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Abstract Penpulimab is an anti-programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) IgG1 antibody with no Fc gamma receptor (FcγR) binding activity, and thus theoretically reduced immune-related adverse events (irAEs) while maintaining efficacy. This single-arm, phase II trial conducted across 20 tertiary care centers in China enrolled adult patients with metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) who had failed two or more lines of previous systemic chemotherapy. Patients received 200-mg penpulimab intravenously every 2 weeks (4 weeks per cycle) until disease progression or intolerable toxicities. The primary endpoint was objective response rate (ORR) per RECIST (version 1.1), as assessed by an independent radiological review committee. The secondary endpoints included progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). One hundred thirty patients were enrolled and 125 were efficacy evaluable. At the data cutoff date (September 28, 2022), 1 patient achieved complete response and 34 patients attained partial response. The ORR was 28.0% (95% CI 20.3–36.7%). The response was durable, with 66.8% still in response at 9 months. Thirty-three patients (26.4%) were still on treatment. The median PFS and OS were 3.6 months (95% CI = 1.9–7.3 months) and 22.8 months (95% CI = 17.1 months to not reached), respectively. Ten (7.6%) patients experienced grade 3 or higher irAEs. Penpulimab has promising anti-tumor activities and acceptable toxicities in heavily pretreated metastatic NPC patients, supporting further clinical development as third-line treatment of metastatic NPC.

Abstract Background Diabetes is a common chronic metabolic disease. The progression of the disease promotes vascular inflammation and the formation of atherosclerosis, leading to cardiovascular disease. The coronary artery perivascular adipose tissue attenuation index based on CCTA is a new noninvasive imaging biomarker that reflects the spatial changes in perivascular adipose tissue attenuation in CCTA images and the inflammation around the coronary arteries. In this study, a radiomics approach is proposed to extract a large number of image features from CCTA in a high-throughput manner and combined with clinical diagnostic data to explore the predictive ability of vascular perivascular adipose imaging data based on CCTA for coronary heart disease in diabetic patients. Methods R language was used for statistical analysis to screen the variables with significant differences. A presegmentation model was used for CCTA vessel segmentation, and the pericoronary adipose region was screened out. PyRadiomics was used to calculate the radiomics features of pericoronary adipose tissue, and SVM, DT and RF were used to model and analyze the clinical data and radiomics data. Model performance was evaluated using indicators such as PPV, FPR, AAC, and ROC. Results The results indicate that there are significant differences in age, blood pressure, and some biochemical indicators between diabetes patients with and without coronary heart disease. Among 1037 calculated radiomic parameters, 18.3% showed significant differences in imaging omics features. Three modeling methods were used to analyze different combinations of clinical information, internal vascular radiomics information and pericoronary vascular fat radiomics information. The results showed that the dataset of full data had the highest ACC values under different machine learning models. The support vector machine method showed the best specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy for this dataset. Conclusions In this study, the clinical data and pericoronary radiomics data of CCTA were fused to predict the occurrence of coronary heart disease in diabetic patients. This provides information for the early detection of coronary heart disease in patients with diabetes and allows for timely intervention and treatment.

BackgroundIrreversible electroporation has been proved as a feasible and safe method against tumor in liver. However, few studies focused on tumors adjacent to perihepatic important structure like vessels, biliary system and gall bladder. These structures limit the effectiveness of conventional treatments. The aim of this article is to analyze the clinical outcomes of patients with hepatic tumors at the special sites who received IRE treatment and provide reliable evidence for broadening the scope of IRE’s clinical application.MethodsThe clinical information of patients who underwent IRE ablation for tumors adjacent to perihepatic important structure between February 2017 and December 2021 was collected and retrospectively analyzed. All patients underwent contrast-enhanced CT or MRI for further evaluation at the 1-month follow-up and every 3 months thereafter. Post-ablation complications, recurrence, progression-free survival and overall survival were evaluated to analyze the prognosis of IRE ablation adjacent to perihepatic important structure. Categorical variables are presented as numbers followed by percentages. Continuous data are presented as the mean ± deviation. The tumor size and IRE ablation size were evaluated by the maximum diameters.ResultsThirty-two patients who underwent IRE ablation for tumor adjacent to perihepatic important structure were studied in this research. There were 39 lesions in 32 patients treated with IRE ablation. Fourteen of them (35.9%) were located adjacent to the porta hepatis, and 8 of them (20.5%) were located adjacent to the hepatocaval confluence. Subcapsular lesions accounted for 15.4% (6 of 39 lesions). The other 11 lesions were in the para gallbladder (5 of 39 lesions, 12.8%), the caudate lobe (5 of 39 lesions, 12.8%) and the colonic hepatic flexure (1 of 39 lesions, 2.6%). According to the Clavien−Dindo classification system for complications, all relative patients with cancer experienced complications below class III except one patient who developed postoperative hemorrhagic shock and improved after timely treatment. Recurrence in situ was observed in 5 of 32 (15.6%) patients. The median PFS of the patients who received IRE ablation was 384 days, and the median OS was 571 days.ConclusionIRE ablation is a feasible and safe treatment strategy for tumors adjacent to perihepatic important structure. With improved equipment, optimized therapeutic parameters and long-term clinical trials, IRE will play an increasingly important role in the treatment of tumors in liver.

Abstract CircLRIG1, a newly discovered circRNA, has yet to have its potential function and biological processes reported. This study explored the role of circLRIG1 in the development and progression of bladder carcinoma and its potential molecular mechanisms. Techniques such as qRT-PCR, Western blot, various cellular assays, and in vivo models were used to investigate mRNA and protein levels, cell behavior, molecular interactions, and tumor growth. The results showed that both circLRIG1 and LRIG1 were significantly reduced in bladder carcinoma tissues and cell lines. Low circLRIG1 expression was associated with poor patient prognosis. Overexpressing circLRIG1 inhibited bladder carcinoma cell growth, migration, and invasion, promoted apoptosis, and decreased tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. Importantly, circLRIG1 was found to sponge miR-214-3p, enhancing LRIG1 expression, and its overexpression also modulated protein levels of E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Vimentin, and LRIG1. Similar effects were observed with LRIG1 overexpression. Notably, a positive correlation was found between circLRIG1 and LRIG1 expression in bladder carcinoma tissues. Additionally, the tumor-suppressing effect of circLRIG1 was reversed by overexpressing miR-214-3p or silencing LRIG1. The study concludes that circLRIG1 suppresses bladder carcinoma progression by enhancing LRIG1 expression via sponging miR-214-3p, providing a potential strategy for early diagnosis and treatment of bladder carcinoma.

Abstract Purpose To analyze the selection of endovascular treatment strategies and the efficacy of various locations and types of splenic artery aneurysms (SAAs). Methods Sixty-three cases of patients diagnosed with SAA from January 2016 to October 2021 were collected, and their clinical data and follow-up results were analyzed. Results Among the 63 patients, 55 had true SAAs, and 8 had false SAAs. The average diameter of the true SAAs was 2.0 ± 0.8 cm. There were 10 cases of intra-aneurysm embolization, 24 cases of intra-aneurysm and aneurysm-bearing artery embolization, 10 cases of bare stent-assisted coil embolization, and 11 cases of stent grafts. The false SAAs had an average diameter of 2.3 ± 1.1 cm. Aneurysm-bearing artery embolization was applied in 5 cases, and stent grafts were applied in 3 cases. The incidence of complications after embolization of the aneurysm-bearing artery was higher (P

Exposure to PM2.5 pollution poses substantial health risks, with the precise quantification of exposure being fundamental to understanding the environmental inequalities therein. However, the absence of high-resolution spatiotemporal ambient population data, coupled with an insufficiency of attribute data, impedes a comprehension of the environmental inequality of exposure risks at a fine scale. Within the purview of a conceptual framework that interlinks social strata and citizenship identity with environmental inequality, this study examines the environmental inequality of PM2.5 exposure with a focus on the city of Xi’an. Quantitative metrics of the social strata and citizenship identities of the ambient population are derived from housing price data and mobile phone big data. The fine-scale estimation of PM2.5 concentrations is predicated on the kriging interpolation method and refined by leveraging an advanced dataset. Employing geographically weighted regression models, we examine the environmental inequality pattern at a fine spatial scale. The key findings are threefold: (1) the manifestation of environmental inequality in PM2.5 exposure is pronounced among individuals of varying social strata and citizenship identities within our study area, Xi’an; (2) nonlocal residents situated in the northwestern precincts of Xi’an are subject to the most pronounced PM2.5 exposure; and (3) an elevated socioeconomic status is identified as an attenuating factor, capable of averting the deleterious impacts of PM2.5 exposure among nonlocal residents. These findings proffer substantial practical implications for the orchestration of air pollution mitigation strategies and urban planning initiatives. They suggest that addressing the wellbeing of the marginalized underprivileged cohorts, who are environmentally and politically segregated under the extant urban planning policies in China, is of critical importance.

Abstract The response rate of pancreatic cancer to chemotherapy or immunotherapy pancreatic cancer is low. Although minimally invasive irreversible electroporation (IRE) ablation is a promising option for irresectable pancreatic cancers, the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment that characterizes this tumour type enables tumour recurrence. Thus, strengthening endogenous adaptive antitumour immunity is critical for improving the outcome of ablation therapy and post-ablation immune therapy. Here we present a hydrogel microsphere vaccine that amplifies post-ablation anti-cancer immune response via releasing its cargo of FLT3L and CD40L at the relatively lower pH of the tumour bed. The vaccine facilitates migration of the tumour-resident type 1 conventional dendritic cells (cDC1) to the tumour-draining lymph nodes (TdLN), thus initiating the cDC1-mediated antigen cross-presentation cascade, resulting in enhanced endogenous CD8+ T cell response. We show in an orthotopic pancreatic cancer model in male mice that the hydrogel microsphere vaccine transforms the immunologically cold tumour microenvironment into hot in a safe and efficient manner, thus significantly increasing survival and inhibiting the growth of distant metastases.

The exceptional corrosion resistance and combined physical and chemical self-cleaning capabilities of superhydrophobic photocatalytic coatings have sparked significant interest among researchers. In this paper, we propose an economical and eco-friendly superhydrophobic epoxy resin coating that incorporates SiO2@CuO/HDTMS nanoparticles modified with Hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDTMS). The application of superhydrophobic coatings effectively reduces the contact area between the metal surface and corrosive media, leading to a decreased corrosion rate. Additionally, the incorporation of nanomaterials, exemplified by SiO2@CuO core–shell nanoparticles, improves the adhesion and durability of the coatings on aluminum alloy substrates. Experimental data from Tafel curve analysis and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) confirm the superior corrosion resistance of the superhydrophobic modified aluminum alloy surface compared to untreated surfaces. Estimations indicate a significant reduction in corrosion rate after superhydrophobic treatment. Furthermore, an optical absorption spectra analysis of the core–shell nanoparticles demonstrates their suitability for photocatalytic applications, showcasing their potential contribution to enhancing the overall performance of the coated surfaces. This research underscores the promising approach of combining superhydrophobic properties with photocatalytic capabilities to develop advanced surface modification techniques for enhanced corrosion resistance and functional properties in diverse industrial settings.

Anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells not only target CD19-positive malignant lymphoma cells but also normal B cells. The utility of CAR-T cell therapy has been reported in rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus; however, its use in Sjögren’s disease (SjD) remains unknown. In this study, we describe the case of a 76-year-old woman with active SjD for 10 years who was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. After receiving anti-CD19 CAR-T cell therapy, she achieved complete remission (CR) on day 28. Since the onset of her 10-year history with SjD, she was negative for antinuclear antibodies and anti-Ro-52 for the first time on day 90 after CAR-T cell therapy. Six months after CAR-T cell therapy, the CR status was maintained, serum cytokine levels returned to their normal levels, and dry mouth symptoms improved. The EULAR Sjögren’s Syndrome Disease Activity Index score decreased from 5 to 2, indicating a partial remission of SjD activity compared with that before CAR-T cell treatment. In the early stage of treatment, she presented with grade 2 cytokine release syndrome and grade 1 neurotoxicity, which were completely controlled after an active intervention. This case highlights the potential application of CAR-T cells in treating autoimmune diseases, such as SjD.

Gastric ulcers significantly impact the quality of life of patients, the pathogenesis of which is closely associated with Helicobacter pylori (HP) infection. Oxidative stress is involved in the pathological mechanism of gastric ulcers. Recently, adenosine A2B Receptor (A2BR) was reported to activate the p38MAPK pathway. However, the role of A2BR in gastric ulcers remains unknown. In the present study, the biological function of A2BR in HP-induced gastric ulcers was investigated to explore novel targets for gastric ulcers. GES-1 cells were infected with HP, followed by incubation with 10 μM BAY60-6583 (A2BR agonist) and 25 nM PSB1115 (A2BR antagonist). In HP-infected GES-1 cells, an increased apoptotic rate, enhanced migration ability, excessive release of reactive oxygen species (ROS), increased malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, and decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity were observed, accompanied by the activation of p38MAPK signaling, which were dramatically aggravated by BAY60-6583 and alleviated by PSB1115. In animal experiments, rats were treated with 2 mg/kg BAY60-6583 and 10 mg/kg PSB1115, followed by gastric ulcer modeling 30 min later. In HP-infected rats, increased ulcer area, elevated pepsin activity, increased hematoxylin and eosin (HE) pathological scores, increased MDA levels, and decreased SOD activity were observed, which were further aggravated by BAY60-6583 and ameliorated by PSB1115. Finally, the effects of A2BR activation on apoptosis, migration, oxidative stress, and p38MAPK signaling in HP-infected GES-1 cells were reversed by an inhibitor of the p38MAPK pathway. Collectively, A2BR facilitated the pathogenesis of HP-induced gastric ulcers by inducing oxidative stress through p38MAPK activation.

Due to the poor activation performance and kinetics of Ti50V25Cr25 alloys, the element Zr was added to improve the phase structure of the alloy and achieve a high-performance hydrogen storage alloy. The Ti50−xV25Cr25Zrx (x = 0, 5, 7, and 9) system alloys were prepared by arc melting. The alloys were analyzed using an X-ray diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The hydrogen storage capabilities of the alloys were also obtained by the Sievert volumetric method. The results indicated that the alloy with Zr added had a combination of the C15 Laves phase and the BCC phase, whereas the Zr-free alloy had a BCC single phase. The partial replacement of Zr with Ti resulted in an increase in the lattice parameters of the main phase. The hydrogen storage kinetic performance and activation of the alloys both significantly improved with an increasing Zr concentration. The time to reach 90% of the maximum hydrogen storage capacity decreased to 2946 s, 230 s, and 120 s, respectively, with the increases in Zr concentration. The initial hydrogen absorption content of the alloys increased and then decreased after the addition of the element Zr. The second phase expanded with an increasing Zr concentration, which in turn decreased the abundance of the BCC main phase. The Ti43V25Cr25Zr7 alloy showed good cycle stability and hydrogen-desorption performance, and it could absorb 90% of the maximum hydrogen storage capacity in around 230 s. The maximum hydrogen-absorption capacity of the alloy was 2.7 wt%. The diffusion activation energy of hydrogen desorption dropped from 102.67 kJ/mol to 92.62 kJ/mol.

Abstract In this work, a method of pretreating THz absorption curve is proposed, which leads to minimal range in absorption, reserving necessary undulation of curve for identification by convolutional neural network. The kernel thought of proposed method is about confining the undulation of curve with a pair of narrow parallel lines and solving their optimal position by consecutively rotation of normalized curve at two fixed points. A fast algorithm is further proposed based on features of convex hull, whose procedure is described in detail. The algorithm involves definition of some important point sets, calculating and comparing slopes and determining best choice out of 4 potential rotations. The rationality of searching critical point is illustrated in a geometric way. Additionally, the adaption of the method is discussed and real examples are given to show the capacity of method to extract nonlinear information of a curve. The study suggests that methods regarding computer graphics also contributes to feature extraction with respect to THz curve and pattern recognition.

Objectives: To evaluate the safety and efficacy of balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration (BRTO) using lauromacrogol sclerosant foam for gastric varices (GVs) with gastrorenal venous shunts. Methods: Data of GV patients treated with BRTO using lauromacrogol sclerosant foam in 2016–2020 were retrospectively analyzed along with procedural success rate, complications, and follow-up efficacy. Results: A total of 31 patients were treated with BRTO. The sclerosant foam was prepared by mixing iodinated oil, lauromacrogol, and air at a 1:2:3 ratio. The BRTO procedure was successfully completed in 93.5% of patients. One patient was allergic to the lauromacrogol injection. A mild postoperative fever occurred in three patients. One patient experienced grand mal seizures after the procedure. There was no significant difference in the median Child-Turcotte-Pugh scores before versus after BRTO. Complete GV resolution was observed in 93.1% of patients. One patient underwent endoscopic treatment for the development of high-risk esophageal varices. Another patient underwent transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt placement for the aggravation of ascites. Conclusions: Lauromacrogol sclerosant foam is safe and effective in patients undergoing BRTO for GV.

Background: Tumors at the hepatocaval confluence are difficult to treat, either surgically or ablatively. Methods: A retrospective longitudinal study on patients ineligible for thermal ablation who underwent computed tomography-guided IRE for hepatic tumors at the hepatocaval confluence was conducted. Factors analyzed included patient and tumor characteristics, IRE procedure details, treatment-related complications, and prognosis. Results: Between 2017 and 2021, 21 patients at our institute received percutaneous IRE. Of the 38 lesions, 21 were at the hepatocaval confluence. Complete ablation was achieved in all cases. Local and distant recurrence was observed in 4.8% (1/21) and 42.6% (9/21) of the ablated tumors, respectively. All postcava remained perfused at follow-up, except for 1 (4.8%) hepatic vein near the lesion found to be temporarily occluded and restored within 1 month. The ratio of the maximum diameter of ablation area at 1, 3, and 6 months post procedure compared to that immediately after IRE was 0.68 (0.50–0.84), 0.49 (0.27–0.61), and 0.38 (0.25–0.59), respectively. Progression-free survival of the patients with recurrence was 121 (range, 25–566) days. Four (19.0%) patients died at the end of follow-up with median overall survival of 451.5 (range, 25–716) days. Conclusions: IRE could be a safe and effective treatment for hepatic tumors at the hepatocaval confluence. This article provides valuable prognostic data; further clinical research is needed for better prognosis.

Percutaneous transhepatic papillary balloon drainage (PTPBD) is a newly emerging interventional treatment modality for choledocholithiasis in China. Compared with other treatments, it has some advantages. Traditional Chinese medicine has been proven to have certain advantages in the treatment of choledocholithiasis, with reliable efficacy, few side effects, and a low recurrence rate. To standardize the clinical practice of choledocholithiasis, facilitate the application of PTPBD, and improve the diagnosis and treatment of integrative medicine, the Chinese College of Interventionalists organized multidisciplinary experts to discuss and formulate this consensus. This consensus aims to regulate the patient selection and technical process of PTPBD and the diagnosis and treatment scheme of integrative medicine.

Abstract Background Pancreatic portal hypertension (PPH) is a type of extrahepatic portal hypertension. We compared the clinical efficacy of different treatment methods for PPH caused by splenic vein stenosis in chronic pancreatitis. Methods This article retrospectively analyzed the PPH cases that were caused by splenic vein stenosis after chronic pancreatitis. Patients were divided into three groups according to the different treatments: splenic vein stent implantation (stent group), splenectomy, and only medications (conservative group). The treatment effects from each group were compared. Results A total of 33 patients were retrospectively analyzed in this study (9, 12, and 12 patients in each group respectively). All the procedures were successful in the stent and splenectomy groups. During the follow-up, no patient had gastrointestinal bleeding recurrence in the stent and splenectomy groups. However, in the conservative group, the incidence of portal hypertensive gastropathy and upper gastrointestinal bleeding were 50% and 25%. In the stent group, all the varicose veins at the base of the stomach had shrunk by varying degrees, and the red color signs regressed. The stent patency rate was 100%. No major complication occurred. The average platelet count at 1, 3, 6-months postoperatively were all significantly higher than the preoperative value (P

Although various nonreciprocal thermal emitters have been suggested to break the balance between absorption and emission, the majority can only achieve nonreciprocal effect at one certain angle, and the angular range in which these structures exhibit nonreciprocal effect is heavily restricted. In this work, the scheme to realize extremely wide-angle nonreciprocal thermal radiation effect is proposed and investigated. It is achieved by placing a dielectric grating atop a Weyl semimetal film backed with a metal mirror. The results show that the emitter exhibits strong nonreciprocal radiation at the wavelength of 15.98 μm when the incident angle is 30°. What's more, the strong nonreciprocal radiation can be achieved in a wide angular range. Such behavior results from the guided mode resonance, which is revealed by investigating the distribution of electromagnetic field at the resonant wavelength and is also confirmed by the dispersion relation of guided mode. This work provides a new approach to the design of novel nonreciprocal thermal emitters.

Abstract Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are extensively deployed to collect various data. Due to harsh environments and limitation of computing and communication capabilities of sensor nodes, the quality and reliability of sensor data are compromised by outliers. With the advent of 5G, sensors tend to generate increasingly more complex data. When faced with big data, traditional outlier detection methods relied on sensor nodes and remote cloud are unable to accord satisfactory performance in terms of delay and energy consumption. To address this problem, we propose a mobile edge–cloud collaboration outlier detection framework. Outlier detection is performed by edge nodes between the remote cloud and the underlying WSNs, while the training and updating of detection model are conducted on the cloud. A fast angle‐based outlier detection method is developed to obtain training data. The detection model is constructed based on support vector data description. An on‐line learning‐based iterative optimization scheme is devised to update the detection model. Besides, a fuzzy concept is incorporated into the detection model to alleviate the problem of loose decision boundary. Extensive experiments are conducted on real‐world data set. Simulation results show that our model is superior to three popular methods in terms of delay and energy consumption. In addition, when the percentage of operational nodes is 60%, our proposal prolongs the network lifetime by 14.2% to 69.8% compared to the three methods.

Irreversible electroporation (IRE) is a soft tissue ablation technique that uses short electrical fields which induce the death of target cells. To evaluate the safety and efficacy of an IRE-based device compared to regular radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of solid liver tumors, in this multicenter, randomized, parallel-arm, non-inferiority study, 152 patients with malignant liver tumors were randomized into IRE (n = 78) and RFA (n = 74) groups. The primary endpoint was the success rate of tumor ablation; the secondary endpoints included the tumor ablation time, complications, tumor recurrence rates and treatment-related adverse events (TRAE). The success rate of tumor ablation using IRE was 94.9% and was non-inferior to the RFA group (96.0%) (P = 0.761). For the secondary endpoints, the average ablation time was 34.29 ± 30.38 min for the IRE group, which was significantly longer than for the RFA group (19.91 ± 16.08 min) (P < 0.001). The incidences of postoperative complications after 1 week (P = 1.000), 1 month (P = 0.610) and 3 months (P = 0.490) were not significantly different between the 2 groups. The recurrence rates of liver tumor at 1, 3 and 6 months after ablation were 0 (0.0%), 10 (13.9%) and 10 (13.3%) in the IRE group and 2.9%, 7.3% and 19.7% in the RFA control group (all P > 0.05), respectively. For safety assessments, 51 patients experienced 191 AEs (65.4%) in the IRE group, which was not different from the RFA group (73.0%, 54/184) (P = 0.646). In 7 IRE patients, 8 TRAEs (7.9%) occurred, the most common being edema of the limbs (mild grade) and fever (severe grade), while no TRAEs occurred in the RFA group. This study proved that the excellent safety and efficacy of IRE was non-inferior to the regular radiofrequency device in ablation performance for the treatment of solid liver tumors. Clinical trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry: ChiCTR1800017516

BackgroundThe main objective of this study was to analyze the effects of KRAS/TP53 mutation status and tumor sideness on the immune microenvironment of colorectal cancer using integrated scRNA-seq data.MethodsA total of 78 scRNA-seq datasets, comprising 42 treatment-naive colorectal tumors, 13 tumor adjacent tissues and 23 normal mucosa tissues were included. Standardized Seurat procedures were applied to identify cellular components with canonical cell marks. The batch-effect was assessed and corrected using harmony algorithm. The scMetabolism algorithm was used for single-cell metabolic analysis. The results and clinical significance were further validated using immunofluorescent-staining and TCGA-COAD datasets. Immune-infiltration scores of bulk-RNA-seq data were estimated using ssGSEA. The presto-wilcoxauc algorithm was used to identify differentially enriched genes or pathways across different subgroups. Two-sided p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsWe refined the landscape of functional immune cell subtypes, especially T cells and myeloid cells, across normal mucosa, tumor adjacent and tumor tissue. The existence and function of two states of exhausted CD8+ T (Tex) subtypes in colorectal cancer, and FOLR2+ LYVE1+ macrophages indicating unfavorable prognosis in colorectal cancer were identified and validated. The diverse tumor mutation status reshaped the immune cell function and immune checkpoint ligands/receptors (ICLs/ICRs) expression pattern. Importantly, the KRAS/TP53 dual mutations significantly reduced the major energy metabolic functions in immune cells, and promoted the cell-to-cell communications towards immunosuppression in colorectal cancers. The results revealed LAG3, CD24-SIGLEC10 and HBEGF-CD9 pathways as potential therapeutic targets for dual mutant colorectal cancers.ConclusionsWe revealed that the immune microenvironment underwent a gradual remodeling with an enrichment of immunosuppressive myeloid cells from normal mucosa to tumor regions in colorectal cancers. Moreover, we revealed the metabolic heterogeneity of tumor-infiltrating immune cells and suggested that the KRAS/TP53 dual mutation may impair antitumor immunity by reducing T and myeloid cell energy metabolism and reshaping cellular interactions toward immunosuppression.

It is a necessity to determine significant food or traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with low cost, which is more likely to achieve high accurate identification by THz-TDS. In this study, feedforward neural networks based on terahertz spectra are employed to predict the animal origin of gelatins, whose adaption to the mission is examined by parallel models built by random sample partition and initialization. It is found that the generalization performance of feedforward ANNs in original data is not satisfactory although prediction on trained samples can be accurate. A multivariate scattering correction is conducted to enhance prediction accuracy, and 20 additional models verify the effectiveness of such dispose. A special partition of total dataset is conducted based on statistics of parallel models, whose influence on ANN performance is investigated with another 20 models. The performance of the models is unsatisfactory because of notable differences in training and test sets according to principal component analysis. By comparing the distribution of the first two principal components before and after multivariate scattering correction, we found that the reciprocal of the minimum number of line segments required for error-free classification in 2-D feature space can be viewed as an index to describe linear separability of data. The rise of proposed linear separability would have a lower requirement for harsh parameter tuning of ANN models and tolerate random initialization. The difference in principal components of samples between a training set and a data set determines whether partition is acceptable or whether a model would have generality. A rapid way to estimate the performance of an ANN before sufficient tuning on a classification mission is to compare differences between groups and differences within groups. Given that a representative peak missing curve is discussed in this article, an analysis based on gelatin THz spectra may be helpful for studies on some other feature-less species.

“The Expert Group on Tumor Ablation Therapy of Chinese Medical Doctor Association, The Tumor Ablation Committee of Chinese College of Interventionalists, The Society of Tumor Ablation Therapy of Chinese Anti-Cancer Association and The Ablation Expert Committee of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology” have organized multidisciplinary experts to formulate the consensus for thermal ablation of pulmonary subsolid nodules or ground-glass nodule (GGN). The expert consensus reviews current literatures and provides clinical practices for thermal ablation of GGN. The main contents include: (1) clinical evaluation of GGN, (2) procedures, indications, contraindications, outcomes evaluation and related complications of thermal ablation for GGN and (3) future development directions.

Abstract Background This study intends to investigate the immunological effects of tumor ablation with irreversible electroporation (IRE). Methods We evaluated the systemic immune response in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after IRE treatment. Furthermore, we analyzed the tumor infiltrating T lymphocytes and the level of serum cytokines in IRE and control groups of tumor-bearing mice. Results We observed that IRE induced an increase in WBC, neutrophil and monocyte counts and a decrease in lymphocyte count 1 day post-IRE and returned to baseline values within 7 days in the patients. Meanwhile, circulating CD4+ T cell subsets, but not CD8+, decreased 1 day post-IRE. The activated T cells and natural killer (NK) cells increased, and regulatory T (Treg) cells decreased. Furthermore, a significant increase in cytotoxic CD8+ T cells infiltration was observed on ablative tumors in mice. The level of serum IFN-γ also significantly increased in the IRE group. Conclusions Our study demonstrated that IRE upregulated activated T cells and downregulated Tregs in the peripheral blood of patients. Meanwhile, the results from the animal model indicated that IRE could induce antitumor adaptive immunity dominated by the infiltration of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells into the tumors, accompanied by reduced Tregs.

Abstract Background To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of ablating renal cell carcinoma (RCC) by irreversible electroporation (IRE). Methods Fifteen patients (19 lesions) with RCC who underwent IRE were retrospectively reviewed. Seven patients had solitary kidneys. Two lesions were located in the renal hilus. One patient had chronic renal insufficiency. Percutaneous biopsy for histopathology was performed. The best puncture path plan was evaluated before CT-guided IRE. The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was compared vs baseline at 1–2 months after the ablation. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography imaging changes were evaluated immediately after IRE. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography/magnetic resonance was performed 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and every year thereafter. The complications after treatment were also reviewed. Results The success rate of the procedure was 100%. The median tumor size was 2.4 (IQR 1.3–2.9) cm, with an median score of 6 (IQR 5.5–8) per R.E.N.A.L. criteria (radius, exophytic/endophytic, nearness to collecting system or sinus, anterior/posterior, and location relative to polar lines). Two cases (3 lesions) were punctured through the liver. In other cases, puncture was performed through the perirenal space. There were no severecomplications in interventional therapy. Transient gross hematuria occurred in 2 patients (centrally located). Self-limiting perinephric hematomas occurred in 1 patient. Needle puncture path metastasis was found in 1 patient 2.5 years after IRE. The subcutaneous metastasis was surgically removed, and there was no evidence of recurrence. There was no significant change in eGFR levels in terms of short- term clinical outcomes (t = 0.348, P = 0.733). At 6 months, all 15 patients with imaging studies available had no evidence of recurrence. At 1 year, 1 patient (1 of 15) was noted to have experienced needle tract metastasis and accepted salvage radiofrequency ablation (RFA) therapy. Conclusions IRE appears to be a safe and effective treatment for RCC that may offer a tissue-sparing method and complete ablation as an alternative therapy for RCC.

Abstract Background Drug resistance and metastasis involving hypoxic tumor environments and persistent stem cell populations are detrimental to the survival of patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Tie1 is upregulated in hypoxia and is believed to counteract the effectiveness of platinum agents by promoting the stemness properties in cells. We have investigated the association of Tie1 with HIF-1α and cisplatin resistance in NSCLC cell lines. Methods The expression of Tie1 in a pulmonary microvascular endothelial cell line (HPMEC) and NSCLC cell lines was detected using qRT-PCR and western blotting. The effect of Tie1 on cell stemness and migration was examined by sphere-forming and transwell assays in NSCLC cells with Tie1 silenced. The regulation of Tie1 by HIF-1α was evaluated by a dual-luciferase reporter assay and chromatin immunoprecipitation. Results We found that hypoxia could induce stemness and cisplatin resistance in vitro. Tie1 was expressed at low levels in NSCLC cells when compared with human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells, however, its expression was increased by hypoxia. Additionally, Tie1 knockdown could reduce stemness properties and increase sensitivity to cisplatin in vitro and in a xenograft mouse model. The promoter of Tie1 contains two predicted hypoxia-response elements (HREs). We mutated both HRE sites and conducted chromatin immune-precipitation and promoter luciferase reporter assays and were able to conclude that the induction of Tie1 by hypoxia was HIF-1α-dependent. Conclusions Our findings indicated that Tie1 is upregulated in a hypoxic environment by HIF-1α and contributes to tumorigenesis and cisplatin resistance through the promotion of stemness in NSCLC cells.

1,5-Anhydroglucitol (1,5-AG) is a sensitive biomarker for real-time detection of diabetes mellitus. In this study, an electrochemical biosensor to specifically detect 1,5-AG levels based on persimmon-tannin-reduced graphene oxide-PtPd nanocomposites (PT-rGO-PtPd NCs), which were modified onto the surface of a screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE), was designed. The PT-rGO-PtPd NCs were prepared by using PT as the film-forming material and ascorbic acid as the reducing agent. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–vis), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy analysis were used to characterise the newly synthesised materials. PT-rGO-PtPd NCs present a synergistic effect not only to increase the active surface area to bio-capture more targets, but also to exhibit electrocatalytic efficiency to catalyze the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). A sensitive layer is formed by pyranose oxidase (PROD) attached to the surface of PT-rGO-PtPd NC/SPCE. In the presence of 1,5-AG, PROD catalyzes the oxidization of 1,5-AG to generate 1,5-anhydrofuctose (1,5-AF) and H2O2 which can be decomposed into H2O under the synergistic catalysis of PT-rGO-PtPd NCs. The redox reaction between PT and its oxidative product (quinones, PTox) can be enhanced simultaneously by PT-rGO-PtPd NCs, and the current signal was recorded by the differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) method. Under optimal conditions, our biosensor shows a wide range (0.1–2.0 mg/mL) for 1,5-AG detection with a detection limit of 30 μg/mL (S/N = 3). Moreover, our electrochemical biosensor exhibits acceptable applicability with recoveries from 99.80 to 106.80%. In summary, our study provides an electrochemical method for the determination of 1,5-AG with simple procedures, lower costs, good reproducibility, and acceptable stability.

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), an important industrial belt for food security for China, is facing the challenge of decreasing cultivated land in the process of rapid urbanization. In this case, how to improve the cultivated land use efficiency (CLUE) has become the top priority. Based on data from 108 cities of YREB from 2001 to 2019, we measured CLUE using a slack-based measure with undesirable output (SBM-Undesirable). The high-value area of CLUE shows a trend from multi-core agglomeration to two-core agglomeration, mainly concentrated in Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration and the northern part of the YREB. Then the paper examines the spatial effect of urbanization on CLUE using the Spatial Error Model (SEM). The result shows that population urbanization has significantly promoted the improvement of CLUE in YREB during the sample period. With each percentage point increase in population urbanization, CLUE will increase by 2.99%. Land urbanization has a negative impact on CLUE, for each percent increase in the expansion of urban spatial scope, CLUE will decrease by 0.06%. The spatial heterogeneity analysis shows that population urbanization in the lower reaches has significantly promoted CLUE, with a coefficient of 1.053. The population urbanization level in the middle and lower reaches of the region has no obvious effect on CLUE. The coefficient of land urbanization in the downstream region is 0.35, which significantly promotes CLUE. The coefficient in the middle is −0.26, which implies the CLUE decreases by 0.26% for every one percentage point increase in land urbanization. Land urbanization in the upper has no significant impact on the CLUE. Policy implications include improving the quality of the three major urban clusters along the YREB, building an ecologic protective screen in the upper, encouraging a new agricultural management system and detailed regulations related to the cultivated land protection in YREB.

Abstract The resource constraint has become an important factor hindering the further development of mobile devices (MDs). Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is a new approach proposed to extend MDs’ capacity and improve their performance by task offloading. In MCC, MDs send task requests to the application service operator (ASO), which provides application services to MDs and needs to determine whether to accept the task request according to the system condition. This paper studies the task admission control problem for ASOs with the consideration of three features (two-dimensional resources, uncertainty, and incomplete information). A task admission control model, which considers radio resource variations, computing, and radio resources, is established based on the semi-Markov decision process with the goal of maximizing the ASO’s profits while guaranteeing the quality of service (QoS). To develop the admission policy, a reinforcement learning-based policy algorithm, which develops the admission policy through system simulations without knowing the complete system information, is proposed. Experimental results show that the established model adaptively adjusts the admission policy to accept or reject different levels and classes of task requests based on the ASO load, available radio resources, and event type. The proposed policy algorithm outperforms the existing policy algorithms and maximizes the ASO’s profits while guaranteeing the QoS.

This paper proposes a novel siamese cross contrast neural network (SCCNN) to classify the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) on computed tomography (CT) images. This method is inspired from cross contrast neural networks (CCNN) which is based on tailored CNN and information based similarity(IBS) theory. A new IBS-based measurement named as discriminative IBS(DisIBS) is designed for SCCNN. SCCNN is composed of two main parts including siamese feature extractors with DisIBS operator and MLP classifiers. Siamese networks extract features with DisIBS calculated by DisIBS operator as metric at the top. MLP classifiers are connected with but gradient-stop to feature extractors deriving classification results. We assign different loss functions with different parts to make better practice, specially DisIBS-based loss for feature extractors and softmax-based for MLP classifiers. SCCNN preserves the advantages of CCNN that can fit the insufficient medical images and small lesions. Furthermore, it extends CCNN with the siamese mechanism and gradient-stop MLP classifiers to accept the random inputs and predict like traditional CNN. To present the effectiveness of SCCNN empirically, we apply this method on a 234-person (157/77 for train/test) dataset and achieve better results than other classic CNN and CCNN methods. We try different base models of siamese structures and display prediction accuracy in two levels (slice/patient). The highest slice/patient accuracy which we have achieved on three-categories classification (HCC/ICC/Normal) is 90.22%/94.92% and the accuracy rises to 94.17%/97.44% on binary classification(HCC/ICC).

We demonstrate a three-component fiber optic seismometer for seismic observation, with no electronics in the sensor probe, but relying exclusively on optical fiber in the form of an unbalanced Michelson interferometer, with state-of-the-art performance characteristics. The fiber optic seismometer system is installed in the seismic observation cave at the Earthquake Administration Bureau of Jilin Province, in Changchun, Jilin, China, and has been operating without interruption for more than a year. Two minor earthquakes of different magnitudes recorded by the three-component fiber optic seismometer are analyzed and discussed in detail from the perspectives of time domain and frequency domain signal quality and fidelity. In addition, the recording results of the fiber optic seismometer are compared with those of the traditional electrical-mechanical seismometer co-located at the observation site. Actual observational results of the seismic events show that the three-component fiber optic seismometer can record the seismic waves clearly, with comparable performance as the conventional seismometer.

Network Representation Learning (NRL) is an effective way to analyze large scale networks (graphs). In general, it maps network nodes, edges, subgraphs, etc. onto independent vectors in a low dimension space, thus facilitating network analysis tasks. As community structure is one of the most prominent mesoscopic structure properties of real networks, it is necessary to preserve community structure of networks during NRL. In this paper, the concept of k-step partial community structure is defined and two Partial Community structure Guided Network Embedding (PCGNE) methods, based on two popular NRL algorithms (DeepWalk and node2vec respectively), for node representation learning are proposed. The idea behind this is that it is easier and more cost-effective to find a higher quality 1-step partial community structure than a higher quality whole community structure for networks; the extracted partial community information is then used to guide random walks in DeepWalk or node2vec. As a result, the learned node representations could preserve community structure property of networks more effectively. The two proposed algorithms and six state-of-the-art NRL algorithms were examined through multi-label classification and (inner community) link prediction on eight synthesized networks: one where community structure property could be controlled, and one real world network. The results suggested that the two PCGNE methods could improve the performance of their own based algorithm significantly and were competitive for node representation learning. Especially, comparing against used baseline algorithms, PCGNE methods could capture overlapping community structure much better, and thus could achieve better performance for multi-label classification on networks that have more overlapping nodes and/or larger overlapping memberships.

In recent years, our research group has been devoting substantial efforts to the research and development of active all-solid-state electronic terahertz (THz) continuous wave imaging systems for nondestructive testing, which is currently benefitting from the increasing amount of transmitting power, high performance/cost ratio and adaptability to engineering. In this paper, an in-house developed broadband linear frequency modulated continuous wave (LFMCW) three-dimensional (3D) THz imaging system is described, and two sets of experimental platforms are set up to assist the planning and completion of the research, including a narrow-band LFMCW 3D imaging radar and a wide-band stepped-frequency modulated continuous wave 3D imaging radar. For 3D imaging systems, to cope with demanding scenarios and to achieve excellent imaging performance, various reconstruction algorithms are explored. The first is a spectral refinement and correction approach based on fast Fourier transform and modern spectral estimation for accurate thickness measurement. The second is the synthetic aperture radar imaging algorithm for surface detection or internal detection of objects with lower refractive index. The third is a 3D reconstruction algorithm based on half space Green's function and the exploding source model for the interior detection of materials with higher refractive index. The fourth is the frequency interference algorithm combining phase unwrapping to measure uneven and nonplanar surfaces. Exploiting these systems, along with the associated experimental platforms and reconstruction algorithms, we successfully implemented non-destructive testing for objects with various defects and of different materials, such as polymer boards with voids, and foam with inclusions.

Context Persimmon tannin (extract of Diospyros kaki L.f [Ebenaceae]) and Aloe gel (extract of Aloe vera (L.) Burm.f. [Asphodelaceae]) are known as anti-radiation agents. However, radiation resistance of the persimmon tannin-Aloe gel composite remains inconclusive. Objective To investigate the capacity of the persimmon tannin-Aloe gel composite to protect against ionising radiation at the cellular level. Materials and methods HaCaT (human epidermal keratinocytes) cells were pre-treated with PT-A-1 (the mass ratio of persimmon tannin and Aloe gel was 2:1) or the single component (persimmon tannin or Aloe gel) at various concentrations (0, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 μg/mL. Control group: medium with no HaCaT cells), and then radiated with X-rays (radiation dose: 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 Gy). Cell viability, cell apoptosis, and radiation-induced intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation were analysed by CCK-8, Hoechst 33258 staining/flow cytometry, and 2′,7′-dichlorfluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA) assay, respectively, for 12 or 24 h incubation after radiation. Results The optimal radiation dose and post-radiation incubation period were determined to be 8 Gy and 12 h. CCK-8 activity detection showed that the cell activity was 77.85% (p

To investigate the H2 purification mechanism of V membranes, we studied the adsorption, dissociation, and diffusion properties of H in V, an attractive candidate for H2 separation materials. Our results revealed that the most stable site on the V (1 0 0) surface is the hollow site (HS) for both adsorbed H atoms and molecules. As the coverage range increases, the adsorption energy of H2 molecules first decreases and then increases, while that of H atoms remains unchanged. The preferred diffusion path of atoms on the surface, surface to first subsurface, and first subsurface to second subsurface is HS → bridge site (BS) → HS, BS → BS, and BS → tetrahedral interstitial site (TIS) → BS, respectively. In the V bulk, H atoms occupy the energetically favourable TIS, and diffuse along the TIS → TIS path, which has a lower energy barrier. This study facilitates the understanding of the interaction between H and metals and the design of novel V-based alloy membranes. Keywords: Hydrogen separation, Vanadium membrane, Diffusion kinetics, Adsorption

Antioxidants are molecules that can prevent the harmful effects of oxygen, help capture and neutralize free radicals, and thus eliminate the damage of free radicals to the human body. Persimmon tannin (PT) has excellent antioxidant activity, which is closely related to its molecular structure. We report here a comparative study of four characteristic structural units from PT (epicatechin gallate (ECG), epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), A−type linked ECG dimer (A−ECG dimer), A−type linked EGCG dimer (A−EGCG dimer)) to explore the structure–activity relationship by using the density functional theory. Based on the antioxidation mechanism of hydrogen atom transfer, the most favorable active site for each molecule exerts antioxidant activity is determined. The structural parameters, molecular electrostatic potential, and frontier molecular orbital indicate that the key active sites are located on the phenolic hydroxyl group of the B ring for ECG and EGCG monomers, and the key active sites of the two dimers are located on the phenolic hydroxyl groups of the A and D’ rings. The natural bond orbital and bond dissociation energy of the phenolic hydroxyl hydrogen atom show that the C11−OH in the ECG monomer and the C12−OH in the EGCG monomer are the most preferential sites, respectively. The most active site of the two A−linked dimers is likely located on the D’ ring C20′ phenolic hydroxyl group. Based on computational analysis of quantum chemical parameters, the A−ECG dimer is a more potent antioxidant than the A−EGCG dimer, ECG, and EGCG. This computational analysis provides the structure–activity relationship of the four characteristic units which will contribute to the development of the application of PT antioxidants in the future.

With the continuous improvement of people’s health awareness and the continuous progress of scientific research, consumers have higher requirements for the quality of drinking. Compared with high-sugar-concentrated juice, consumers are more willing to accept healthy and original Not From Concentrated (NFC) juice and packaged drinking water. At the same time, drinking category detection can be used for vending machine self-checkout. However, the current drinking category systems rely on special equipment, which require professional operation, and also rely on signals that are not widely used, such as radar. This paper introduces a novel drinking category detection method based on wireless signals and artificial neural network (ANN). Unlike past work, our design relies on WiFi signals that are widely used in life. The intuition is that when the wireless signals propagate through the detected target, the signals arrive at the receiver through multiple paths and different drinking categories will result in distinct multipath propagation, which can be leveraged to detect the drinking category. We capture the WiFi signals of detected drinking using wireless devices; then, we calculate channel state information (CSI), perform noise removal and feature extraction, and apply ANN for drinking category detection. Results demonstrate that our design has high accuracy in detecting drinking category.

Selective recovery of indium has been widely studied to improve the resource efficiency of critical metals. However, the interaction and selective adsorption mechanism of indium/iron ions with tannin-based adsorbents is still unclear and hinders further optimization of their selective adsorption performance. In this study, the epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) monomer, which is the key functional unit of persimmon tannin, was chosen to explore the ability and mechanism of selective separation/extraction of indium from indium–iron mixture solutions. The density functional theory calculation results indicated that the deprotonated EGCG was easier to combine with indium/iron cations than those of un-deprotonated EGCG. Moreover, the interaction of the EGCG–Fe(III) complex was dominated by chelation and electrostatic interaction, while that of the EGCG–In(III) complex was controlled by electrostatic interactions and aromatic ring stacking effects. Furthermore, the calculation of binding energy verified that EGCG exhibited a stronger affinity for Fe(III) than that for In(III) and preferentially adsorbed iron ions in acidic or neutral solutions. Further experimental results were consistent with the theoretical study, which showed that the Freundlich equilibrium isotherm fit the In(III) and Fe(III) adsorption behavior very well, and the Fe(III) adsorption processes followed a pseudo-second-order model. Thermodynamics data revealed that the adsorption of In(III) and Fe(III) onto EGCG was feasible, spontaneous, and endothermic. The adsorption rate of the EGCG monomer for Fe(III) in neutral solution (1:1 mixed solution, pH = 3.0) was 45.7%, 4.3 times that of In(III) (10.7%). This study provides an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the structure of EGCG and the selective adsorption capacity at the molecular level and provides theoretical guidance for further optimization of the selective adsorption performance of structurally similar tannin-based adsorbents.

Ceramic adhesive structures have been increasingly used in aerospace applications. However, the peaks of the signal on the upper and lower surface of the adhesive layer are difficult to measure directly due to the thin thickness of the adhesive layer and the effect of the attenuation dispersion of the ceramic layer. Thus, the existing non-destructive testing techniques have been ineffective in detecting adhesive quality. In this paper, the thickness of the adhesive layer is measured using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. A sparse deconvolution method is proposed for the terahertz time-domain spectral signal of ceramic adhesive structures with different adhesive layer thicknesses. The results show that the methods proposed in this paper can realize the separation of reflection signals for glue layers with a thickness of 0.20 mm. By comparing with a wavelet denoising method and a modified covariance method (AR/MCM), the effectiveness of the sparse deconvolution method in estimating the thickness of the glue layer is demonstrated. This work will provide the theoretical and experimental basis for using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to detect the homogeneity of ceramic adhesive structures.

BackgroundThis study aims to assess the feasibility of a novel metallic segmented transcordal stent modified with three-dimensional (3D) printing for treating inoperable malignant laryngotracheal stenosis and the tolerability of the stent.MethodsThis was a retrospective study. The stents were individually customized with the aid of 3D printing model based on the anatomic features of each patient’s airway. The stent was composed of two separate segments that corresponded to the larynx and the upper trachea. The stents were barrel-shaped at the proximal end to prevent migration. The proximal end of the stent was located slightly above the vocal cord. The technical and clinical success of stenting procedure, patient tolerability, and stent-related complications of patients were evaluated.ResultsTen patients with dyspnea caused by malignant laryngotracheal stenosis underwent implantation of such stents. Technical and clinical success of the stenting procedure were achieved in all patients. For all patients, basic communication in life could be maintained by speaking softly. During follow-up, one patient showed intolerance to the stent, and the stent was retrieved 2 weeks after stenting. Stent migration was found in one patient, and the position of the stent was readjusted. Granulation tissue proliferation was found in two patients and was treated with cryotherapy by bronchoscopy. There were no deaths associated with stenting.ConclusionsThe individually customized metallic segmented transcordal stent is feasible and tolerable for patients with inoperable malignant laryngotracheal stenosis. The implantation of this stent may serve as a novel alternative treatment for patients who are not suitable for surgery or tracheotomy.

With the rise of mobile edge computing (MEC), mobile services with the same or similar functions are gradually increasing. Usually, Quality of Service (QoS) has become an indicator to measure high-quality services. In the real MEC service invocation environment, due to time and network instability factors, users’ QoS data feedback results are limited. Therefore, effectively predicting the Qos value to provide users with high-quality services has become a key issue. In this paper, we propose a truncated nuclear norm Low-rank Tensor Completion method for the QoS data prediction. This method represents complex multivariate QoS data by constructing tensors. Furthermore, the truncated nuclear norm is introduced in the QoS data tensor completion in order to mine the correlation between QoS data and improve the prediction accuracy. At the same time, the general rate parameter is introduced to control the truncation degree of tensor mode. Finally, the prediction approximate tensor is obtained by the Alternating Direction Multiplier Method iterative optimization algorithm. Numerical experiments are conducted based on the public QoS dataset WS-Dream. The results indicate that our QoS prediction method has better prediction accuracy than other methods under different missing density QoS data.

PurposeTo extract texture features from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of patients with brain tumors and use them to train a classification model for supporting an early diagnosis.MethodsTwo groups of regions (control and tumor) were selected from MRI scans of 40 patients with meningioma or glioma. These regions were analyzed to obtain texture features. Statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS (version 20.0), including the Shapiro–Wilk test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test, which were used to test significant differences in each feature between the tumor and healthy regions. T-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) was used to visualize the data distribution so as to avoid tumor selection bias. The Gini impurity index in random forests (RFs) was used to select the top five out of all features. Based on the five features, three classification models were built respectively with three machine learning classifiers: RF, support vector machine (SVM), and back propagation (BP) neural network.ResultsSixteen of the 25 features were significantly different between the tumor and healthy areas. Through the Gini impurity index in RFs, standard deviation, first-order moment, variance, third-order absolute moment, and third-order central moment were selected to build the classification model. The classification model trained using the SVM classifier achieved the best performance, with sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve of 94.04%, 92.3%, and 0.932, respectively.ConclusionTexture analysis with an SVM classifier can help differentiate between brain tumor and healthy areas with high speed and accuracy, which would facilitate its clinical application.

Based on thin plate theory and thermal conduction equation in view of deformation effect， the thermoelastic coupling model of annular plate and the corresponding motion differential equation of friction plate in the friction clutch is established. The differential equation and the boundary condition are discretized by the differential quadrature method. The relation curves of the first three dimensionless natural frequencies of friction plate in friction clutch with the dimensionless angular velocity and the dimensionless thermolelastic coupling coefficient are obtained in a variable transverse temperature environment. The result shows that the first three dimensionless natural frequencies of friction plate increase with the increase of the dimensionless angular speed and the dimensionless thermolelastic coupling coefficient， and the different boundary conditions have a certain different effect on the increase of natural frequencies of friction plates， which provide the theoretical basis for design and performance analysis of friction clutch.

Abstract Background Chinese word segmentation (CWS) and part-of-speech (POS) tagging are two fundamental tasks of Chinese text processing. They are usually preliminary steps for lots of Chinese natural language processing (NLP) tasks. There have been a large number of studies on CWS and POS tagging in various domains, however, few studies have been proposed for CWS and POS tagging in the clinical domain as it is not easy to determine granularity of words. Methods In this paper, we investigated CWS and POS tagging for Chinese clinical text at a fine-granularity level, and manually annotated a corpus. On the corpus, we compared two state-of-the-art methods, i.e., conditional random fields (CRF) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) with a CRF layer. In order to validate the plausibility of the fine-grained annotation, we further investigated the effect of CWS and POS tagging on Chinese clinical named entity recognition (NER) on another independent corpus. Results When only CWS was considered, CRF achieved higher precision, recall and F-measure than BiLSTM-CRF. When both CWS and POS tagging were considered, CRF also gained an advantage over BiLSTM. CRF outperformed BiLSTM-CRF by 0.14% in F-measure on CWS and by 0.34% in F-measure on POS tagging. The CWS information brought a greatest improvement of 0.34% in F-measure, while the CWS&POS information brought a greatest improvement of 0.74% in F-measure. Conclusions Our proposed fine-grained CWS and POS tagging corpus is reliable and meaningful as the output of the CWS and POS tagging systems developed on this corpus improved the performance of a Chinese clinical NER system on another independent corpus.

This paper reviews recent progress of active millimeter wave (mmW) imaging techniques for personnel security screening. With the ability to penetrate clothing and the promised millimeter scale spatial resolution, mmW imaging has been widely pursued for personnel surveillance without the usual concern for radiation safety. A brief development history of mmW imaging is introduced. An overview of imaging research and developmental achievements, along with antenna considerations based on quasi-optical geometry, phased reflector array, monostatic array, and multistatic array, is provided. Design considerations related to practical applications, including system calibrations, walk-through system (WTS), portable system, and compressive sensing (CS), are also discussed.

Recognition of discriminative neural signatures and regions corresponding to emotions are important in understanding the neuron functional network underlying the human emotion process. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a spatial discrete signal. In this paper, in order to extract the spatio-temporal characteristics and the inherent information implied by functional connections, a multichannel EEG emotion recognition method based on phase-locking value (PLV) graph convolutional neural networks (P-GCNN) is proposed. The basic idea of the proposed EEG emotion recognition method is using PLV-based brain network to model multi-channel EEG features as graph signals and then perform EEG emotion classification based on this model. Different from the traditional graph convolutional neural networks (GCNN) methods, the proposed P-GCNN method uses the PLV connectivity of EEG signals to determine the mode of emotional-related functional connectivity, which is used to represent the intrinsic relationship between EEG channels in different emotional states. On this basis, the neural network is trained to extract effective EEG emotional features. We conduct extensive experiments on the SJTU emotion EEG dataset (SEED) and DEAP dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that novel framework can improve the classification accuracy on both datasets, but not so effective on DEAP as on SEED, in which with 84.35% classification accuracy for SEED, and the average accuracies of 73.31%, 77.03% and 79.20% are, respectively, obtained for valence, arousal, and dominance classifications on the DEAP database.