferroptosis compared to the CPR group. Our results showed that the administration of MSCs significantly alleviated post-resuscitation cardiac and cerebral injuries in swine, in which the protective effects were related to the inhibition of cell pyroptosis and ferroptosis.

In order to clarify the electromechanical coupling characteristics of polymer materials and extend their applications in MEMS (Micro-electromechanical Systems), electromechanical responses of PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) with different electrodes and thicknesses under different loading conditions have been performed experimentally and numerically. Basic electrical parameters measurement and quasi-static tensile experiment of PDMS specimens were conducted. Furthermore, the dynamic mechanical properties and polarization voltage of PDMS with different electrodes and thicknesses under different loading conditions have been studied by Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) system integrating with electrical output measuring system. Beyond that, Abaqus/Explicit numerical simulation of PDMS specimen under different loading conditions was carried out based on Yeoh viscoelastic model and Prony series, then the strain gradient and the flexoelectric coefficients were obtained. The results show that the maximum stress of PDMS increases with increasing of loading speed and decreases with increasing of thickness, the maximum polarization voltage increases with increasing of strain rate, the maximum polarization voltages of PDMS with “C” electrode and “+” electrode are about 14 times of that with circular electrode, the flexoelectric coefficients of PDMS are within the range of 10−11–10−9C/m.

ABSTRACT: Background: Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is associated with kidney podocyte injury and may occur as part of thyroid autoimmunity such as Graves’ disease. Therefore, the present study was designed to ascertain if and how podocytes respond to and regulate the input of biologically active thyroid hormone (TH), 3,5,3′-triiodothyronine (T3); and also to decipher the pathophysiological role of type 3 deiodinase (D3), a membrane-bound selenoenzyme that inactivates TH, in kidney disease. Methods: To study D3 function in healthy and injured (PAN, puromycin aminonucleoside and LPS, Lipopolysaccharide-mediated) podocytes, immunofluorescence, qPCR and podocyte-specific D3 knockout mouse were used. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR), co-immunoprecipitation and Proximity Ligation Assay (PLA) were used for the interaction studies. Findings: Healthy podocytes expressed D3 as the predominant deiodinase isoform. Upon podocyte injury, levels of Dio3 transcript and D3 protein were dramatically reduced both in vitro and in the LPS mouse model of podocyte damage. D3 was no longer directed to the cell membrane, it accumulated in the Golgi and nucleus instead. Further, depleting D3 from the mouse podocytes resulted in foot process effacement and proteinuria. Treatment of mouse podocytes with T3 phenocopied the absence of D3 and elicited activation of αvβ3 integrin signaling, which led to podocyte injury. We also confirmed presence of an active thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSH-R) on mouse podocytes, engagement and activation of which resulted in podocyte injury. Interpretation: The study provided a mechanistic insight into how D3-αvβ3 integrin interaction can minimize T3-dependent integrin activation, illustrating how D3 could act as a renoprotective thyrostat in podocytes. Further, injury caused by binding of TSH-R with TSH-R antibody, as found in patients with Graves’ disease, explained a plausible link between thyroid disorder and NS. Funding: This work was supported by American Thyroid Association (ATA-2018-050.R1).

Gamified interactive e-books can make the learning process more interactive, enjoyable, and personalized by incorporating game elements into the educational content, thus increasing student engagement and retention in the flipped classroom. However, scholars have pointed out that learning with game elements that may lead to poor learning outcomes. Therefore, this study proposes a self-regulated-based gamified interactive e-book (S-GIEB) to stimulate students to monitor their learning process in a flipped mathematics classroom with the expectation of improving their learning performance and affection. A total of 120 sixth grade students were divided into three groups: students who used self-regulation-based interactive e-book in a flipped mathematics classroom (S-GIEB group), students who learned with gamified interactive e-book in a flipped mathematics classroom (GIEB group), and those who learned with instructional videos in a traditional flipped classroom (TFC group). The findings revealed that incorporating self-regulated strategies in gamified interactive e-books can significantly enhance primary students' learning achievement, self-regulation abilities, learning motivation, and meta-cognition tendency. This suggests that such an approach not only fosters better academic performance but also cultivates important skills like self-regulation abilities and meta-cognition. The study underlines the potential of technology-enhanced learning tools to revolutionize traditional teaching methods, offering a blueprint for future educational innovations. Recommendations for the use of S-GIEB and for future research were also discussed.

Abstract Objective To describe a minimally invasive comprehensive treatment for granulomatous lobular mastitis (GLM) and compare its effect with the existing methods, particularly in terms of its recurrence rate and esthetic outcomes. Methods This retrospective study reviewed 69 GLM patients receiving the minimally invasive comprehensive treatment. Patients’ information, including age, clinical features, image characteristics, histopathological findings, mastitis history, treatment process, operative technique, recurrence, and esthetic effect, was evaluated. Results All patients were female with a median age of 32 (range 17–55) years. Hospital stays ranged from 2 to 34 days, with a median of 6 days. The shortest time for complete rehabilitation was 2 days and the longest time was 365 days, with a median of 30 days. After a median follow-up of 391 days (range 162–690), 7 patients (10.14%) relapsed. The average cosmetic score was 2.62 ± 0.57 points and was mainly related to the past treatment, especially the surgical history. Conclusion Minimally invasive comprehensive treatment is a new method for the treatment of GLM, ensuring a therapeutic effect while maintaining breast beauty.

Interval estimation of landslide displacement prediction is significant for landslide early warning. The goal of this paper is to improve the accuracy of landslide displacement point prediction and quantify the uncertainties associated with the predicted values. To do so, a coupling prediction model based on double moving average (DMA) method and long short-term memory (LSTM) network is investigated. The DMA method is employed to decompose cumulative displacement of landslide into trend and periodic displacements, while the LSTM network is adopted to model and predict these two sub dis-placements. The sum of predicted sub displacements is considered as predicted cumulative displacement. Further, the probability estimation theory is utilized to derive confidence intervals that quantify the uncertainties of the point prediction. The proposed approach was validated on Baishuihe landslide in Three Gorges Reservoir area of China. Results show that the LSTM network performs better than support vector machine and Elman network, while the DMA decomposition method outperforms single moving average method. As a consequence, the coupling prediction model of DMA and LSTM network is a better solution for the point prediction of landslide displacement. Furthermore, the proposed probability estimation method can construct high-quality confidence intervals.

In order to deeply reveal the microscopic damage mode and microscopic damage mechanism of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic laminates (CFRP laminates) impacted vertically by the ice projectile at high velocity. In this paper, the loading system of the one-stage light gas gun, the liquid nitrogen circulating cooling system, the impact pressure measuring system and the high speed camera acquisition system are used, and the experiments of the spherical ice projectile (simulated hail ice, SHI) with diameter of 11 mm impacting CFRP laminates vertically at the velocity of 50-200 m/s were carried out. The impact pressure of the SHI impacting the target, the strain of X-Y in the two main directions at the impact point were measured, and the deflection/ time history curve at the impact point during the impact process was obtained. By using ABAQUS/Explicit finite element software, the numerical simulation of high-velocity vertical impact of SHI on CFRP laminates was compared with the image acquisition results of the high speed camera at different moments during the impact process, and the failure morphology and process of SHI was analyzed. At the same time, the delamination of the target obtained by numerical simulation is compared with the cracking of the CFRP fiber reinforcement and the delamination of the epoxy resin interface obtained by microscopic SEM observation, the correctness of using cohesion model to describe the micro-damage of CFRP laminates induced by SHI impacting vertically at high speed was verified. The damage failure threshold of CFRP laminates under the impact load of SHI under given experimental conditions was obtained. By establishing a three-point simply supported physical model, the ultimate deflection of laminated plates subjected to delamination failure was analyzed. Based on the measurement of strain and deflection at impact point, the valuable reference for the prediction of delamination failure in CFRP laminates can be provided, then the detection of the micro-damage to the surface composite part of the aircraft will be realized by the control of the sensor. Keywords: CFRP laminates, Cohesion model of ice projectiles, Microscopic damage model, Microscopic damage mechanism, Delamination failure prediction

Abstract Background Avoiding the phagocytosis by tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) is necessary for the growth and metastasis of solid tumors. CD47 binds to the receptor signal-regulatory protein-α (SIRP-α) on the macrophages to avoid normal phagocytosis. In this study, we evaluated the expression and prognostic significance of CD47 and CD68-labeled TAMs in breast cancer solid tumors. Methods Two hundred seventeen cases of breast cancer tissues and 40 cases of benign breast lesions were collected for immunohistochemical staining of CD47 and CD68. Results Both of the CD47 and CD68 expression were significantly higher in breast cancer tissues (P 0.05). Interestingly, combined high expression of CD47 and CD68 (CD47highCD68high) not only had a significant association with advanced TNM stage, histological grade, LNM, ER status, PR status and recurrence (P

Rotating machinery often works under complex and variable working conditions; the vibration signals that are widely used for the health monitoring of rotating machinery show extremely complicated dynamic frequency characteristics. It is unlikely that a few certain frequency components are used as the representative fault signatures for all working conditions. Aiming at a general solution, this paper proposes an intelligent bearing fault diagnosis method that integrates adaptive variational mode decomposition (AVMD), mode sorting based deep belief network (DBN) and extreme learning machine (ELM). It can adaptively decompose non-stationery vibration signals into temporary frequency components and sort out a set of effective frequency components for online fault diagnosis. For online implementation, a similarity matching method is proposed, which can match the online-obtained frequency-domain fault signatures with the historical fault signatures, and the parameters of AVMD-DBN-ELM model are set to be the same as the most similar case. The proposed method can decompose vibration signals into different modes adaptively and retain effective modes, and it can learn from the idea of an attention mechanism and fuse the results according to the weight of MIV. It also can improve the timeliness of the fault diagnosis. For comprehensive verification of the proposed method, the bearing dataset from the University of Ottawa is used, and some recent methods are repeated for comparative analysis. The results can prove that our proposed method has higher reliability, higher accuracy and higher efficiency.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a group of drugs employed in the treatment of various types of malignant tumors and improve the therapeutic effect. ICIs blocks negative co-stimulatory molecules, such as programmed cell death gene-1 (PD-1) and its ligand (PD-L1) and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4), reactivating the recognition and killing effect of the immune system on tumors. However, the reactivation of the immune system can also lead to the death of normal organs, tissues, and cells, eventually leading to immune-related adverse events (IRAEs). IRAEs involve various organs and tissues and also cause thyroid dysfunction. This article reviews the epidemiology, clinical manifestations, possible pathogenesis, and management of ICIs-related thyroid dysfunction.

Thyroid cancers (TC) have increasingly been detected following advances in diagnostic methods. Risk stratification guided by refined information becomes a crucial step toward the goal of personalized medicine. The diagnosis of TC mainly relies on imaging analysis, but visual examination may not reveal much information and not enable comprehensive analysis. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology used to extract and quantify key image information by simulating complex human functions. This latent, precise information contributes to stratify TC on the distinct risk and drives tailored management to transit from the surface (population-based) to a point (individual-based). In this review, we started with several challenges regarding personalized care in TC, for example, inconsistent rating ability of ultrasound physicians, uncertainty in cytopathological diagnosis, difficulty in discriminating follicular neoplasms, and inaccurate prognostication. We then analyzed and summarized the advances of AI to extract and analyze morphological, textural, and molecular features to reveal the ground truth of TC. Consequently, their combination with AI technology will make individual medical strategies possible.

The inhibitor of growth (ING) family was discovered as the type II tumor suppressors, which regulated the proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, angiogenesis, metastasis, and invasion of tumor cells through multiple pathways. ING3, a new member of ING family, has been reported to be downregulated in several types of tumors. However, few studies on ING3 in breast cancer have been reported. In this study, we investigated the expression of ING3 and determined its prognostic value in breast cancer. The immunohistochemistry was performed to evaluate the expression of ING3 in tissue microarrays (TMA) including breast cancer tissues (n=211) and normal breast tissues (n=50). In normal breast tissues, ING3 protein was detected in both the cytoplasm and nucleus. In breast cancer tissues, ING3 protein was principally detected in the cytoplasm. Compared with normal breast tissues, the expression of ING3 in nucleus was remarkably reduced in breast cancer tissues. The downregulated ING3 in nucleus was significantly correlated with clinicopathological characteristics including histological grade, lymph node metastasis, and the status of ER and PR. In HER2 positive-type and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients, it had the lower rate of nuclear ING3 with high expression than that in luminal-type. Moreover, Kaplan-Meier curves demonstrated that the reduced expression of ING3 in nucleus was correlated with a poorer 5-DFS and 5-OS of breast cancer patients. Importantly, multivariate Cox regression analysis suggested that the reduced expression of ING3 in nucleus was an independent prognostic factor in breast cancer. Our study comprehensively described the expression of ING3 in breast cancer for the first time and proved that it was an independent prognostic predictor of breast cancer, as well as a new idea for study of breast cancer.

The spherical ice projectile impacting vertically on Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic laminates (CFRP laminates) with different curvatures was developed by using the one-stage light gas gun loading system. The numerical simulation results of the vertical impact of the arched CFRP laminates with different curvatures by SHI were compared with the experimental test results, Scanning Electron Microscopy micro failure mode and the image acquisition of the high speed camera by using ABAQUS/Explicit finite element software. The deformation process and failure mode of arched CFRP laminates with different curvatures and simulated hail ice (SHI)were analyzed, and the reliability of the numerical simulation was verified. By establishing a two-hinged simply supported mechanical physical model of arched laminates, the principal stresses of each layer along the direction of 0° and 90° of fibers in arched laminates were obtained. It would provide technical support for the prediction of fiber failure and delamination damage in the process of impacting on laminates at high velocity.

The layered rock mass widely exists in mining, construction, transportation, and water conservancy projects, and the damage phenomena of plate crack and spalling often occurs in the process of coal and rock dynamic disaster in deep mining. Therefore, the rock mass nearby excavation surface is usually considered to be composed of layers of thin plate rock mass to reveal the damage and failure mechanism of rock mass. In the whole dynamic process of mining and coal and rock dynamic disaster, rock mass would bear the dynamic disturbance from mine earthquake, and at present, the mechanical characteristics of rock mass are mainly studied under static load, while dynamic mechanical response characteristics and the mechanisms of dynamic damage, failure, and disaster-causing are still unclear. This study mainly focused on the dynamic response characteristic and failure mechanism of rock mass based on a rectangular thin plate model. The frequency equations and deflection equations of the thin plate rock mass with different boundary conditions (S-F-S-F, S-C-S-C, and C-C-C-C) were established under free vibration by the thin plate model and the dual equation of the Hamilton system, and the deflection equations under impact load were derived based on the Duhamel integral. And then, the effective vibration modes of the thin plate rock mass with different boundary conditions and their natural frequencies were obtained by Newton’s iterative method. Based on the third-strength theory and the numerical simulation results by LS-DYNA, the maximum shear of the effective vibration modes and the processes of damage and failure under impact load were analyzed. The research results showed that the initial position of damage and failure may be determined by effective vibration mode with the lowest frequency; the develop tendency of which by the combined actions of other effective vibration modes and the effective vibration modes with lower frequency could have greater influence on the process of damage and failure of the thin plate rock mass, which are beneficial to revealing the mechanism of coal and rock dynamic disaster.

Objective: During the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in China, breast cancer (BC) patients and healthcare workers faced several challenges, resulting in great psychological stress. We measured the psychological status of BC patients and female nurses and compared the severity within the two groups at the peak time-point of the COVID-19 outbreak.Methods: A total of 207 BC patients and 684 female nurses were recruited from Wuhan. They completed an anonymous questionnaire online using the most popular social media software in China, WeChat. The psychological status of BC patients and of female nurses was measured using the Chinese versions of the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7), the 7-item Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), and the 22-item Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) for evaluation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The differences between the two groups were analyzed.Results: The scores of BC patients and frontline female nurses for the four scales were significantly higher than those of non-frontline female nurses (P < 0.001). There were similar scores between BC patients and frontline female nurses for PHQ-9, GAD-7, and IES-R (P = 0.789, P = 0.101, P = 0.158, respectively). Notably, the scores of BC patients for ISI were significantly higher than those of the frontline female nurses (P = 0.016). A considerable proportion of BC patients reported symptoms of depression (106/207, 51.2%), anxiety (130/207, 62.8%), insomnia (106/207, 51.2%), and PTSD (73/207, 35.5%), which was more severe than that of female nurses.Conclusions: BC patients experienced great psychological pressure during the COVID-19 outbreak. The incidents of symptomatic anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and PTSD were significantly comparable to that of frontline female nurses, and episodes of insomnia among BC participants were more serious than for frontline female nurses.

Background: The susceptibility of breast cancer is largely affected by the metabolic capacity of breast tissue. This ability depends in part on the expression profile of cytochrome P450 (CYPs). CYPs are a superfamily of enzymes with related catalysis to endogenous and exogenous bioactive substances, including xenobiotic metabolism, drugs, and some endogenous substances metabolism which activate cells and stimulate cell signaling pathways, such as arachidonic acid metabolism, steroid metabolism, fatty acid metabolism. Interestingly, CYP was electively expressed in different tumors, and mediated the metabolic activation of multiple carcinogens and participated in the activation and deactivation of tumor therapeutic drugs. However, the biological action of cytochrome P450 2U1 (CYP2U1) in breast carcinoma is little understood so far.Methods: To investigate the biological value of CYP2U1 in breast carcinoma, we performed immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis and survival analysis based on clinico-pathological data of breast cancer.Results: IHC analysis showed that the abundance of CYP2U1 protein was inversely proportional to the state of estrogen receptor(ER) (P < 0.05), and the lower the degree of tumor differentiation, the higher the protein abundance (P < 0.001). Additionally, compared with luminal tumors, the CYP2U1 protein content was more abundant in triple negative breast cancer (P < 0.05). Importantly, survival analysis showed that higher CYP2U1 protein levels predicted poor 5-year overall survival rate (P < 0.01), 5-year disease-free survival rate (P < 0.05), and 5-year metastatic-free survival rate (P < 0.01) for the entire enrolled breast cancer patients.Conclusions: CYP2U1 is generally closely related to the clinicopathological characteristics and is also an adverse prognostic factor for breast carcinoma patients, indicating that CYP2U1 is engaged in the malignant progression of breast carcinoma.

Active electromagnetic armor, as a kind of electromagnetic launch, is a future-oriented high-tech weaponry. The geometric parameters of the coil are the key elements affecting the interception performance. In this paper, the influence of copper strip length, copper strip thickness and radius of the base circle on the initial launch velocity of the intercepting plate was studied based on the self-developed launcher. The relationship between the length of the copper strip and the initial velocity was theoretically deduced. The reliability of the simulation was verified by a combination of simulation and experiment. The results show that the initial velocity of the intercepting plate is linear with the winding length of the coil. As the width of the copper strip increases, the initial velocity increases accordingly, and the radius of the base circle has little effect on the initial velocity of intercepting plate.

In traditional Chinese medicine, dihydroartemisinin (DHA) is the focus of extensive attention because of its unique activity with Fe2+ to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) and promote apoptosis. In this work, we designed a newfangled ink@hydrogel containing FeCl3, traditional Chinese ink (Hu Kaiwen ink), and agarose hydrogel to create a synergistic activity with DHA in the treatment of cancer. When the system is irradiated under 1,064 nm for a few minutes, the ink in the ink@hydrogel converts the light to heat and hyperthermia causes the reversible hydrolysis of hydrogel. Then, Fe3+ quickly diffuses from the hydrogel to the tumor microenvironment and is reduced to Fe2+ to break the endoperoxide bridge in pre-injected DHA, which results in the release of free radicals for a potent anticancer action. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a hydrogel tumor therapy system that induces a photo-thermal response in the second near infrared window (NIR-II). in vivo experiments also showed a significant effect of DHA-Fe2+ in chemodynamic therapy (CDT) and in photo-thermal therapy. This hydrogel platform provided an encouraging idea for synergistic tumor therapy.

Prognostics and health management (PHM) with failure prognosis and maintenance decision-making as the core is an advanced technology to improve the safety, reliability, and operational economy of engineering systems. However, studies of failure prognosis and maintenance decision-making have been conducted separately over the past years. Key challenges remain open when the joint problem is considered. The aim of this paper is to develop an integrated strategy for dynamic predictive maintenance scheduling (DPMS) based on a deep auto-encoder and deep forest-assisted failure prognosis method. The proposed DPMS method involves a complete process from performing failure prognosis to making maintenance decisions. The first step is to extract representative features reflecting system degradation from raw sensor data by using a deep auto-encoder. Then, the features are fed into the deep forest to compute the failure probabilities in moving time horizons. Finally, an optimal maintenance-related decision is made through quickly evaluating the costs of different decisions with the failure probabilities. Verification was accomplished using NASA’s open datasets of aircraft engines, and the experimental results show that the proposed DPMS method outperforms several state-of-the-art methods, which can benefit precise maintenance decisions and reduce maintenance costs.

Emergent literacy is the term used to describe the reading and writing experiences of young children before they learn to write and read conventionally, and it is important for the construction of children's early reading skills and the enhancement of their later reading performance. The systematic review was conducted to examine the effectiveness of children's interactive reading apps in promoting emergent literacy for children between the ages of three and eight over the last decade (2013-2022). A total of 50 studies were included in this review, and it can be concluded that multimedia features (e.g., a dictionary, background music, and animated pictures) in children's interactive reading apps are effective for enhancing emergent literacy. Conversely, interactive functions (such as games and hotspots) may distract children's attention, leading to poor reading performances. This review also demonstrated the positive effects of children's interactive reading apps on improving their learning outcomes and behavior. In addition, the results indicated that well-designed apps could promote children's emerging literacy skills. However, more in-depth studies will be required in the future to provide designers with a well-defined guideline for designing reading apps for children.

BACKGROUND:China has a substantial tuberculosis (TB) disease burden and an aging population. Seniors have a higher risk of developing TB disease compared to younger age groups. Active case finding (ACF) could help identify seniors with TB disease. METHODS:From March to June 2017, we included ACF during annual physical check-ups for persons aged ≥ 65 years in Bayi, Sichuan Province. Seniors with clinical TB symptoms (i.e., cough lasting ≥ 2 weeks and/or hemoptysis) or one or more risk factors (e.g., previous TB disease, diabetes, and heavy alcohol consumption) were offered chest x-rays. We used acid-Fast Bacilli smear and solid culture laboratory testing for TB confirmation. We calculated the yield (i.e., cases identified among seniors screened) and cost per new each TB case detected. Focus group-interviews were conducted with health care workers and seniors to evaluate project acceptability. Participation rates and acceptability were used to assess feasibility. RESULTS:Of the 2,393 seniors residing in Bayi, 2,049 (85.6%) were enrolled in the pilot project. Of these seniors, 794 (38.7%) presented with at least one TB risk factor and 74 (3.6%) had symptoms consistent with active TB disease. Three seniors (0.2%)-each presenting with at least one risk factor-were diagnosed with active TB. The project yielded 146 TB cases per 100,000 seniors screened; the cost per case detected was $4,897. Most workers supported ACF if additional resources and staff could be provided. Seniors appreciated the convenience of this integrated health service approach. CONCLUSIONS:Although the yield was lower than expected, ACF appeared feasible in Bayi. Targeting seniors with at least one known TB risk factor could help detect previously unidentified TB cases. However, similar projects in communities with a higher TB prevalence are needed to further evaluate the yield and required resources prior to implementation on a larger scale. Findings from our pilot project should be combined with data from these future ACF projects to improve TB screening criteria.

Background. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the inflammatory response is involved in the progression of lipopolysaccharide- (LPS-) induced myocardial cell apoptosis. Accumulating evidence has shown that thyroxine participates in diseases by downregulating the inflammatory response. This study aimed at investigating whether thyroxine alleviates LPS-induced myocardial cell apoptosis. Methods. Bone marrow-derived macrophages (Mø) were treated with LPS and thyroxine, and Mø differentiation and Mø-related cytokine expression were measured. The effect of Mø differentiation on mouse cardiomyocyte (MCM) apoptosis was also detected in vitro. In addition, C57BL/6 mice underwent thyroidectomy and were treated with LPS 35 days later; subsequently, Mø differentiation and myocardial cell apoptosis in hearts were analyzed. To determine whether the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) p65 pathway mediates the effect of thyroxine on Mø differentiation and myocardial cell apoptosis, the specific NF-κB p65 pathway inhibitor JSH-23 was administered to mice that underwent a thyroidectomy. Results. Levothyroxine treatment significantly reduced the activation of the NF-κB p65 pathway, decreased M1 macrophage (Mø1) differentiation and Mø1-related cytokine mRNA levels in LPS-treated Mø, and increased M2 macrophage (Mø2) differentiation and Mø2-related cytokine mRNA expression. The protective effects of levothyroxine on MCM apoptosis mediated by LPS-treated Mø were alleviated by JSH-23. In mice, thyroidectomy aggravated LPS-induced cardiac injury and cardiac dysfunction, further promoted NF-κB p65 activation, and increased cardiac Mø1 expression and myocardial cell apoptosis but decreased cardiac Mø2 expression. JSH-23 treatment significantly ameliorated the thyroidectomy-induced increases in myocardial cell apoptosis and Mø differentiation. Conclusions. Thyroxine alleviated the Mø1/Mø2 imbalance, reduced the inflammatory response, decreased myocardial cell apoptosis, and protected against cardiac injury and cardiac dysfunction in LPS-treated mice. Thyroxine may be a novel therapeutic strategy to prevent and treat LPS-induced cardiac injury.

Accurate PM2.5 concentration prediction is crucial for protecting public health and improving air quality. As a popular deep learning model, deep belief network (DBN) for PM2.5 concentration prediction has received increasing attention due to its effectiveness. However, the DBN structure parameters that have a significant impact on prediction accuracy and computation time are hard to be determined. To address this issue, a modified grey wolf optimization (MGWO) algorithm is proposed to optimize the DBN structure parameters containing number of hidden nodes, learning rate, and momentum coefficient. The methodology modifies the basic grey wolf optimization (GWO) algorithm using the nonlinear convergence and position update strategies, and then utilizes the training error of the DBN to calculate the fitness function of the MGWO algorithm. Through the multiple iterations, the optimal structure parameters are obtained, and a suitable predictor is finally generated. The proposed prediction model is validated on a real application case. Compared with the other prediction models, experimental results show that the proposed model has a simpler structure but higher prediction accuracy.

In recent decades, landslide displacement forecasting has received increasing attention due to its ability to reduce landslide hazards. To improve the forecast accuracy of landslide displacement, a dynamic forecasting model based on variational mode decomposition (VMD) and a stack long short-term memory network (SLSTM) is proposed. VMD is used to decompose landslide displacement into different displacement subsequences, and the SLSTM network is used to forecast each displacement subsequence. Then, the forecast values of landslide displacement are obtained by reconstructing the forecast values of all displacement subsequences. On the other hand, the SLSTM networks are updated by adding the forecast values into the training set, realizing the dynamic displacement forecasting. The proposed model was verified on the Dashuitian landslide in China. The results show that compared with the two advanced forecasting models, long short-term memory (LSTM) network, and empirical mode decomposition (EMD)−LSTM network, the proposed model has higher forecast accuracy.

High mortality rate of critically-ill patients could be induced by sepsis and septic shock, which is the extremely life threatening. The purpose of this work is to identify and evaluate the potential regulatory mechanism of LPS-induced inflammation associated with miR-6835 and lipid rafts in HUVECs.The 3' UTR luciferase activity of AdipoR1 was detected, which was predicted the potential target gene of miR-6835. Moreover, the treated HUVECs with or without inhibitors or mimics of miR-6835 were used. Furthermore, the bio-functions of HUVECs were explored. The protein expression levels of SIRT-1, AMPK, and AdipoR1 were assessed, which were involved in the AdipoR1 signaling pathway. Then, the interaction between TLR-4 and AdipoR1 in lipid rafts and its mediation role on LPS-induced inflammation was investigated in HUVECs.MiR-6835 targeted directly on AdipoR1, and suppressed its expression in mRNA (mimics of miR-6835: 0.731±0.016 vs control: 1.527±0.015, P

The recovery of motor functions is accompanied by brain reorganization, and identifying the inter-hemispheric interaction post stroke will conduce to more targeted treatments. However, the alterations of bi-hemispheric coordination pattern between homologous areas in the whole brain for chronic stroke patients were still unclear. The present study focuses on the functional connectivity (FC) of mirror regions of the whole brain to investigate the inter-hemispheric interaction using a new fMRI method named voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC). Thirty left subcortical chronic stroke patients with pure motor deficits and 37 well-matched healthy controls (HCs) underwent resting-state fMRI scans. We employed a VMHC analysis to determine the brain areas showed significant differences between groups in FC between homologous regions, and we explored the relationships between the mean VMHC of each survived area and clinical tests within patient group using Pearson correlation. In addition, the brain areas showed significant correlations between the mean VMHC and clinical tests were defined as the seed regions for whole brain FC analysis. Relative to HCs, patients group displayed lower VMHC in the precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, calcarine gyrus, thalamus, cerebellum anterior lobe, and cerebellum posterior lobe (CPL). Moreover, the VMHC of CPL was positively correlated with the Fugl-Meyer Score of hand (FMA-H), while a negative correlation between illness duration and the VMHC of this region was also detected. Furthermore, we found that when compared with HCs, the right CPL exhibited reduced FC with the left precentral gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, middle temporal gyrus, thalamus and hippocampus. Our results suggest that the functional coordination across hemispheres is impaired in chronic stroke patients, and increased VMHC of the CPL is significantly associated with higher FMA-H scores. These findings may be helpful in understanding the mechanism of hand deficit after stroke, and the CPL may serve as a target region for hand rehabilitation following stroke.

BACKGROUND:As a marker for tumor cell proliferation, Ki67 has important impacts on breast cancer (BC) prognosis. Although immunohistochemical staining is the current standard method, variations in analytical practice make it difficult for pathologists to manually measure Ki67 index. This study was to develop a fluorescent spectrum-based quantitative analysis of Ki67 expression by quantum-dots (QDs) multiple imaging technique. METHODS:A QDs-based in situ multiple fluorescent imaging method was developed, which stained nuclear Ki67 as red signal and cytoplasmic cytokeratin (CK) as green signal. Both Ki67 and CK signals were automatically separated and quantified by professional spectrum analysis software. This technique was applied to tissue microarrays from 240 BC patients. Both Ki67 and CK values, and Ki67/CK ratio were obtained for each patient, and their prognostic value on 5-year disease free survival was assessed. RESULTS:This method simultaneously stains nuclear Ki67 and cytoplasmic CK with clear signal contrast, making it easy for signal separation and quantification. The total fluorescent signal intensities of both Ki67 sum and CK sum were obtained, and Ki67/CK ratio calculated. Ki67 sum and Ki67/CK ratio were each attributed into two grades by X-tile software based on the best P value principle. Multivariate analysis showed Ki67 grade (P = 0.047) and Ki67/CK grade (P = 0.004) were independent prognostic factors. Furthermore, area under curve (AUC) of ROC analysis for Ki67/CK grade (AUC: 0.683, 95%CI: 0.613-0.752) was higher than Ki67 grade (AUC: 0.665, 95%CI: 0.596-0.734) and HER-2 gene (AUC: 0.586, 95%CI: 0.510-0.661), but lower than N stage (AUC: 0.760, 95%CI: 0.696-0.823) and histological grade (AUC: 0.756, 95%CI: 0.692-0.820) on predicting the risk for recurrence. CONCLUSIONS:A QDs-based quantitative and in situ multiple imaging on Ki67 and CK was developed to improve Ki67 assessment in BC, and Ki67/CK grade had better performance than Ki67 grade in predicting prognosis.

The formation of new atmospheric aerosol particles and their subsequent growth have been observed under different environmental conditions globally; such observations are few over northwest China. Here, we present an analysis of some case studies for new particle formation (NPF) events from two distinct suburban locations in northern China during May and June of two consecutive years, and provide more information to understand the characteristics of NPF events in North China. Particle number size distribution was measured at suburbs of Beijing (39.75° N, 116.96° E) during 1 June to 2 July 2013 and at suburbs of Xi’an (34.09° N, 108.55° E) during 1 to 25 May 2014. The average of total particle number concentration in the similar size range of 10–487 nm at the suburbs of Beijing (9.0 × 103 cm−3) was about two times higher than those observed at Xi’an (4.7 × 103 cm−3), and the mean particle mode diameter at Beijing was 1.4-fold higher than that at Xi’an. The estimated total condensation sink (CS) at Beijing (3.11 × 10−2 s−1) was also higher than at Xi’an (1.13 × 10−2 s−1). The frequency of NPF events at suburb of Beijing was 24%, lower than that in Xi’an (50%), and also lower than urban site of Beijing (35% in June) and another suburb of Beijing (over 50% in June). The NPF events with (Class I) or without (Class II) subsequent growth were both observed at the two suburb sites. The derived GR at the suburb of Beijing (range from 4.6 to 8.6 nm h−1) was a little higher than that at Xi’an (range from 3.3 to 6.7 nm h−1), which are generally comparable to typical values in mid-latitude reported in previous studies. The air masses coming from north or northwest China favor the occurrence of NPF event under low condensation sink and clear days. The number size distributions of freshly nucleated particles showed clear bimodal distributions on both sites. Additionally, Mode Dp of nucleated particles at the two sites was 17 ± 1 nm and 22 ± 4 nm, respectively during the periods with NPF events. The case study of NPF events at the two suburb sites shows that the surface area concentration and total scattering coefficient (SC) was significant decreased during the NPF events at both sites. High temperature, low condensation sink and low relative humidity furthered the occurrence of NPF events, and wind direction shifts were important for the subsequent growth of particles. NPF events in the suburbs of Beijing usually occurred when relative humidity (RH) < 55%, CS < 0.02 s−1, or 55% < RH < 68%, CS < 0.01 s−1. However, there is no clear range for Xi’an. Furthermore, we observed that some NPF events occurred at higher RH and very low CS in this study on both sites, which means that low CS may be more important than low RH for the particle formation on clear days.