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Regional landscape ecological risk (LER) assessment is of great significance for coordinating the relationship between land use and ecological environment, and for promoting the rational allocation of resources, and it is the basis and guarantee for achieving sustainable development. By assessing the landscape ecological risk of the Huaihe River ecological and economic zone, it can promote the development of ecological risk assessment theory, provide a scientific basis for the formulation of ecological civilization construction planning and policies, and help to strengthen environmental monitoring, planning and management, and promote the construction of ecological civilization. Based on the remote sensing image data of land use from 1985 to 2020, the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of land use and LER in the Anhui section of the Huaihe River Ecological and Economic Belt in China were explored. The results showed that: (1) The construction land showed an increasing trend, with an increased area of 4753.35 km2, whereas the cultivated land showed a negative growth trend, with a reduced area of 4487.58 km2. (2) During the past 35 years, the ecological risks in the research area showed a decreasing trend as a whole, with medium-low and medium-risk areas ranking as the main; medium-high and high-risk areas are mainly distributed on both sides of the Huaihe River and in the northern-central part of Suzhou City. (3) Moran's I values of LER in each period were showing significant spatial autocorrelation and tending to converge spatially. In the future, the ecological security pattern should be optimized for local high-risk deterioration areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities and colleges in the United States implemented remote learning and restrictions on in-person social events during the Fall 2020 academic semester. These changes and restrictions, in addition to the other numerous negative impacts of COVID-19, can exacerbate the already stressful transition from high school to college. This transition is a key developmental period during which the complexity of interpersonal relationships and the risk of internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression increase. As such, the present study examined dispositional gratitude as a protective factor against depressive symptoms and loneliness among a sample of first-year college students who began college during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examined whether perceived social support and support provision mediated these relationships. Participants were 364 first-year college students who completed three online surveys during the 1st (T1), 7th (T2), and 14th (T3) weeks of the Fall 2020 academic semester. T1 gratitude was associated with lower T3 depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness over time. These relationships were mediated by T2 perceived social support but not by T2 support provision. Implications of our findings are discussed. Public Significance Statement: Gratitude was associated with lower levels of loneliness and depressive symptoms over time through increased perceived social support. Our study suggests that gratitude may be an especially important psychological asset and key intervention target for first-year college students' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, object detection in natural images has made a breakthrough, but it is still challenging in oriented ship detection for remote sensing imagery. Considering some limitations in this task, such as uncertain ship orientation, unspecific features for locating and classification in the complex optical environment, and multiplicative speckle interference of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), we propose an oriented ship detector based on the pairwise branch detection head and adaptive SAR feature enhancement. The details are as follows: (1) Firstly, the ships with arbitrary directions are described with a rotated ground truth, and an oriented region proposal network (ORPN) is designed to study the transformation from the horizontal region of interest to the rotated region of interest. The ORPN effectively improved the quality of the candidate area while only introducing a few parameters. (2) In view of the existing algorithms that tend to perform classification and regression prediction on the same output feature, this paper proposes a pairwise detection head (PBH) to design parallel branches to decouple classification and locating tasks, so that each branch can learn more task-specific features. (3) Inspired by the ratio-of-average detector in traditional SAR image processing, the SAR edge enhancement (SEE) module is proposed, which adaptively enhances edge pixels, and the threshold of the edge is learned by the channel-shared adaptive thresholds block. Experiments were carried out on both optical and SAR datasets. In the optical dataset, PBH combined with ORPN improved recall by 5.03%, and in the SAR dataset, the overall method achieved a maximum F1 score improvement of 6.07%; these results imply the validity of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, deep-learning methods have yielded rapid progress for object detection in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. It is still a great challenge to detect ships in SAR imagery due to ships' small size and confusable detail feature. This article proposes a novel anchor-free detection method composed of two modules to deal with these problems. First, for the lack of detailed information on small ships, we suggest an adaptive feature-encoding module (AFE), which gradually fuses deep semantic features into shallow layers and realizes the adaptive learning of the spatial fusion weights. Thus, it can effectively enhance the external semantics and improve the representation ability of small targets. Next, for the foreground–background imbalance, the Gaussian-guided detection head (GDH) is introduced according to the idea of soft sampling and exploits Gaussian prior to assigning different weights to the detected bounding boxes at different locations in the training optimization. Moreover, the proposed Gauss-ness can down-weight the predicted scores of bounding boxes far from the object center. Finally, the effect of the detector composed of the two modules is verified on the two SAR ship datasets. The results demonstrate that our method can effectively improve the detection performance of small ships in datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • High-quality Ga 2 O 3 heterostructures grown via LMBE with lattice/energy band matching. • Modulating APDs' voltage and dark current by adjusting MgO layer thickness. • The impact of the barrier layer on the nBn structure APDs performance was systematically studied. • The fabrication of Ga 2 O 3 -based solar-blind APDs with the current optimal performance has been achieved. Ga 2 O 3 -based solar-blind avalanche photodetectors (APDs) offer advantages such as compactness, low power consumption, and high stability. They could improve the integration and reliability of solar-blind photodetectors, and serve as a viable substitute for photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in deep ultraviolet signal detection. We have previously demonstrated that the n-Barrier-n (nBn) structure, composed of Ga 2 O 3 /MgO/Nb:SrTiO 3 heterostructure, can efficiently reduce the dark current and enhance the reverse breakdown voltage due to the increased conduction band offsets. The barrier layer is a key factor in determining the device performance in the nBn heterostructure. Hence, we further optimize the study by varying the thickness of the barrier layer MgO to examine its effect on the devices. This modulation can affect the avalanche multiplication process, and thus enable the tuning of APDs' performance. In this paper, we present the optimized thin film growth process, and the systematic investigation of the responsivity and gain of the device with different barrier layer thicknesses. The optimal performance was achieved with 25 nm MgO thickness. We also explore the underlying mechanism to elucidate the role of the barrier layer. Our results provide insights into the influence of barrier layer thickness in the nBn structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, ZnGa2O4 metal–semiconductor–metal solar-blind ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors were fabricated and discussed by using the radio-frequency (r.f.) magnetron sputtering method with considerations of the influences of growing and measuring temperatures on photoelectric performances in detail. With the increase of growing temperature, the grain size and optical bandgap of the films increased. Ohmic contacts were formed between the films and Ti/Au electrodes for all the samples, and the photoconductive photodetectors shown decent solar-blind photoelectric performances. At 10 V biasing voltage, the devices had fast response speed and large photo-to-dark current ratio of ∼107 at 650 °C. Moreover, we measured the dark current (Idark) and photocurrent (Iphoto) of these devices in the temperature range from 298 K to 598 K. With the increase of temperature, the Idark increased monotonously, while the Iphoto first decreased and then increased. Furthermore, this study about the effects of temperatures on the ZnGa2O4 films and photodetectors may well provide a meaningful guide for its relevant developments in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Methods Results Conclusions It is unclear whether less acetabular coverage is associated with the failure of core decompression (CD) for osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH). This study aimed to investigate the clinical outcomes of CD for ONFH with small‐ or medium‐sized pre‐collapse lesions, and determine what factors, especially acetabular anatomical parameters, predict the failure of CD.Between January 2010 and December 2022, we retrospectively reviewed 269 consecutive CDs in 188 patients diagnosed with ONFH with small‐ or medium‐sized pre‐collapse lesions. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to evaluate the survival rate of CD for ONFH with progression of collapse or conversion to total hip arthroplasty (THA) as the endpoint. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify the potential risk factors for the failure of CD. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was further performed with conversion to THA as the endpoint to determine the predictive value of these factors.The overall 5‐year survival rate of CD for ONFH with small‐ or medium‐sized pre‐collapse lesions was 74.3% (95% confidence interval (CI) 69.0%–81.1%) with progression of collapse as the endpoint and 83.9% (95% CI 79.3%–88.7%) with conversion to THA as the endpoint. Univariate logistic regression analysis showed that bilateral affected hips was significantly associated with progression of collapse, and center‐edge angle (CEA), sharp angle, acetabular head index (AHI), as well as acetabular depth ratio (ADR) were significantly associated with both progression of collapse and conversion to THA. Multivariate logistic regression analysis further indicated that CEA and AHI were independent risk factors for both progression of collapse and conversion to THA. ROC curve analysis with conversion to THA as the endpoint revealed that the cutoff values for CEA and AHI were 26.8° (sensitivity = 74.4%, specificity = 78.6%, area under the curve (AUC) = 0.809) and 79.8 (sensitivity = 78.4%, specificity = 73.8%, AUC = 0.818), respectively.CD showed satisfactory clinical outcomes for ONFH with small‐ or medium‐sized pre‐collapse lesions where less acetabular coverage with a CEA < 26.8° or AHI < 79.8 was identified as an independent risk factor for the failure of CD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TE is a critical and difficult problem that tries to map traffic with various requirements to paths in dynamic communication networks. The emerging SDN enables centralized TE optimization with a global view. From the architectural viewpoint, ICN facilitates TE from many aspects, such as in-network caching which can reduce redundant traffic and content-awareness which can extract prior knowledge of content type directly. Thus, we leverage ICN to optimize SDN TE. However, ICN brings more complexities and dynamics to the network environment, which makes model-based TE methods inefficient. Inspired by recent advances in applying artificial intelligence techniques to solve complex online control problems, we investigate deep learning for content-awareness and DRL for TE decision. In addition, we propose a parallel online learning mechanism to safely utilize DRL which has trial-and-error nature. Results show that our proposal significantly improves network performance in terms of total network throughput, bandwidth utilization, and load balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a synthetic polymer that has been widely used in various medical implants. Traditionally considered a biologically inert material, it is now understood that PMMA may have proinflammatory properties. Here, we present a proof-of-concept study of the effect of PMMA on CD4 T cells. Using particulate PMMA, a material that resembled wear debris in orthopedic implants, to stimulate whole peripheral blood mononuclear cells, we found that the expression of IFNgamma, IL-4, IL-17, and TGFbeta could all be upregulated in CD4 T cells in a manner that was dependent on the dose of particulate PMMA. Furthermore, compared to direct anti-CD3/CD28 stimulation, PMMA preferentially stimulated the expression of IFNgamma and IL-17 but not the expression of IL-4 or TGFbeta. Interestingly, the presence of autologous monocytes was required, since PMMA had no stimulatory effect on isolated CD4 T cells. We further demonstrated that direct monocyte-CD4 T cell contact was required, and the costimulatory molecules CD80 and CD86 were involved for the optimal stimulation of CD4 T cells. PMMA also directly mediated the death of CD4 T cells in a manner that was dependent on dose but independent of the presence of monocytes. Overall, our study revealed that PMMA could induce CD4 T cell death, and also could result in CD4 T cell activation with a preference toward proinflammatory responses in a monocyte-dependent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, based on the characteristic of lanthanide in oxygen storage capacity, a series of Pr a Ti b O x composite supports with different mole ratios of Pr to Ti and the corresponding Au catalysts were prepared - to investigate the oxidation of CO under CO 2 -rich atmosphere with lean oxygen content. A significant promotion in CO conversion rate over the catalyst with a molar ratio of Pr:Ti = 1:2 and a very high catalytic stability was also obtained. The addition of optimal Pr will make smaller gold particles, provide higher capacity in surface reactive oxygen releasing at low temperatures and weaken the deposition of carbonates in CO 2 -rich atmosphere. However, more Pr will strongly interact with gold, which leads to the majority of Au+ species in the catalysts and thus lower the catalytic activity. This study may provide a potential application of rare earth elements in sealed CO 2 -laser. [Display omitted] • The Pr a Ti b O x composites supported Au catalysts were studied for CO oxidation with CO 2 -rich feed. • The optimal catalyst was found with a molar ratio of Pr:Ti = 1:2. • Good catalytic performance correlated to the easy surface reactive oxygen releasing and weak deposition of carbonates. • The majority of Au+ species in the catalysts with higher Pr content results in worse performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Although anemia during pregnancy is common in the USA, socio-demographic factors make pregnant women enrolled in Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program more vulnerable than the general population. The purpose of this study was to examine the socio-demographic characteristics, blood hemoglobin concentrations, nutrition knowledge and potential associations among these factors in a sample of pregnant women participating in the WIC program.Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study using survey methodology was conducted. In total, 60 pregnant women who were between 12 and 24 weeks of gestation and were carrying a single fetus were recruited from two WIC clinics. Overall nutrition knowledge was assessed with 42 questions arranged into three subscales. Participants’ scores were transformed into tertiles. WIC program records were used to record blood hemoglobin values. Principal component analysis was used to validate the knowledge subscales. Correlational and multivariate regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship among variables.Findings Prevalence of anemia among the participants was higher than the national averages. Only 10 per cent of participants scored in the high tertile for nutrition knowledge. Anemia-during-pregnancy knowledge score was positively correlated with blood hemoglobin concentrations (r = 0.23, p < 0.05), and it was also a predictor of blood hemoglobin levels (R2 = 0.364, p = 0.02).Originality/value This is the first study to report on the knowledge of anemia, anemia during pregnancy and preventive measures among pregnant women enrolled in the WIC program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been approved as a cellular drug for the treatment of a variety of immune-related diseases by the government of many countries'. Previous investigations, including ours, have shown that exosomes secreted by MSCs (MSC-ex) are one of the main factors responsible for the therapeutic effect of MSCs. However, the immune modulation activities and the contents of MSC-ex derived from cells under different incubation conditions differ dramatically. Therefore, the optimal way to ensure effectiveness is by identifying and preparing MSC-ex with confirmed potent immunosuppressive activity. The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze the composition and function of MSC-ex secreted by MSCs stimulated by different cytokines to obtain exosomes with more potent immunosuppressive activity. To achieve this aim, umbilical cord-derived MSCs were treated with PBS, TGF-β, IFN-γ, or TGF-β plus IFN-γ for 72 hr. Then, exosomes were isolated from the culture supernatants. Common exosome markers, such as CD9, CD63, and CD81, were detected and analyzed by FCM. At the same time, the TGF-β, IFN-γ, IDO, and IL-10 content in exosomes was detected, and the influence of exosmes from defferent groups on the induction of mononuclear cell transformation into Tregs was analyzed via FCM. Our results show that the TGF-β combined with IFN-γ exosome group more effectively promoted the transformation of mononuclear cells to Tregs, and the analysis showed that IDO may play an important role. This study might provide a novel strategy to treat GVHD as well as other immune-associated disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuing consumption of resources and increasingly prominent environmental issues, microalgal resource utilization has received extensive attention. In this study, based on the microalgal investigation in desert biological soil crusts (BSCs) using pyrosequencing technology, the cultivated crust microalgae were further isolated in order to obtain high quality microalgae for resource utilization. The results showed that with crust development and succession, microalgal diversity gradually decreased, including the number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and genus, although Microcoleus always was the dominant genera. Pyrosequencing obtained 630 OTUs of cyanobacteria, 25 OTUs of green algae and 9 OTUs of diatom; however, part of cultivated microalgae still could not yet be detected due to the DNA extraction preferences and errors caused by PCR amplification. After isolation, four strains were purified and cultivated, including two filamentous cyanobacteria Microcoleus vaginatus BSC-06 and Scytonema javanicum BSC-39, and two unicellular green algae Chlorella sp. BSC-24 and Monoraphidium dybowskii BSC-81. The two green algae grew fast (>250 mg L -1  d -1 ), and achieved high lipid productivity up to 75–85 mg L -1  d -1 , with lipid content of 28.7–39.0%, thus was considered as promising feedstock for biodiesel production. In addition, the two crust cyanobacteria could be used to construct artificial cyanobacterial soil crusts in desertification control, although their biomass accumulation was not as high as that in the green algae. Ultimately, combining biodiesel production with desertification control would not only improve desert environments, but also provide ideal places for the local microalgal resource exploitation, further promoting desert socioeconomic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The carbon cycle (C-cycle) is the most important and complex biogeochemical cycle in soil ecosystems, but our understanding of C-cycle at the community level remains limited. Biocrusts are known ecosystem engineers and represent ideal model systems for biogeochemical cycling studies. Here, metagenomic sequencing based on five repeated collections of four types of biocrusts revealed a low abundance of genes related to light-driven inorganic carbon fixation, and high abundance of genes related to the chemical energy-driven degradation of macromolecular organic carbon (OC), fermentation, aerobic respiration, and CO oxidation. For OC decomposition, genes mediating starch/glycogen and cellulose degradation were most abundant during the initial complex OC degradation, as were genes mediating fermentation during terminal steps of OC decomposition. To assess successional changes in carbon cycle, the metagenomic data were combined with absolute quantification via GeoChip, as well as key enzyme activity measurements. Inorganic carbon fixation, fermentation, CH 4 oxidation, and both starch/glycogen and peptidoglycan degradation decreased during succession. However, several high efficiency processes, as well as CO oxidation and most types of OC degradation, increased. Co-occurrence networks revealed that C-cycle in biocrusts consists of an assimilation module, akin to primary production, and a dissimilation module, comparable to secondary production; dynamic changes in the relationships between C-cycle pathways and microbial community composition occurred during succession. The two C-cycle modules were connected by the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle, as well as ethanol and propionate fermentation; the modules were balanced by drought and salinity. Collectively, these results improve our understanding of C-cycle pathways and regulatory mechanisms in biocrust succession, and provide a basis for future multi-omics studies of these systems. • Inorganic carbon fixation was low, with trace gases as energy supplement. • The carbon cycle in biocrusts showed significant dynamics during succession. • Two essential modules in the carbon cycle were found with co-occurrence network. • Carbon assimilation and dissimilation were balanced by drought and salinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) scholars and mediciners have reported AI systems that accurately detect medical imaging and COVID-19 in chest images. However, the robustness of these models remains unclear for the segmentation of images with nonuniform density distribution or the multiphase target. The most representative one is the Chan-Vese (CV) image segmentation model. In this paper, we demonstrate that the recent level set (LV) model has excellent performance on the detection of target characteristics from medical imaging relying on the filtering variational method based on the global medical pathology facture. We observe that the capability of the filtering variational method to obtain image feature quality is better than other LV models. This research reveals a far-reaching problem in medical-imaging AI knowledge detection. In addition, from the analysis of experimental results, the algorithm proposed in this paper has a good effect on detecting the lung region feature information of COVID-19 images and also proves that the algorithm has good adaptability in processing different images. These findings demonstrate that the proposed LV method should be seen as an effective clinically adjunctive method using machine-learning healthcare models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging applications of force-sensitive manipulation with the requirements on grasping safety and efficiency pose significant challenges on the design of compliant constant-force mechanisms with large operating ranges. In this paper, we propose a novel curved-beam based quasi-constant force mechanism fully compatible with the additive manufacturing technology, which is configurable with appropriate arc-elements to achieve quasi-constant force output with a large motion stroke. We develop an analytical model to describe the static deformation behavior of the proposed mechanism and analyze the performance sensitivity of its structural parameters, with which we also propose the optimization formulation and general guidelines for the design of curved-beam based compliant quasi-constant force mechanisms to meet force and displacement requirements. Finite element analysis and experiments are also conducted to comprehensively evaluate the proposed design, demonstrating significant performance improvement over existing results. • A novel quasi-constant force mechanism based on curved-beam is proposed. • An analytical model of multi-sectional curved-beam is derived. • Parameter optimization and design guidelines for quasi-constant force mechanism are provided. • Experimental validations of the proposed method with demonstrated performance improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Different ion-selective coatings were prepared. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was used to investigate the failure behaviour of the coatings immersed in 5wt.% KCl solution at 60°C. The corrosion product was analysed by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy. Results show that the products were mainly ferrous oxide for bipolar and anionic coatings. Some KCl and K elements were observed in varnish and cationic coating, in addition to ferrous oxide. The results indicate that bipolar and anionic coatings can inhibit ion permeation because of ionic selectivity and increasing of the cross-link density of the coatings facilitated by silane coupling agent KH550. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: To investigate genetic structure and differentiation of four lake populations of Coilia ectenes, a total of eighty-one individuals from four largest freshwater lakes (Dongting [DT], Poyang [PY], Chaohu [CH], Taihu [TH]) were analyzed based on mtDNA control region sequences. Seventy-five haplotypes were detected, and four to seven 38 bp tandem repeats were found. The indexes of nucleotide diversity (π) in these four populations were DT 0.78%, PY 1.09%, CH 0.81%, and TH 0.62%. Genetic distances within populations were between 0.63 and 1.14%, and from 0.76 to 1.60% among populations. A Neighbor–Joining (NJ) tree consisted of three major clades. Clade 1 consisted of 88.89, 26.09, and 4.55% individuals of DT, PY, and CH. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that most variances occurred within populations, suggesting that this is the main source of total variance. Our results suggest that the four lake populations of C. ectenes have not developed significant genetic structure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We present the Multi-scale Recurrent Attention Gated Fusion Network (MRAGFN) as an end-to-end solution for tackling the image dehazing task. • We develop the Global Feature Extraction Module (GFEM), which utilizes dilated convolutions of different receptive fields to effectively extract complex features from the input image. • We introduce the Dual Attention Fusion (DAF) module to effectively implement the attention mechanism and create haze-relevant feature maps. • We design the Feature Enhancing Module (FEM), drawing inspiration from the SOS boosting algorithm. • We propose the Recurrent Attention Gated Fusion (RAGF) module, which incorporates attention and gating mechanisms. This module progressively refines features by giving weight to relevant information while reducing redundancy. The purpose of single image dehazing is to eliminate the bad influence of haze on images, so as to maintain more scene information of images. In recent years, the convolutional neural networks (CNN) have made significant contributions to single image dehazing. However, the visual quality of dehazed images still needs to be further improved. In view of the problems of single-scale shallow image feature extraction and the insufficient use of intermediate layer features in existing dehazing networks, we propose an end-to-end Multi-scale Recurrent Attention Gated Fusion Network (MRAGFN) to address the image dehazing task. We cascade three Dual Attention Fusion (DAF) modules to progressively form three haze-relevant features map, meanwhile, we adopt downsampling operation on the input to produce global feature map, which are used to weight the three feature maps to compensate for the missing of single-scale feature information. We present Feature Enhancement Module (FEM) to enhance the feature representation ability of these weighted feature maps. We design Recurrent Attention Gated Fusion (RAGF) module by adding attention mechanism and gating mechanism to gradually obtain more refined features based on these weighted features while eliminating redundant features. Experimental results on different hazy images demonstrate that the proposed dehazing network can restore the haze-free images and perform better than the state-of-the-art dehazing networks in terms of the objective indicators (such as PSNR, SSIM) and the subjective visual quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composite material is a new material prepared by several raw materials with different forms or properties through new processing methods. The composite not only maintains the advantages of the properties of each component but also can obtain the comprehensive properties that cannot be achieved by a single component through the complementarity and correlation of the properties of each component. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of wet and hot conditions on the interlaminar fracture toughness and durability of composites. In this paper, the interlaminar fracture toughness and durability are studied, and the prediction and analysis method under wet and hot conditions is carried out. The effects of hot and humid conditions on interlaminar fracture toughness and durability were analyzed. The experimental results show that the longitudinal compressive strength of the unidirectional composite at 120°C and 1.00% moisture absorption is 29.53% lower than that at 20°C and 0.50% moisture absorption. Due to the high moisture absorption of aramid fiber, the longitudinal compressive strength of unidirectional aramid composite fiber will be significantly reduced in the humid and warm environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of our study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of Mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes (MSC-exs) on eczema mice model. Eczema mice were established by 2, 4-two nitrochlorobenzene. Human umbilical cords cells and exosomes were harvested. In eczema mice model, the effect of MSC-ex on eczema was evaluated by severity score, atopic dermatitis score and histopathological analysis of dermis. MTT tests were performed to assess PBMC proliferation. Treg was identified by flow cytometry. The angiogenesis was analyzed by endothelial cell tube formation assay. Compared with PBS, the wound closure of animals treated with MSC-exs was faster. After MSC-exs treatment, there were more new epidermis and dermis, and less scar formation of the lesion. There were significant differences in the integral score of skin injury and the number of lymphocyte infiltration in the skin between the treatment group and the PBS group (p <.01). MSC-exs significantly inhibit Peripheral blood mononuclear cell proliferation, promote the transformation of Treg and the formation of endothelial tube. MSC-ex accelerated wounds healing in mice eczema model by inhibiting inflammatory cell infiltration and promoting vascular formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The impact of activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4), differentially expressed in colorectal cancer (CRC), on 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) chemoresistance has not been fully explained. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the clinical significance of ATF4-mediated microRNA-145 (miR-145)/histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4)/p53 axis in CRC. Methods: Initially, the expression of ATF4, miR-145, HDAC4, and p53 in CRC tissues and cells was quantified by RT-qPCR and immunoblotting. Next, luciferase activity and chromatin immunoprecipitation assays were performed to verify the binding affinity among miR-145, ATF4, and HDAC4. Moreover, proliferation, clone formation, and apoptosis in CRC cells treated with 5-FU were assessed after gain- or loss-of-function of ATF4, miR-145, and/or HDAC4. Furthermore, the tumorigenicity and chemoresistance of CRC cells in mice were assayed for validating the in vitro findings. Results: ATF4 and HDAC4 were highly expressed, while miR-145 and p53 were poorly expressed in CRC tissues and cells. miR-145 targeted and negatively regulated HDAC4 to activate p53, and miR-145 expression was suppressed by ATF4. Of note, ATF4 facilitated cell proliferation and clone formation ability and repressed apoptosis to promote autophagy and chemoresistance of CRC cells by regulating the miR-145/HDAC4/p53 axis. In vivo experiment elucidated that ATF4-mediated miR-145/HDAC4/p53 axis enhanced tumorigenesis and resistance of CRC cells to 5-FU. Conclusion: In conclusion, ATF4-mediated miR-145 inhibition accelerated autophagy of CRC cells and boosted their resistance to 5-FU via the HDAC4/p53 axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The in-situ self-assembled Au nanofilms are triggered by high concentration NaOH. • The gradient gold nanofilms can be achieved on any SiO 2 contained substrates. • The tailored gold nanofilms can be act as plasmon substrates for SERS or lasing. Because of the strong light absorption and/or scattering, nano scaled gold has many favorable optic and electric properties. With the continuous miniaturization of nano photoelectronic devices and nano electromechanical systems, there is an urgent demand for controllable and tailored gold nanoparticles film with excellent performance. Here, a modified HAuCl 4 -NaOH-CTAB (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) aqueous solution system was utilized to self-assembly synthesize gold nanofilm on glass substrates. The high concentration NaOH is not only reducing Au3+ to Au0, but facilitating interfacial assembly of gold nanostructure at liquid–solid interface via etching glass surface. Based on this growth kinetic, the gradient, well-designed and in-situ growing gold nanoparticles film can be achieved on any SiO 2 contained substrates by controlling the growth time in the reaction system. Furthermore, the in-situ self-assembled gold nanoparticles film can be act as plasmon substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) or plasmonic enhanced semiconductor lasing, even gold electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades, traditional hand-crafted feature based methods and deep feature based methods have successively played the most important role in image classification. In some cases, hand-crafted features still provide better performance than deep features. This paper proposes an innovative network based on deep learning integrated with binary coding and Sinkhorn distance (DBSNet) for remote sensing and texture image classification. The statistical texture features of the image extracted by uniform local binary pattern (ULBP) are introduced as a supplement for deep features extracted by ResNet-50 to enhance the discriminability of features. After the feature fusion, both diversity and redundancy of the features have increased, thus we propose the Sinkhorn loss where an entropy regularization term plays a key role in removing redundant information and training the model quickly and efficiently. Image classification experiments are performed on two texture datasets and five remote sensing datasets. The results show that the statistical texture features of the image extracted by ULBP complement the deep features, and the new Sinkhorn loss performs better than the commonly used softmax loss. The performance of the proposed algorithm DBSNet ranks in the top three on the remote sensing datasets compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a high-performance general-purpose no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) method based on image entropy. The image features are extracted from two domains. In the spatial domain, the mutual information between different color channels and the two-dimensional entropy are calculated. In the frequency domain, the statistical characteristics of the two-dimensional entropy and the mutual information of the filtered subband images are computed as the feature set of the input color image. Then, with all the extracted features, the support vector classifier (SVC) for distortion classification and support vector regression (SVR) are utilized for the quality prediction, to obtain the final quality assessment score. The proposed method, which we call entropy-based no-reference image quality assessment (ENIQA), can assess the quality of different categories of distorted images, and has a low complexity. The proposed ENIQA method was assessed on the LIVE and TID2013 databases and showed a superior performance. The experimental results confirmed that the proposed ENIQA method has a high consistency of objective and subjective assessment on color images, which indicates the good overall performance and generalization ability of ENIQA. The implementation is available on github https://github.com/jacob6/ENIQA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of cancer stem cells is widely acknowledged as the underlying cause for the challenging curability and high relapse rates observed in various tumor types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Despite extensive research on numerous therapeutic targets for NSCLC treatment, the strategies to effectively combat NSCLC stemness and achieve a definitive cure are still not well defined. The primary objective of this study was to examine the underlying mechanism through which Fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase 1 (FBP1), a gluconeogenic enzyme, functions as a tumor suppressor to regulate the stemness of NSCLC. Herein, we showed that overexpression of FBP1 led to a decrease in the proportion of CD133-positive cells, weakened tumorigenicity, and decreased expression of stemness factors. FBP1 inhibited the activation of Notch signaling, while it had no impact on the transcription level of Notch 1 intracellular domain (NICD1). Instead, FBP1 interacted with NICD1 and the E3 ubiquitin ligase FBXW7 to facilitate the degradation of NICD1 through the ubiquitin–proteasome pathway, which is independent of the metabolic enzymatic activity of FBP1. The aforementioned studies suggest that targeting the FBP1-FBXW7-NICD1 axis holds promise as a therapeutic approach for addressing the challenges of NSCLC recurrence and drug resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths, and the most common type is lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). LUAD is frequently diagnosed in people who never smoked, patients are always diagnosed at advanced inoperable stages, and the prognosis is ultimately poor. Thus, there is an urgent need for the development of novel targeted therapeutics to suppress LUAD progression. In this study, we demonstrated that the expression of DNA replication and sister chromatid cohesion 1 (DSCC1) was higher in LUAD samples than normal tissues, and the overexpression of DSCC1 or its coexpressed genes were highly correlated with poor outcomes of LUAD patients, highlighting DSCC1 might be involved in LUAD progression. Furthermore, the expression of DSCC1 was positively correlated with multiple genetic mutations which drive cancer development, including TP53, TTN, CSMD, and etc. More importantly, DSCC1 could promote the cell proliferation, stemness, EMT, and metastatic potential of LUAD cells. In addition, DSCC1 interacted with HSP90AB1 and promoted the progression of LUAD via regulating ER stress. Meanwhile, DSCC1 expression negatively correlated with immune cell infiltration in lung cancer, and DSCC1 positively regulated the expression of PD-L1 in LUAD cells. Collectively, this study revealed that DSCC1 is a novel therapeutic target to treat LUAD and a biomarker for predicting the efficiency of PD-1/PD-L1 blockade treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Generally, the standard method of applying sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer patients is via a technetium-labeled nanocolloid (radiolabeled tracer) with or without blue dye. However, the radioactive agents may cause challenges both to hospitals and patients. Alternatively, a safer candidate method, such as SPIO, has been often introduced and validated in comparison with standard methods. The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of SPIO and its clinical impact on the management of breast cancer. Based on our study, SPIO could be considered as an alternative standard of care for sentinel lymph node detection. Compared with the standard method, SPIO exhibited equivalent or even superior detection capacities, while safety could be guaranteed. Lower SPIO doses would also not impair detection capacity compared with the standard method. The absence of radioactivity of SPIO is one of the most important advantages for clinical applications. Superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO), an alternative mapping agent, can be used to identify sentinel lymph nodes in patients with clinically node-negative breast cancer. However, its performance in comparison with the standard method, using a radioisotope (technetium-99 m, Tc) alone or in combination with blue dye, remains controversial. Hence, a systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of SPIO and its clinical impact in the management of breast cancer. The PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases were comprehensively searched from inception to 1 May 2022. Cohort studies regarding the comparison of SPIO with standard methods for sentinel lymph node identification were included. A total of 19 prospective cohort studies, which collectively included 2298 clinically node-negative breast cancer patients undergoing sentinel lymph node identification through both the standard method and SPIO, were identified. The detection rate for sentinel lymph nodes (RR, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.05–1.08; p < 0.001) was considerably higher in the SPIO cohorts than in the standard method cohorts, although this difference was not significant in detected patients, patients with positive sentinel lymph nodes, or positive sentinel lymph nodes. Compared with the standard method, the SPIO method could be considered as an alternative standard of care for sentinel lymph node detection in patients with clinically node-negative breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maize seeding is greatly affected by improper seed placement and poor planter performance under a no-tillage mechanisation system. To overcome the issue, we explored the impact of separat-ing board and anti-blocking mechanism (0, 1/4, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, and 1 type) on maize seeding under different forward speeds (3, 5, 7 km/h) and rotational speeds (260, 400, 530, 740 rpm), where the performance metrics included the mass of straw coiled, seeding height, emergence rate, soil mound depth, straw movement, and straw clearance. The study results show that separating board helps to increase forward and side displacements of the straw, which avoids localized accumulation of straw around the antiblocking mechanism. The straw clearance rate of the anti-blocking mechanism with a separating board is greater than that without the separating board. Therefore, the 2/3 type anti-blocking mechanism with a separating board is recommended for maize seeding at a forward speed of 5 km/h and a rotational speed of 400 rpm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coilia ectenes is a commercially important fishery species. In this study, genetic diversity and population structure of C. ectenes were examined by using mitochondrial DNA control region sequences in 246 individuals sampled from 10 localities in China. One hundred and ninety-five polymorphic sites defined 184 distinct haplotypes, revealing a moderately high haplotype diversity (Hd) and a relatively low nucleotide diversity (π) in the 10 localities. An excess of unique haplotypes at most sample locations were detected, which might influence the genetic structure of the C. ectenes populations. Hd ranged from 0.939 to 1.000 and π ranged from 0.26% to 1.15%. The Dongting fish population had the highest π level. The genetic distances ranged from 0.26% to 1.03% within populations and from 0.56% to 4.90% between populations. The distances between the Fuzhou (FZ) population and other populations were mostly >4.8%. Neighbor-joining tree indicated distinct patterns of phylogeographic structure among haplotypes from FZ population and those from other populations. Analyses of molecular variance and Fst statistics suggested that the divergence existed among populations from 10 localities, indicating that gene flow might be restricted among those regions, despite the wide dispersal. In addition, neutral tests and analysis of mismatch distribution suggested that C. ectenes might have undergone a population expansion. Our study revealed the extant population genetic diversity and structure of the C. ectenes, and was in favor of the related fishery management issues including fishery stock identification and conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A bipolar coating, which is composed of inner layer epoxy with nano SiO2 modified by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) (containing positive fixed charge) and outer layer epoxy with nano SiO2 modified by sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) (containing negative charge), was prepared in this paper. Its deterioration process after exposure to 5% KCl solution was also studied by EIS measurement and SEM observation. The results indicate that the impedance module of the bipolar coating is about 1E+9ohm after a longer time immersion period. The bipolar coating has a better anti-corrosion capacity than that of epoxy coating. The cation-selective outer layer in bipolar coating inhibits the aggressive anion, such as Cl− ion, passing through the outer coating. Similarly, the anion-selective inner layer inhibits the metal cation passing through the inner coating. Thus the bipolar coating can protect the metal substrate from corrosion effectively. The p–n junction of bipolar coating, which has great charge storage ability, is the key factor in the anti-corrosion capacity of bipolar coating. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Coilia ectenes is an important commercial fisheries species. In this study, the genetic diversity and population structure of ten Chinese populations of C. ectenes were investigated using cytochrome b (cytb) sequences of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). We sequenced the complete cytb gene of 279 individuals. One hundred and eleven polymorphic sites defined 97 distinct haplotypes. Haplotype diversity (Hd) ranged from 0.6433 to 0.9517 and nucleotide diversity (π) ranged from 0.16% to 1.23%. The Wuhan (WH) fish population had the highest π level. The genetic distances ranged from 0.16% to 1.26% within populations and from 0.18% to 2.66% between populations. The distances between the Fuzhou (FZ) population and other populations were greater than 2%, while the distance between the Lianyungang (LYG) and Taihu Lake (TH) populations was the smallest. The fixation index analysis indicated that there was significant genetic divergence among populations from different geographical groups. Both the neighbor-joining tree and median-joining network analysis of the haplotype data showed distinct patterns of phylogeographic structure. The hierarchical analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that intra-group variation among populations (θ SC) was highly significant. The results of this study suggest that C. ectenes populations, especially geographically isolated groups, have developed significant genetic structures. In addition, tests of neutral evolution and mismatch distribution suggest that C. ectenes may have experienced a population expansion, possibly in the past 110,000years. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Child care institutions(CCI) in Japan are saving children who come from poor and problem families. • To get out from their original families, these children must behave as 'decent children'. • Entering college is a huge success, but disciplines in the CCI makes them have troubles in college. • CCI children can enter and graduate from low-rank colleges. • After graduation, their jobs with a low salary will head them to the path of poverty again. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the process of going to college and subsequent college life of those who have experiences of entering Child Care Institutions (CCI) in Japan and to discuss higher education policies concerning 'child poverty' based on the results. This paper focuses on children who escaped from unstable families and could attain higher education in Japan. Particularly, this paper explored the experiences of several children who entered Child Care Institutions (CCI) and then continued their studies in college and examined the limitation of the support system for poor children in Japan. In this research, mixed method will be used. A questionnaire survey of students at University X and interviews towards 16 college students who had experiences of staying in CCI were conducted. The results are as follows: 1) Those who have entered CCI have chosen to go to university while internalizing the expectations of the surrounding staff. 2) However, happiness shared between the institution staff and the students are ended up entering university. 3) Those who have entered CCI have changed their thinking about employment and have financial difficulties after entering university. From there, it can be seen that the students are concerned about the gap between institutional life and university life in terms of building social relationship capital and rebounding to a disciplined life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a degenerative disease with irreversible and progressive dilation of the artery. But there are few options for efficacious treatment except for traditional surgery. Probucol has been widely applied to treat hyperlipidaemia and atherosclerosis in clinic, but whether it can protect against AAA remains unknown. In this study, the protective effects of probucol against AAA and its related mechanisms were explored.Experimental Approach: The model of AAA was induced in mice by periaortic application of elastase (40 min) to the abdominal aorta. Probucol at different doses was administered by daily gavage, starting on the same day as AAA was induced, for 14 days. In vitro, cultures of rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) were stimulated with TNF-α. Haem oxygenase (HO)-1 siRNA and HO-1 plasmid were used to regulate the expression or activity of HO-1 in the VSMCs and to clarify the effects of HO-1.Key Results: Probucol dose-dependently prevented the development of AAA, reflected by decreased incidence of AAA, diameter of aortic dilation, elastin degradation, and infiltration of inflammatory cells. Probucol also protected VSMCs from oxidative injury and enhanced elastin biosynthesis. This anti-inflammatory effects of probucol on VSMCs were significantly decreased when HO-1 was inhibited by siRNA.Conclusion and Implications: Probucol protected against AAA through inhibiting the degradation of elastin induced by inflammation and oxidation and by facilitating the biosynthesis of elastin. HO-1 played a crucial role in the anti-inflammatory effects of probucol in VSMCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thanks to the availability of large-scale data, deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have witnessed success in various applications of computer vision. However, the performance of CNNs on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image classification is unsatisfactory due to the lack of well-labeled SAR data, as well as the differences in imaging mechanisms between SAR images and optical images. Therefore, this paper addresses the problem of SAR image classification by employing the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to produce more labeled SAR data. We propose special GANs for generating SAR images to be used in the training process. First, we incorporate the quadratic operation into the GAN, extending the convolution to make the discriminator better represent the SAR data; second, the statistical characteristics of SAR images are integrated into the GAN to make its value function more reasonable; finally, two types of parallel connected GANs are designed, one of which we call PWGAN, combining the Deep Convolutional GAN (DCGAN) and Wasserstein GAN with Gradient Penalty (WGAN-GP) together in the structure, and the other, which we call CNN-PGAN, applying a pre-trained CNN as a discriminator to the parallel GAN. Both PWGAN and CNN-PGAN consist of a number of discriminators and generators according to the number of target categories. Experimental results on the TerraSAR-X single polarization dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Aims: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) of French-American-British (FAB) subtypes M0 and M1 are both poorly differentiated AML, but their mutational spectrum and molecular characteristics remain unknown. This study aimed to explore the mutational spectrum and prognostic factors of AML-M0 and M1. Methods: Sixty-five AML patients derived from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database were enrolled in this study. Whole-genome sequencing was performed to depict the mutational spectrum of each patient. Clinical characteristics at diagnosis, including peripheral blood (PB) white blood cell counts (WBC), blast percentages in PB and bone marrow (BM), FAB subtypes and the frequencies of known recurrent genetic mutations were described. Survival was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier methods and log-rank test. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were constructed for event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS), using a limited backward elimination procedure. Results: Forty-six patients had more than five recurrent genetic mutations. FLT3 had the highest mutation frequency (n=20, 31%), followed by NPM1 (n=18, 28%), DNMT3A (n=16, 25%), IDH1 (n=14, 22%), IDH2 (n=12, 18%), RUNX1 (n=11, 17%) and TET2 (n=7, 11%). Univariate analysis showed that age ≥60 years and TP53 mutations had adverse effect on EFS (P=0.015, P=0.036, respectively) and OS (P=0.003, P=0.004, respectively), WBC count ≥50×109/L and FLT3-ITD negatively affected EFS (P=0.003, P=0.034, respectively), whereas NPM1 mutations had favorable effect on OS (P=0.035) and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) on EFS and OS (all P< 0.001). Multivariate analysis suggested that allo-HSCT and NPM1 mutations were independent favorable prognostic factors for EFS and OS (all P< 0.05), WBC count ≥50×109/L was an independent risk factor for EFS (P=0.002) and TP53 mutations for OS (P=0.043). Conclusions: Our study provided new insights into the mutational spectrum and molecular signatures of AML-M0 and M1. We proposed that FLT3-ITD, NPM1 and TP53 be identified as markers for risk stratification of AML-M0 and M1. Patients with AML-M0 and M1 would likely benefit from allo-HSCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The SSEResNet feature fusion backbone network based on ResNet101 is designed by using SENet attention module and CSPNet enhancement module. • A visual monitoring method of laser cleaning quality based on improved Cascade R-CNN is proposed by using SSEResNet, BiFPN and Soft-NMS. • A visual monitoring method of surface quality after laser cleaning based on SSEResNet101 regression model is proposed by reforming SSEResnet backbone network. • The effects of four different learning rate decay strategies on the two proposed deep learning models are studied. In order to protect the substrate during the cleaning process as well as evaluate the cleaning effect and surface quality after laser cleaning of aircraft coatings, a visual monitoring method based on deep learning is proposed. In this paper, the data sets of "flame recognition-cleaning quality evaluation" and "optical image-surface roughness" are constructed and data enhancement is performed. The SSEResNet backbone network which can effectively extract the details of the input image is designed by using the feature fusion method. The Cascade R-CNN object detection model is improved by using SSEResNet, BiFPN and Soft-NMS, and the SSEResNet101 regression model which can directly predict surface roughness from optical images is proposed based on ResNet101. Model comparison and ablation experiments show that the above two deep learning models proposed by us have excellent detection ability and regression prediction performance, and can realize flame recognition, cleaning effect judgment during laser cleaning as well as post-cleaning surface quality evaluation. In this paper, the effects of four different learning rate decay strategies on the models are further studied. The results show that the training effect of CosineAnnealing with warm restart method is the best. In SSEResNet101 model, the training mean square error (MSE) loss is 0.0249, the mean absolute error (MAE) is 0.278μm, and the test MAE is 0.245μm; In improved Cascade R-CNN model, the mean average precision (mAP) value of intersection over union (IoU=0.6) reaches 93.6%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Invasive fungal disease (IFD) causes morbidity and mortality in patients with hematological malignancy. Recurrence of IFD after chemotherapy or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is associated with poor prognosis. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of different strategies of secondary antifungal prophylaxis (SAP) for IFD and choose an appropriate SAP regimen. Methods: Clinical data of patients with previous IFD who underwent chemotherapy or HSCT between Jan 2008 and Jun 2013 were retrospectively reviewed and followed up to 180 days post-chemotherapy or HSCT. The clinical characteristics and diagnosis were analyzed according to the diagnostic criteria for IFD. The efficacy of different strategies for SAP and risk factors influencing the failure of SAP were evaluated. Results: Of the 164 patients enrolled, 121 patients received SAP regimen (73.78%), and IFD recurred in 40 patients: 16.5% (20/121) in SAP group and 46.5% (20/43) in non-SAP group. In SAP group, 58 received SAP agents which were proven effective for their previous IFD, while other 63 patients received other broad-spectrum antifungal agents. There was no significant difference in the recurrence rates between these two subgroups (13.8% (8/58) vs 19.0% (12/63), P = 0.437). The IFD recurrence rates were statistically significant between patients with allogeneic HSCT and chemotherapy or autologous HSCT (25% vs 8.2%, P = 0.013). Multivariate analysis indicated that allogeneic HSCT was the independent risk factor of IFD recurrence after SAP. Conclusions: Secondary antifungal prophylaxis is necessary to prevent IFD recurrence in patients with hematological malignancy, especially for patients in the setting of allogeneic HSCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A rapid and reliable microwave extraction and the triple quadrupole-linear ion trap mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the determination of eight alkaloids in Portulaca oleracea L. The optimal microwave extraction (MWE) condition was performed at 60°C for 12min with ethanol–water (70:30, v/v) as the extracting solvent, and the solvent to solid ratio was 30:1. The alkaloids were first detected simultaneously by electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry under positive–negative conversion multiple reaction monitor ((+/−)MRM) technique. With investigating three different columns, samples were separated in only 8min on a Waters ACQUITY UPLC HSS T3 (50×2.1mm2, 1.8μm) column using acetonitrile and formic acid–water solution as a mobile phase with a flow rate at 0.2mL/min. All calibration curves showed good linearity (r>0.999) within the test ranges. The method developed was validated with acceptable sensitivity, intra- and inter-day precision, reproducibility, and extraction recoveries. It was successfully applied to the determination of eight alkaloids in Portulaca oleracea L. from different sources and different harvest periods. The method also provide a reference for extraction and determination of alkaloids in other complex systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The t(8;21)(q22;q22) translocation is the most common chromosomal translocation in acute myeloid leukemia ( AML), and it gives rise to acute myeloid gene 1 ( AML1) -myeloid transforming gene 8 ( ETO)-positive AML, which has a relatively favorable prognosis. However, the molecular mechanism related to a favorable prognosis in AML1- ETO-positive AML is still not fully understood. Our results show that the AML1-ETO fusion protein triggered activation of early growth response gene l ( EGR1) by binding at AML1-binding sites on the EGR1 promoter and, subsequently, recruiting acetyltransferase P300, which is known to acetylate histones. However, AML1- ETO could not recruit DNA methyltransferases and histone deacetylases; therefore, EGR1 expression was affected by histone acetylation but not by DNA methylation. Both transcription and translation of EGR1 were higher in AML1- ETO-positive AML cell lines than in AML1- ETO-negative AML cell lines, owing to acetylation. Furthermore, when AML1- ETO-positive AML cell lines were treated with C646 (P300 inhibitor) and trichostatin A (histone deacetylase inhibitor), EGR1 expression was significantly decreased and increased, respectively. In addition, treatment with 5-azacytidine (methyltransferase inhibitor) did not cause any significant change in EGR1 expression. Overexpression of EGR1 inhibited cell proliferation and promoted apoptosis, and EGR1 knockout promoted cell proliferation. Thus, EGR1 could be a novel prognostic factor for a favorable outcome in AML1- ETO-positive AML. The results of our study may explain the molecular mechanisms underlying the favorable prognosis in AML1- ETO-positive AML. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]