Search

Objective To explore the predictive value of T cell activation in peripheral blood of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) after anti PD-1 therapy and its ratio to tumor burden on the efficacy of immunotherapy. Methods Serum specimens were obtained before and after treatment from 85 patients with HCC who received anti-PD-1 treatment. Indicators such as cell subpopulations and T cell activation were detected by flow cytometry. Combined with imaging analysis, cutoff value was obtained by X-tile software. Survival analysis was used to evaluate patients' outcomes. Results The maximum fold change of Ki-67+/PD-1+/CD8+ T cells in treatment cycles and the tumor burden determined by imaging were associated with prognoses. The ratio of T cell Ki-67+/PD-1+/CD8+ expression to tumor burden ratio greater than 0.6 at the first cycle of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy was associated with improvements in progression-free survival and overall survival (P < 0.05). Conclusion The ratio of activationa in T cells in peripheral blood after immunotherapy to the tumor burden may be related to the clinical efficacy of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy for HCC.

PurposeWe prospectively evaluate the short-term clinical and radiographic outcomes of the only Chinese domestically produced trabecular titanium acetabular cup(3D ACT™ cup) in primary total hip arthroplasty (THA), aiming to provide evidence-based support for its clinical application.MethodsA total of 236 patients, who underwent primary THA using 3D ACT™ cup in the Department of Joint Surgery at our hospital between January 2017 and June 2019, were included in this study. General patient data, imaging information, functional scores, and complications were collected to evaluate the early clinical efficacy.ResultsAll patients were followed up for 33–52 months, with an average of (42.2 ± 9.2) months. At the last follow-up, the preoperative HHS score increased significantly from 43.7 ± 6.8 to 85.6 ± 9.3 points (P

In order to improve the quality of hot - dip galvanized coating on ductile iron castings, the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and X - ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and other means were employed to study the effects of pre - oxidation on the formation of oxides on surface of ductile iron, the surface silicon content and hot - dip galvanized coating structure. Results showed that a selective SiO2 oxide layer was formed on the surface of pre - oxidized ductile iron. After pre - oxidation, the silicon content on the surface of ductile iron increased obviously. On the contrary, the silicon content on the surface of ductile iron decreased after alkali washing and acidic pickling. After pre - oxidation at 800 ℃ for 5 h, the silicon content on the surface of ductile iron decreased to 1.86%(mass fraction). Moreover, the thickness of hot dip galvanized alloy coating of ductile iron could be obviously reduced by surface pre - oxidation. After pre - oxidation at 800 ℃ for 5 h, the alloy layer in hot dip galvanizing of ductile iron had the densest structure and the smallest thickness of 20.1 μm. Besides, the variation law of alloy layer thickness with pre - oxidation temperature was basically consistent with the variation law of silicon content on the surface of ductile iron after alkali washing and acidic pickling with pre - oxidation temperature.

Hyperbolic electrode linear ion trap is a good choice as the mass analyzer of miniaturized ion trap mass spectrometer for the reason that it has a compact size and excellent performance. However, ions are ejected from both opposite directions along the x-axis for existing hyperbolic electrode linear ion trap, which means that the ion detection efficiency could not be higher than 50% if only one ion detector is employed in the miniaturized ion trap mass spectrometer. This symmetrical structure significantly influences the analysis performance of hyperbolic electrode linear ion trap and limits the application at miniaturized ion trap mass spectrometer. Therefore, in order to further improve the ion detection efficiency of the ion trap, an asymmetric hyperboloid linear ion trap structure was proposed. By optimizing the unidirectional stretching distance Δra of the x-axis electrode in the direction of ion ejection after the optimization to the stretching distances Δrx of both x axis electrodes, a reasonable asymmetric radio frequency electric field was introduced for improving ion unidirectional ejection efficiency. The samples used in the simulation experiments were ions with m/z 609, 610 and 611. The internal electric field distribution, ion motion trajectory and simulated mass spectra peak of the asymmetric hyperboloid linear ion trap for different electrode structures were analyzed by simulation software SIMION and AXSIM. Then the ion unidirectional ejection efficiency and mass resolution were calculated, and the data were drawn as line charts. The simulation results showed that on the basis of the optimized symmetrical hyperboloid ion trap structure, whose x-axis electrodes were both stretched by Δrx=0.9 mm, an ion unidirectional ejection efficiency of over 90% and a mass resolution over 5 100 for m/z 610 were achieved by optimizing the parameters such as AC frequency and scanning rate, when one of the x-axis electrodes was unidirectionally stretched by Δra=0.8 mm. In addition, under the condition of ions with large m/z 1 890, a mass resolution up to 10 590 and an ion unidirectional ejection efficiency of 93.3% were achieved when Δra=0.7 mm. It proved that the asymmetric hyperboloid linear ion trap with the optimized geometric structure could greatly improve the ion detection efficiency with only one ion detector under the guarantee of high mass resolution, which had a significant advantage for developing miniaturized ion trap mass spectrometer in the future. On the whole, the research could provide a theoretical foundation for further investigations, but there were still some problems to be solved, such as the actual processing, assembly and experiment.

Based on the excellent chelating ability of phytic acid (PA), Ag+, Cu2+, Fe3+, and Zn2+, were used to chelate with PA, and deposited on the surface of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) to form core-shell structure, so as to improve the interfacial compatibility between layered clay and polymer matrix. Surface coated LDHs (LDHs@PA-M) loaded with different metal ions were prepared. The micromorphology of LDHs@PA-M loaded with different metal ions was studied and applied in the strengthening modification of poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL). The results show that PA can form stable and uniform nano-coatings with Ag+ and Cu2+on the surface of LDHs. With the excellent antibacterial activity of Ag+ and Cu2+, the antibacterial rates of LDHs@PA-Ag+ and LDHs@PA-Cu2+ against Escherichia coli (E.coli) both exceed 99.99%. Compared with pure PCL, the tensile strength and elongation at break of LDHs@PA-Cu2+/PCL nanocomposites (mass fraction of LDHs@PA-Cu2+ is 1%) increase by 30.7% and 33.3%, reaching 40.9 MPa and 816%, respectively. The enhancement of mechanical properties for LDHs@PA-Cu2+/PCL nanocomposites is the most remarkable. The antibacterial rate of LDHs@PA-Cu2+/PCL and LDHs@PA-Ag+/PCL nanocom-posites against E.coli both exceed 99.99%. It shows excellent antibacterial activity, which expands the application of layered clay/bio-based polymer nanocomposites in the field of active packaging.

C12H9ClFN3, monoclinic, C2/c (no. 15), a = 24.713(13) Å, b = 15.459(13) Å, c = 17.507(12) Å, β = 17.515(11)°, V = 4742(6) Å3, Z = 16, Rgt(F) = 0.0530, wRref(F2) = 0.1161, T = 113(2) K.

In order to screen out the preservatives that had better effects on inhibiting the white-blush of freshcut carrots, prolong its shelf life. Using fresh carrots as the test material, the effects of different treatments on the white-blush of fresh-cut carrots during storage were compared, and the changes in whiteness value of fresh-cut carrots in each group were analyzed. Other relevant physical and chemical indicators were measured. The results showed that compared with other treatment groups, the onion treatment group had the lowest whiteness index, the strongest antioxidant capacity, and the best quality of fresh-cut carrots. This indicated that onions were suitable for processing fresh-cut carrots, which cold better inhibit the activities of POD, PAL, and other enzymes, inhibit the white-blush of fresh-cut carrots, and delay their aging.

In this paper, it is proved that the Ricci operator of an almost Kenmotsu 3-h-manifold M is of transversely Killing-type if and only if M is locally isometric to the hyperbolic 3-space ℍ3(−1){{\mathbb{H}}}^{3}(-1) or a non-unimodular Lie group endowed with a left invariant non-Kenmotsu almost Kenmotsu structure. This result extends those results obtained by Cho [Local symmetry on almost Kenmotsu three-manifolds, Hokkaido Math. J. 45 (2016), no. 3, 435–442] and Wang [Three-dimensional locally symmetric almost Kenmotsu manifolds, Ann. Polon. Math. 116 (2016), no. 1, 79–86; Three-dimensional almost Kenmotsu manifolds with η\eta -parallel Ricci tensor, J. Korean Math. Soc. 54 (2017), no. 3, 793–805].

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Despite the substantial impact of environmental factors, individuals with a family history of liver cancer have an increased risk for HCC. However, genetic factors have not been studied systematically by genome-wide approaches in large numbers of individuals from European descent populations (EDP). APPROACH AND RESULTS: We conducted a 2-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) on HCC not affected by HBV infections. A total of 1872 HCC cases and 2907 controls were included in the discovery stage, and 1200 HCC cases and 1832 controls in the validation. We analyzed the discovery and validation samples separately and then conducted a meta-analysis. All analyses were conducted in the presence and absence of HCV. The liability-scale heritability was 24.4% for overall HCC. Five regions with significant ORs (95% CI) were identified for nonviral HCC: 3p22.1, MOBP , rs9842969, (0.51, [0.40-0.65]); 5p15.33, TERT , rs2242652, (0.70, (0.62-0.79]); 19q13.11, TM6SF2 , rs58542926, (1.49, [1.29-1.72]); 19p13.11 MAU2 , rs58489806, (1.53, (1.33-1.75]); and 22q13.31, PNPLA3 , rs738409, (1.66, [1.51-1.83]). One region was identified for HCV-induced HCC: 6p21.31, human leukocyte antigen DQ beta 1, rs9275224, (0.79, [0.74-0.84]). A combination of homozygous variants of PNPLA3 and TERT showing a 6.5-fold higher risk for nonviral-related HCC compared to individuals lacking these genotypes. This observation suggests that gene-gene interactions may identify individuals at elevated risk for developing HCC. CONCLUSIONS: Our GWAS highlights novel genetic susceptibility of nonviral HCC among European descent populations from North America with substantial heritability. Selected genetic influences were observed for HCV-positive HCC. Our findings indicate the importance of genetic susceptibility to HCC development.

To examine the perceived impact of international educational experiences and cultural beliefs before and after completing a 1-year Masters of Science in Nursing program.

Aliphatic polyester block copolymers poly(ε-caprolactone) -poly(butylene succinate) -poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL-PBS-PCL) were synthesized by the ring-opening polymerization of ε-CL in the presence of the pre-polymerized PBS as the macro-initiator. LDHs-g-PCL were prepared by in-situ ring-opening polymerization of ε-CL. Then LDHs-g-PCL/PCL-PBS-PCL nanocomposites were prepared by blending PCL-PBS-PCL and LDHs-g-PCL via solution casting method. The chemical structures of PCL-PBS-PCL and LDHs-g-PCL were investigated. And crystallization behavior, mechanical properties and barrier properties of nanocomposites were also deeply studied. The results of thermal analysis confirm that the crystallization of PBS blocks is restrained markedly with the addition of LDHs-g-PCL. On the contrary, the crystallization of PCL chains is gradually increasing. The changes of crystallization for nanocomposites lead to the decrease in the high temperature melting peaks and the increase in the low temperature melting peaks. Even though a slight decrease (6%) in tensile strength, elongation at break of nanocomposites reaches to the maximum value of 772% (increased by 35%) in the presence of LDHs-g-PCL containing 20% (mass fraction). Compared with pure PCL-PBS-PCL, the O2 permeability of nanocomposites decreased by nearly 52% as LDHs-g-PCL content increase up to 50% (mass fraction). The key parameters to improve the barrier properties of nanocomposites are not only the barrier effect of the LDHs (a decrease in diffusion is expected because of a more tortuous path for diffusing molecules) but also the bulk effect that they develop in the polymer matrix.

The influence of quenching temperature and holding time in dual-phase region on microstructure and mechanical properties of 7Ni steel was studied by X-ray diffractometer, scanning electron microscopy and thermal dilatometer. Based on the thermal expansion curve, the production and transformation rate of reversed austenite of 7Ni steel under each stage of the QLT treatment was quantitatively measured, and the transformation process of reversed austenite was revealed. The results indicate that the transformation of reversed austenite during QLT treatment successively goes through four stages:quenching temperature holding, quenching cooling, tempering temperature holding and tempering cooling. Appropriately improving the quenching temperature in dual-phase region and extending the holding time is beneficial to the transformation of reversed austenite during tempering, and also promotes its uniform distribution, which consequently reduces the strength and enhances the ductility as well as toughness of 7Ni steel. Under the quenching in dual-phase region treatment at 660℃ for 30min, the comprehensive mechanical properties of the 7Ni steel are the best, which completely meet the mechanical property requirements of 9Ni steel stipulated by ASTM A553.

With the continuous growth of the global submarine cable laying length, the frequency of faults and the caused economic losses are increasing year by year. Rapid identification of submarine cable faults can reduce economic losses. For several typical submarine cable faults, this paper proposes a recognition method based on FCN-GRU-SVM. First, pre-process the original signal, then import the data into FCN-GRU to extract the signal features, and finally use SVM to identify the fault types. The experimental verification using the data set obtained by finite element simulation shows that the proposed method is superior to the comparison model and other time-frequency processing methods in accuracy and robustness.

Fe-17Cr-4C-2V-Mn-Si-Ti complex system hardfacing alloys were deposited by using flux-cored wire self-shielded open arc welding. The effects of silicon on their M7C3 ( M =Fe, Cr, V, Mn) phases and abrasion resistance were investigated by OM, XRD and SEM. The results show that, with silicon content increasing from 0.6%(mass fraction) to 2.4%, the size of primary M7C3carbides gradually reduces and transites from rod-like shape to block-like shape in dispersion distributing state. γ-Fe phases, which adjacent to those primary M7C3 grains, progressively reduce until disappear. It dues to that silicon can change the precursor of primary M7C3 nucleates in nature, e.g. liquid high carbon atom clusters and it results in the change of their morphology, distribution and size. The wear test results indicate that the abrasion resistance of open arc hardfacing alloys improves firstly and then reduces when silicon content increases from 0.6% to 2.4%. The optimum abrasion resistance is acquired at 1.5%Si. The analysis on the surface worn morphologies show that the micro-cutting and micro-spalling wearing mechanisms coexist.

In order to guide a reasonable application of the bulk ultrafine-grained industrial pure iron, a serious of ultrafine-grained pure iron samples with different microstructures were fabricated by multi-passes ECAP and heat-treatment, and their microstructures and pitting corrosion behaviour were investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electrochemical polarization and impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques, respectively. Results show that:with the increase of ECAP passes, lath-shaped structure with high dislocation density transforms into equiaxed grains with low dislocation density; the dislocation density decreases and the high-angle grain boundaries increase, after the annealing treatment. ECAP passes have less effect on the self-passivation of pure iron, and its open circuit potential (OCP) and polarization resistance are less changed; the pitting corrosion resistance of the ECAPed pure iron is related to the ECAP passes:the pitting potential first decreases and then increases with the increase of ECAP passes; the self-passivation property and pitting corrosion resistance of the ECAPed pure iron are improved after the annealing heat-treatment, the OCP, polarization resistance and pitting potential values increase obviously.

PURPOSE:To analyze the change of CT texture features of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESC) during RT delivery and to correlate these changes with the RT responses and survival. METHODS:A total of 61 ESC patients received radical RT were screened. Weekly CTs (4-6 sets for each patient) were acquired during RT. The tumors, normal esophageal mucosa tissue (NEC) of 5 cm and the spinal cord in the relevant area were delineated. CT texture features were extracted with a home-made tool. The changes of these features were analyzed by t-test. The correlations of the changes of features with RT responses and with patient survival were investigated by Pearson analysis. RESULTS:The average changes were increased by 0.00072 ±0.00197 for coarseness, by 0.14 ±0.40 for entropy, and by 2.34 ±3.56 for strength. In addition, the average changes were reduced by 8.88 ±15.71cc for volume and by 0.07 ±0.11 for busyness. The changes of the coarseness, strength, STD and entropy in ESC were different for the good and poor response groups. The survival rate of the patients was significantly correlated with the change of coarseness and strength (P = 0.0027 and P = 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS:During RT, changes of CT texture features of ESC, e.g., coarseness, strength, STD, entropy and volume are correlated with radiation response and survival rate. With more clinical data and robust research, CT features, e.g., coarseness and strength, can be selected as outstanding imaging biomarkers for prediction of RT prognosis of ESC.

Excessive use of chemical fertilizers in the soil will cause excessive residues of heavy metals, soil hardening and high soil alkalinity. A soil pH tester is generally used to test the soil pH scale to ensure the normal growth of crops. However, the tester cannot be used directly in the case of soil hardening and the soil should be moistened before measurement. In addition, existing soil pH testers can only perform single-point tests, and multiple tests are generally required in order to obtain accurate experimental data. Common deep soil pH test devices are difficult to use and have the problem of inaccurate measurement results due to excessive impurities in the soil in the process of use, resulting in errors in soil analysis which require secondary revision to improve the soil environment. To make up for the defects of existing technologies, this study designs a deep high-moisture soil pH tester, which has the advantage of high soil impurity filtering performance and addresses the problem of inaccurate measurement results due to excessive impurities in the soil.