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During the investigations of macrofungi resources in Zhejiang Province, China, an interesting wood rot fungus was collected. Based on morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies, it is described as a new species, Anthracophyllum sinense. A. sinense is characterized by its sessile, charcoal black and pleurotoid pileus, sparse lamellae occasionally branching, clavate basidia with long sterigmata [(3-)6-7(-8) μm], and non-heteromorphous cystidia. A. sinense establishes a separate lineage close to A. archeri and A. lateritium in the phylogenetic tree., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Background: We aimed to compare the performance of three contrast-enhanced T1-weighted three-dimensional (3D) magnetic resonance (MR) sequences to detect brain tumors at 3 Tesla. The three sequences were: (I) delay alternating with nutation for tailored excitation sampling perfection with application-optimized contrasts using different flip angle evolution (DANTE-SPACE), (II) pointwise encoding time reduction with radial acquisition (PETRA), and (III) magnetization-prepared rapid acquisition with gradient echo (MPRAGE)., Methods: This study involved 77 consecutive patients, including 34 patients with known primary brain tumors and 43 patients suspected of intracranial metastases. All patients underwent each of the three sequences with comparable spatial resolution and acquisition time post-injection. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) for gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM), contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs) for lesion/GM, lesion/WM, and GM/WM were quantitatively compared. Two radiologists determined the total number of enhancing lesions by consensus. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) between the two radiologists for metastases presence, qualitative ratings for image quality, and acoustic noise level of each sequence were assessed., Results: Among the three sequences, SNRs and CNRs between lesions and surrounding parenchyma were highest using DANTE-SPACE, but CNR WM/GM was the lowest with DANTE-SPACE. SNRs for PETRA images were significantly higher than those for MPRAGE (P<0.001). CNRs between lesions and surrounding parenchyma were similar for PETRA and MPRAGE (P>0.05). Significantly more brain metastases were detected with DANTE-SPACE (n=94) compared with MPRAGE (n=71) and PETRA (n=72). The ICCs were 0.964 for MPRAGE, 0.975 for PETRA, and 0.973 for DANTE-SPACE. Qualitative scores for lesion imaging using DANTE-SPACE were significantly higher than those obtained with PETRA and MPRAGE (P=0.002 and P=0.004, respectively). The acoustic noise level for PETRA (64.45 dB) was significantly lower than that for MPRAGE (78.27 dB, P<0.01) and DANTE-SPACE (80.18 dB, P<0.01)., Conclusions: PETRA achieves comparable detection of brain tumors with MPRAGE and is preferred for depicting osseous metastases and meningeal enhancement. DANTE-SPACE with blood vessel suppression showed improved detection of cerebral metastases compared with MPRAGE and PETRA, which could be helpful for the differential diagnosis of tumors., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://dx.doi.org/10.21037/qims-21-107). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (2022 Quantitative Imaging in Medicine and Surgery. All rights reserved.)

The impacts of global climate change and human disturbance on terrestrial ecosystems has been expanding in intensity and scope. However, there is a lack of evaluation methods for large-scale heterogeneous landscape systems during ecosystem integrity assessment. From the perspective of landscape ecology, this study chose the indicators of landscape structure and landscape stability to comprehensively evaluate regional landscape change characteristics and ecosystem integrity dynamics of Greater Hinggan Mountains area using land use data and NPP data of 2005, 2010 and 2015 with GIS data processing and analysis platform. The results showed that Greater Hinggan Mountains area was dominated by forest land. The dominance degree of forest land was stable at 64.9%, which was much higher than the grassland that with the second dominance. The landscape diversity index was 0.59 in all three periods, accounting for 42.4% of the maximum value of landscape diversity index. Such a result indicated that the landscape resistance was stable in this area. From the view of landscape biomass, farmland and residential land had increased year by year, while forest area had decreased year by year, indicating that the effects of human disturbance on Greater Hinggan Mountains area were increasing.

Klippel-Trénaunay syndrome (KTS) is a rare angio-osteo-hypertrophic syndrome characterized by vascular malformations, soft tissue and/or bone hypertrophy, and varicose veins. For the purpose of describing the imaging findings and elucidating the role of medical imaging in the diagnosis and assessment of patient with KTS, we have reviewed the imaging data of 14 KTS patients. The imaging features on different imaging modalities were analyzed. Unilateral lower limb involvement was evident in 71% of cases (n=10) and bilateral but asymmetric lower limb involvement in the remaining 29% of cases (n=4). The most commonly depicted imaging features were varicosities in 93% (n=13), muscle hypertrophy in 79% (n=11) and venous anomalies in 64% (n=9). Other less common imaging findings included lymphedema in 29% (n=4), arterial malformations 29% (n=4), soft tissue hemangiomas 21% (n=3), pelvic and thigh phleboliths 21% (n=3), venous aneurysms 21% (n=3), bone abnormalities 14% (n=2) and lymphadenopathy 14% (n=2). A severe unilateral lower limb deformity resulting in contractures and muscle atrophy of the whole limb was depicted in 1 case. The pathognomonic marginal vein of Servelle was identified in 2 cases. AV shunt was highly suspected in 4 cases and was confirmed by DSA in 1 case, making Klippel-Trénaunay-Weber syndrome a more apt diagnosis. Associated ipsilateral duplicated renal artery was found in 1 case. We have concluded that medical imaging is the cornerstone in the diagnosis and assessment of severity and complications, follow-up and differentiation of KTS from other similar conditions. Different imaging modalities play complementary roles in the evaluation of KTS patients.

Natural capital trends of Shenyang from 1995 to 2014 were analyzed using improved three-dimensional ecological footprint model. The results showed that, from 1995 to 2014, the ecological carrying capacity per capita of Shenyang fluctuated within a narrow range generally; the per capital ecological footprint, ecological deficit, footprint size and the footprint depth per capita increased along a wave-like curve. The changing rates of footprint size and depth tended to stabilize gradually. The way of natural capital utilization of cultivated land changed from capital flow in 2004 to capital stock, the capital stock replaced capital flow and became a source to meet the need of na-tural resources in the regional cultivated land, the use ratios of stock-flows increased gradually. The capital flow had been used by woodland and the occupancy rates of capital flows remained unchanged. The capital stock had been used by grassland and water, and the use ratios of stock-flows increased gradually. The development of Shenyang was in an unsustainable state. Coordinating the relationship between natural capital stock consumption and the utilization of stock-flows was one of the key ways to realize the sustainable development of Shenyang. Developing new resource, rationally planning the land and improving land utilization should be to reduce the consumption of natural capi-tal, at the same time, the protection of ecological environment should be to achieve sustainable development.

Transplantation using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) is emerging as a potential regenerative therapy after ischemic attacks in the brain. However, it has been questioned because very few transplanted BMSCs are detected homing to and survived in the ischemic region. Improving the cell viability and migration ability under the complex ischemic condition seems very important. The aim of our study is to identify whether hypoxic condition and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) could improve the cell survival and migration ability of transplanted cells or hypoxic condition could promote BMSC's neural differentiation. BMSCs were treated under either normoxic (21% O 2 ) or hypoxic (1% O 2 ) (HP-BMSCs) conditions, no significant apoptosis was observed in hypoxic precondition (HP) group, our study confirmed that HP improves BMSCs proliferation and migration. Meanwhile, neural induction of BMSCs under hypoxic condition exhibited significant superior results than normoxic condition. Additionally, the addition of G-CSF in HP-BMSCs culture media promoted HP efficiency on BMSCs. These findings shed light on novel efficient strategy on the prosperity of BMSCs. Hypoxic preconditioning and cultured with G-CSF may become a promising therapeutics for cell-based therapy in the treatments of ischemia stroke.

Kouhe River water pollution caused by industry, agriculture and life sewage, not only reduced the water use function, but also directly affected the quality of Qinghe River. Due to the lack of effective management of water resources, the irrational use and water environment pollution occurred in Kouhe River basin. In this paper, in order to maintain the sustainable development of Kouhe River basin, taking Xifeng County and Kaiyuan City as two control units, COD as pollution factor, the water environmental capacity of Kouhe River basin was calculated. Combined with water quality monitoring data, river environment functional zone, pollution census data and the recovery cost of COD, an ecological compensation standard was determined. When the guarantee rates were 50%, 75%, and the average flow of the driest month in recent 10 years, the corresponding compensation standards of Xifeng County to downstream Kaiyuan City were 390.9 x 10(4), 448.6 x 10(4) and 514 x 10(4) yuan · a(-1), respectively. The river basin ecological compensation mechanism was put forward which should include ecological compensation fund raising, allocation and supervision.

In acute stroke magnetic resonance imaging, many attempts have been made to identify the onset time of ischemic events using the simply quantitative judgment of relative signal intensity (rSI) from various MR images. However, no uniform opinion has been achieved broadly till now. The controversy might derive from the potential patients' selection bias of clinical retrospective study, the discrepant MR parameters, and the various sample sizes among different studies. Thus, we evaluated the temporal change of the relative DWI signal intensity (rDWI), relative ADC value (rADC), relative FLAIR signal intensity (rFLAIR), and relative T2 signal intensity (rT2), and further compare their diagnostic value in identifying the hyperacute lesions based on our embolic canine model with clear onset time. Twenty ischemic models were successfully established. All rSI values were linearly correlated to time with significance until 24 h after model establishment (P < 0.05). Paired comparison of ROC curves showed that significant difference was found between rADC and other three rSIs (P < 0.0001). However, no significant difference was found among rDWI, rT2 and rFLAIR. Our results indicated that rDWI, rFLAIR and rT2 may be helpful to predict the onset time of ischemic events with the similar diagnostic value. However, the rADC does not have comparable predictive value in our embolic canine model.

Background and Purpose: Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability, and many studies have focused on the evolution of FLAIR imaging in the acute and chronic time window. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential efficacy of FLAIR-related techniques in identifying the onset time of cerebral ischemia in a canine embolic stroke model., Materials and Methods: An embolic ischemic model was generated through the use of an autologous clot in 20 beagle dogs. Both FLAIR and DWI were performed at 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours, 6 hours, and 24 hours after embolization, respectively. Visual "DWI-FLAIR mismatch" was defined as hyperintense signal detected on DWI but not on FLAIR. The relative signal intensity of FLAIR-positive lesions and the degree of DWI-FLAIR mismatch was calculated as relative FLAIR = relative signal intensity of FLAIR positive lesions, mismatch degree = (100-VFLAIR/VDWI) × 100%., Results: The ischemic model was successfully established in all animals. FLAIR-positive lesions were seen in 3, 11, 16, 19, and 20 beagle dogs at 5 time points after embolization, respectively. There was significant correlation between the relative FLAIR, degree of DWI-FLAIR mismatch, and the onset time (relative FLAIR: r = +0.42; 95% CI, 0.20-0.60; mismatch degree: r = -0.85; 95% CI, 0.89-0.78). Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that the degree of DWI-FLAIR mismatch could identify the hyperacute ischemic lesions with a sensitivity range from 1.00-0.76; visual DWI-FLAIR mismatch sensitivity ranged from 0.85-0.39, whereas specificity was 0.83-0.95 versus 0.85-1.00., Conclusions: The relative FLAIR and DWI-FLAIR mismatch values were useful in predicting the onset time in our canine embolic stroke model. The degree of DWI-FLAIR mismatch proposed in our study could be a good indicator with high sensitivity for identifying the hyperacute ischemic stroke.

By constructing an evaluation system based on emergy analysis which included emergy flow, source of emergy index, social subsystem evaluation index, economic subsystem evaluation index, natural subsystem evaluation index and composite index, the development and sustainability of the eco-economic system of Liaoning Province between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. The result showed that from 2000 to 2010, the total used emergy increased from 3440.12 x 10(20) sej to 7636.33 x 10(20) sej, among which the proportion of the nonrenewable emergy in 2010 occupied the most in the total by 68.6% , and the emergy per capita increased from 8.32 x 10(15) sej to 17.96 x 10(15) sej. The emergy self-support ratio in the system was generally higher, while it dropped from 91.1% in 2000 to 79.9% in 2010. The emergy loading ratio increased from 3.22 to 7.80, the emergy sustainable index dropped from 3.47 to 0.64, and the emergy index for sustainable development decreased from 6.73 to 1.56. It suggested the eco-economic system of Liaoning Province presented an unsustainable development trend. The development level of Liaoning in 2010 merely equaled to the level of Japan and America in the 1980s.