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Radiodermatitis is an inevitable side effect of radiotherapy in cancer treatment and there is currently no consensus on effective drugs for treating the condition. Vitamin B

Background: Liver cancer (LC) is a common malignancy with very high morbidity. Pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases (PDKs) are regulators of mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase complexes (PDCs) and play an important role in regulating cellular energy metabolism. In this study, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database was used to analyze the expression of PDK2 mRNA in LC, and to explore the value of PDK2 in the diagnosis and prognosis of LC.Methods: The TCGA database, containing the clinical data of 373 LC patients, includes information on PDK2 expression values. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of PDK2 was drawn to evaluate its diagnostic ability. Patients were divided into PDK2 high- and low-expressing groups by threshold levels. The Chi-square test was used to evaluate the correlation between PDK2 levels and clinicopathological characteristics. The Kaplan-Meier estimator and Cox regression analysis were performed to assess the effect of PDK2 levels on survival outcomes.Results: PDK2 expression in LC tissue was lower than that in normal liver tissues. According to the area under the curve (AUC) value calculated by ROC, PDK2 has a considerable diagnostic value for LC prognosis. The decreased expression of PDK2 is associated with clinical parameters, such as histologic grade ( P =0.0001), radiation therapy ( P =0.0490), vital status ( P =0.0240), and overall survival (OS) ( P =0.0222). Multivariate analysis shows that decreased PDK2 level is an independent risk factor for predicting poor prognosis in LC.Conclusions: PDK2 has a significant impact on the prognosis of LC and is a potential biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of LC.

Background: liver cancer is a malignant tumor with a high morbidity and mortality that endangers human health. High mobility group A2 (HMGA2) is a chromosome associated protein that participates in embryogenesis, tissue development, tumorigenesis and development. Objective: to explore the relationship between HMGA2 expression and the clinicopathological parameters and survival of liver cancer patients using The Cancer Genome Atlas Liver Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) data. Methods: RNA-sequencing data and the corresponding clinical characteristics of the patients were downloaded from the Atlas database. The Chi-squared test was used to assess the relationship between HMGA2 expression and clinical variables. Cox regression analysis was used to compare survival rates between the high- and low-expressing groups; the p-values and Kaplan-Meier survival curves were compared using the log-rank test. Results: RNA-seq data from 373 cases of liver cancer cases were analyzed. HMGA2 was overexpressed in liver cancer and significantly associated with gender (p = 0.0357), T classification (p = 0.0063), clinical classification (p = 0.0026) and overall survival (p = 0.0386). According to the multivariate analysis, HMGA2 could independently predict overall survival in liver cancer. Conclusions: HMGA2 independently predicts poor prognosis in liver cancer and serves as a molecular marker to determine disease prognosis.

To detect and quantify synephrine in feed, an effective analytical method based on quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe solid-phase extraction coupled to ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was developed with isotopic internal standards. Pretreatment was performed using quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe solid-phase extraction with primary secondary amine and C18 sorbent as sorbents in combination with Oasis MCX column clean-up to extract and purify feed samples. Tandem mass spectrometry detection in positive ion mode was conducted in positive multiple reaction monitoring mode in addition to the quantitative internal standard method. Two transitions of synephrine at m/z 168.1/150.0 and 168.1/135.0 were selected, and m/z 168.1/135.0 was determined as the quantification ion pair. D9 -Terbutaline was selected as an internal standard, for which m/z 235.1/153.0 was selected as the quantification ion pair. Good linearity was shown for synephrine in the range of 0.5-50 μg/L, and the correlation coefficient exceeded 0.999. The recoveries in three different feed samples at three spiked levels were 81.42-112.08%, and the relative standard deviations were not greater than 14.66%. The method proposed in this study was reliable and highly effective, and its sensitivity, accuracy, and precision are suitable for determining synephrine residues in feed samples.

A new solid phase extraction sorbent, based on poly(methacrylic acid) brushes-containing coordination polymer networks on monolith, was in-situ synthesized in a commercial syringe filter via surface grafting. Extraction of twenty model analytes, including nine sulfonamides, eight steroid hormones, and three quinolones, could be efficiently achieved by the monolithic hybrid filter due to multi-interactions. Through simple filtering steps, fast extraction (60 s of adsorption and 60 s of desorption) could be achieved. Furthermore, the monolithic hybrid filter was used to analyze the model compounds in chicken meat samples in combination with ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Compared with other adsorption sorbents in reported literatures, the proposed monolithic hybrid filter allowed for shorter purification time, simplified sample pretreatment procedure, and comparable LODs and LOQs of 0.1–3 μg kg−1 and 0.4–10 μg kg−1, respectively. The recoveries for all analytes ranged from 83.9% to 103% with inter-day relative standard deviation lower than 10%. The results demonstrated that the developed analytical method was highly efficient and operationally convenient, and had a great potential for high throughput analysis of multi-residues.

For abstracting the periodical spectra of geophysical parameters, there are normally three options, i.e. the periodograms or window spectra method (FFT or BT method), the maximum entropy spectrum estimation method (MEM) and the maximum likelihood spectrum estimation method (MLM). According to the comparison of three kinds of methods of spectral estimation and their application to geophysical study, we come to the conclusion that the MLM is better than MEM in frequency resolution, power estimation, extracting signals from the background with strong noise. Furthermore, it is more efficient in working out numerical values by MLM than by MEM, especially when accurate spectral estimation is made, for example, estimation of the parameters in a system. Among these three methods, MEM shows the highest resolution in frequency, hut the lowest precision in power estimation. In the geomagnetic deep sounding (GDS), power estimation is emphasized. So, the application of MLM to the geomagnetism and earthquake prediction has been examined in this paper and the results are satisfied. The results of analysis with FFT method of a total number of 1460 Ax indices for 1967"~ 1969 at the Beijing Geomagnetic Observatory show that few of the spectral lines can pass the significant test, especially for those lines with period of 27 days near to that of the solar rotation. On the contrary, MLM analysis of the same data MLM shows the most striking peak of the power at a period of near 27.5 days (Figure 1). This is a typical example showing that when strong noise background exist, the MLM is much more efficient than the FFT method.

In this paper the Capon spectral estimation method, i.e. the maximum likelihood method, was applied to the analysis of the short periodic geomagnetic events occurred from January to March, 1986 at the Chinese Great Wall Station on Antarctic (CGWSA) and the complex transfer functionsA andB for periodsT=45 s—160 min were calculated, derived from the modulus |A| ofA and its phase angle, it seems that there are two structural layers in the subterranean electric conductivity under the CGWSA, the corresponding periods at the interface being around 20–26 minutes. We also compared the Capon spectral estimation method with the Fast Fourier Trasformation (FFT). The former appeared to be better than the latter.