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Renal-artery stenosis, a common disease among persons older than 65 years,may result in hypertension, ischemic nephropathy, and multiple long-term complications [1]. Early studies [2] suggested that renal-artery angioplasty or stentingmay result in significant reductions in systolic blood pressure. However, the Cardiovascular Outcomes in Renal Atherosclerotic Lesions (CORAL) trial [3] recently presented a definitive test of the usefulness of renal-artery stents for moderately severe renalartery stenosis and made a conclusion that renal-artery stenting is no better than medical therapy alone in preventing clinical events. It seems that stenting for renal-artery stenosis after years of its clinical use hits a blind alley. However, pathophysiological changes after stenting include not only improvement in the diameter of the stenotic renal artery but also the tissues of and around the artery, particularly the sympathetic nerve fibers which lie in the adventitia of the renal artery (Fig.1). A recent research [4] demonstrated that balloon angioplasty can reduce the number of sympathetic nerve fibers of the renal artery. So this may be more than just a theoretical consideration. Renal-artery stenosis is characterized not onlybyactivationof the renin–angiotensin system, but also byheightened sympathetic drive [5] which contributes to the pathophysiology of numerous chronic cardiovascular diseases such as essential hypertension, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, diabetes and so on. Nowadays percutaneous catheter-based renal denervation (RDN) is emerging as a new, effective and safe approach to achieve sustained blood pressure reduction in patients with resistant hypertension which can decrease sympathetic activity by interrupting the afferent and efferent renal sympathetic nervous fibers located in the adventitia of the renal arteries by delivery of radiofrequency energy. Herein, we hypothesize that RDN on patients with prior renal stents may enhance the damages of renal sympathetic nervous fibers and reduce the sympathetic activities to a much lower level. However, renal-artery stenosis and prior renal stents are considered a contraindication in routine clinical practice of RDN due to technological unavailability and a worry of deterioration of stenosis. Nevertheless, one case report [6] explored and demonstrated the feasibility and potential effectiveness of the combination of RDN and renal stenting. What's more, a recent small animal study [7] proved that vascular brachytherapy which has been approved for the treatment of in-stent restenosis can also cause renal sympathetic nerve fibrosis while avoiding significant damage to the renal artery. All theseexplorationsmaybreak new ground of therapy with renal-artery stenosis.

Adiponectin is a cytokine produced predominantly by adipose tissue and correlates with glucose and lipid homeostasis. However, the effects of adiponectin on endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and apoptosis of adipose tissue remain elusive. In this study, we found that tunicamycin-induced ER stress increased serum free fatty acid (FFA) and impaired glucose tolerance, elevated the mRNA levels of GRP78, Chop, ATF2 and caspase 3, but reduced adiponectin mRNA level in white adipose tissue. Moreover, ER stress-triggered adipocyte apoptosis by increasing cellular FFA level and Ca2+ level. Further analysis revealed that adiponectin alleviated ER stress-induced adipocyte apoptosis by elevating peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα) mRNA level. Our data also confirmed that adiponectin reduced early apoptotic cells and blocked the mitochondrial apoptosis pathway by activating the AdipoR1/AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) signal pathway. In addition, PPARα bound to ATF2 promoter region and inhibited transcription of ATF2. The inhibition of adipocyte apoptosis by adiponectin was correlated with transcriptional suppression of ATF2. Furthermore, adiponectin inhibited ER stress-induced apoptosis by activating the AMPK/PKC pathway. In summary, our data demonstrate adiponectin inhibited ER stress and apoptosis of adipocyte in vivo and in vitro by activating the AMPK/PPARα/ATF2 pathway. Our study establishes that adiponectin is an important adipocytokine for preventing and treating obesity.

Defibrillation threshold (DFT) testing has traditionally been a routine part of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation. DFT testing was developed in the early days of the ICD when failure of defibrillation was common, recipients had a high-risk of ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF), and the only therapy for rapid VT or VF was a shock. However, modern ICD systems have such a high rate of successful defibrillation that many electrophysiologists now question whether DFT testing is still worthwhile. Studies found that long-term mortality was not higher among patients not undergoing DFT testing. Moreover, there was no survival difference between patients with a lower DFT and a higher DFT. Other studies have demonstrated that DFT testing poses some risk to the patient such as myocardial damage, embolic stroke in patient with atrial fibrillation and DFT testing-related death. If DFT testing is abandoned, more patients may have the opportunity to be treated with ICD, especially in regions with few or no electrophysiologists. It may be argued that other physicians, such as those currently implanting pacemakers, would more readily implant ICDs if not for the requirement of DFT testing.

In this Letter, by using a novel extended homoclinic test approach (EHTA) we obtain two new types of exact periodic solitary-wave and kinky periodic-wave solutions for Jimbo–Miwa equation. Moreover, we investigate the strangely mechanical features of wave solutions. These results enrich the variety of the dynamics of higher-dimensional nonlinear wave field.

The main idea of rough set theory is to extract decision rules by attribute reduction and value reduction in the premises of keeping the ability of classification. This paper presents a new method for the definition of attribute importance. This method consider the definition of absolute nuclear algorithm, under the condition of invariable in keeping the positive region, by comparing to the size of the improved algorithm of attribute importance. The algorithm can reduce the computational complexity and improve the computational efficiency. The presented algorithm is applied to ship fuel. Consumption data analysis, simulation experiment shows that the algorithm is more effective.

BackgroundIn the European Union (EU), the use of diniconazole-M is no longer authorized. However, residues of diniconazole-M occur in various plant commodities.Methodology/principal findingsA selective and simple analytical method for the trace level determination of diniconazole in soil, fruit, vegetables and water samples was developed based on immunoaffinity extraction followed by Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. The ELISA was based on monoclonal antibodies highly specific to diniconazole and was a fast, cost-effective, and selective screening method for the detection of diniconazole. The results of the ELISA correlated well with gas chromatography (GC) results, with the correlation coefficient of 0.9879 (n = 19). A simple gel permeation chromato- graphy clean-up method was developed to purify extracts from matrices containing high amounts of fat and natural pigments, without the need for a large dilution of the sample. The immunoaffinity column (IAC) capacity was 0.180 mg g(-1). The columns could be re-used approximately 20 times with no significant alteration in capacity. The recoveries from complex samples were in the range of 89.2% to 96.1% with a relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.770%-6.11% by ELISA. The results were in good agreement with those obtained by HPLC method.Conclusion/significanceThe IAC extraction procedure coupled with HPLC and ELISA analysis could be also used as alternative effective analytical methods for the determination of diniconazole concentrations in complex samples.

Meeting abstracts Expansion of antigen-specific T cells, from peripheral blood specific for tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) is a prerequisite for the advanced cellular therapy. Such antigen-specific T cells should express a Th1-functional phenotype and are able to enter tumor-tissue. We identified

Meeting abstracts The generation of T lymphocytes with specific reactivity against autologous tumor cells is a prerequisite for effective targeted cellular therapies. We established a protocol for tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) cultures from small biopsies or surgically resected material

Radiofrequency (RF) catheter ablation of left-sided accessory pathways is really a great challenge in patients with prosthetic heart valves so that it is in general delayed or even avoided in such patients due to concerns of the higher perceived risks of mechanical complications and difficulty of

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is still a primary cause of death in most countries. The pathogenesis of CVD can be influenced by multiple risk factors. Recent studies suggested that the innate immune system may be involved in the development of CVD. Pentraxins are critical components of the innate immune system. Recent researches have demonstrated that elevated plasma pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is associated with cardiovascular events and cardiovascular risk factors. Thus, we hypothesized that elevated plasma PTX3 is a potential cardiovascular risk factor evidenced by the following aspects: (1) PTX3 inhibited angiogenesis and promoted restenosis, (2) the expression of PTX3 increased in advanced atherosclerotic lesions and the blood of patients with ischemic heart disorders, (3) elevated plasma PTX3 levels were associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes. If the hypothesis is confirmed, PTX3 will be an effective target point to the prevention and treatment of CVD.

To retrospectively evaluate the efficacy of stent-delayed implantation in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with high thrombus burden after thrombus extraction was performed.Of 186 consecutive AMI patients, 56 were included according to thrombus score(TS)or=2, and then were divided into 2 groups based on the thrombus score after thrombus extraction was executed: the stent-direct implantation group (TS=0 or 1)and the stent-delayed implantation group (TSor=2) even if 3 times thrombus extraction were given. Thrombolysis in myocardial infarction(TIMI)flow grade and TIMI myocardial perfusion (TMP) were used to assess the coronary artery flow and myocardial perfusion,respectively.TIMI score in the stent-direct implantation group was lower than that in the stent-delayed implantation group. There was no significant difference(P=0.07). TMP score in the stent-direct implantation group was significantly lower than that in the stent-delayed implantation group (P0.05).Stent-delayed implantation can remarkably improve myocardial perfusion in AMI patients with high thrombus burden after thrombus extraction and intensive anti-thrombosis therapy is administrated.

An indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ic-ELISA) has been developed for detection of pretilachlor in water and soil. An immunogen was prepared from haptens of pretilachlor conjugated to bovine serum albumin(BSA). The specific polyclonal antibodies were obtained by immunizing New Zealand white rabbits. The influence of parameters including concentrations of methanol, ionic strength and pH values were optimized to improve the sensitivity of the assay. The optimized ELISA was shown to have a high sensitivity and specificity for pretilachlor. Under optimal conditions, the ELISA has demonstrated an 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of 0.0359 mg/L with a limit of detection (LOD, IC10) of 6.9 ng/L. The cross-reactivities to some analogs of pretilachlor (acetochlor, butachlor, metazachlor and metalaxyl) were below 1.5%. The average recoveries of pretilachlor from distilled water, tap water, paddy water and soil were in the range of 77.0–115.2% between 0.005 and 5.0 mg/L. The results of ELISA for spiked samples were confirmed by GC–ECD with a high correlation coefficient of 0.9950(n=11). Thus, the ELISA proven to be a sensitive, specific, inexpensive and quantitative tool for detection of pretilachlor from four kinds of spiked samples.

It is a trend of modern measurement technology to combine the contact and non-contact measurement techniques together to realize a more efficient and high-precision inspection of manufactured products. Based on an analysis of existing optical inspection technologies and the merits and shortcomings of coordinate measuring machine (CMM) technique, we propose a multi-sensor automatic inspection system, which combines the coordinate measuring machine with non-contact optical measuring apparatus and can select automatically either of the two methods for different (simple-geometry or complex free-form) measured objects so as to raise the accuracy amd efficiency of measurement. The general planning and key components of the system are discussed.

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are common birth defects, whose specific biomarkers are needed. The purpose of this pilot study is to determine whether protein profiling in NTD-mothers differ from normal controls using SELDI-TOF-MS. ProteinChip Biomarker System was used to evaluate 82 maternal serum samples, 78 urine samples and 76 amniotic fluid samples. The validity of classification tree was then challenged with a blind test set including another 20 NTD-mothers and 18 controls in serum samples, and another 19 NTD-mothers and 17 controls in urine samples, and another 20 NTD-mothers and 17 controls in amniotic fluid samples. Eight proteins detected in serum samples were up-regulated and four proteins were down-regulated in the NTD group. Four proteins detected in urine samples were up-regulated and one protein was down-regulated in the NTD group. Six proteins detected in amniotic fluid samples were up-regulated and one protein was down-regulated in the NTD group. The classification tree for serum samples separated NTDs from healthy individuals, achieving a sensitivity of 91% and a specificity of 97% in the training set, and achieving a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 97% and a positive predictive value of 95% in the test set. The classification tree for urine samples separated NTDs from controls, achieving a sensitivity of 95% and a specificity of 94% in the training set, and achieving a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 82% and a positive predictive value of 85% in the test set. The classification tree for amniotic fluid samples separated NTDs from controls, achieving a sensitivity of 93% and a specificity of 89% in the training set, and achieving a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 88% and a positive predictive value of 90% in the test set. These suggest that SELDI-TOF-MS is an additional method for NTDs pregnancies detection.

A method for surface profile measurement using a chessboard-shaped 2-D Ronchi grating is proposed. The gradients in two orthogonal directions of the measured surface can be obtained simultaneously using a chessboard-shaped 2-D Ronchi grating, so that it is possible to reconstruct the surface profile by means of only one Ronchigram with high accuracy. The measuring principle and the design of the chessboard-shaped 2-D Ronchi grating are described. Measurements of both stationary and varying surfaces using an instrument constructed on the basis of the method were conducted with satisfactory results.