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Gastric cancer is a commonly diagnosed form of cancer, and cisplatin is commonly used as a chemotherapy drug for treating it. However, the side effects of cisplatin may reduce patients’ willingness to use it. Seselin, a derivative of coumarin, has been found to have anticancer properties as well as anticoagulant effects. In this study, we investigated the effect of seselin on promoting cisplatin-induced gastric cancer cell death using the cell proliferation reagent WST-1, BrdU incorporation and lactate dehydrogenase release. The role of seselin and cisplatin in the apoptosis of gastric cancer cells was analyzed using a phospho-kinase array and Western blot analysis. Seselin did not affect G2/M stasis, but it promoted cell death in AGS cells treated with cisplatin. Phospho-kinase array analysis revealed that cisplatin regulates intracellular p53 phosphorylation, while seselin regulates intracellular β-catenin expression by affecting the phosphorylation of glycogen synthase kinase-3 beta (GSK-3β), extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and Src tyrosine kinase. Seselin and cisplatin promote the apoptosis of gastric cancer cells by the synergistic effect of two distinct signaling pathways. These findings suggest that seselin may be used as a complementary therapy to reduce the clinical dose of chemotherapy.

Object: We aimed to study whether arterial blood gas parameters, inflammatory markers, and coagulation indicators correlate with pulmonary artery systolic pressure (PASP) values in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). Methods: A total of 121 patients with PTB who had a measurement of PASP by Doppler echocardiography in the active phase of tuberculosis were included in this study. We carried out univariate and multivariate linear regression analyses to determine factors correlated with PASP values. We excluded patients with other diseases or conditions that might lead to increased PASP. Results: Univariate linear regression analysis revealed positive correlations of age, white blood cell count, neutrophils ratio, Log procalcitonin, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, Log C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, Log D-dimer with PASP and showed an inverse correlation of arterial partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2) and arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) with PASP. Multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that PaO2 and Log procalcitonin remained correlated with PASP values. Conclusion: PaO2 and procalcitonin were strongly correlated with PASP values in patients with active PTB. The degree of hypoxia and severity of secondary respiratory bacterial infection may influence PASP value in active PTB.

Digestive tumors commonly include esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer. Most of which are malignant tumors. All of the tumors do strong harm to human body and seriously affect the physical and mental health of patients. With the change of modern dietary habits, the morbidity of digestive tumors is increasing year by year, and the threat to the society is increasingly intensified. Traditional treatments for digestive tumors include surgical resection, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, all of which can alleviate the symptoms to some extent, but there are still many drawbacks. Compared with traditional therapy, immunotherapy has better therapeutic effect and fewer adverse reactions. Immunotherapy is to activate the human immune system and kill tumor cells by its own immune function. In immunotherapy, CAR-T cell therapy, a kind of personalized therapy that takes effect through gene modification to obtain T cells carrying tumor antigen-specific receptor, occupies a leading position. At present, CAR-T cells have shown excellent results in the treatment of lymphoid and hematopoietic tumors, on the contrast, there are few studies on the treatment of solid tumors. In this article, we summarized the application of some CAR-T cells in solid tumors of the digestive system.

In this paper, the problem of modifying Halpern iteration for approximating a common fixed point of a family of asymptotically quasi- ∅-nonexpansive mappings is considered. Strong convergence theorems are established in a uniformly smooth and strictly convex Banach space which also enjoys the Kadec-Klee property. The results presented in this paper mainly improve the corresponding results announced in [Y.J. Cho, X. Qin, S.M. Kang, Strong convergence of the modified Halpern- type iterative algorithms in Banach spaces, An. Stiint. Univ. Ovidius Constanta Ser. Mat. 17 (2009) 51-68].

Ying-Zai Chen,1 Wei-Lieh Huang,1,2,5 Jia-Chi Shan,4,5 Yu-Hsuan Lin,1–3,5 Hung-Chieh Wu Chang,1 Li-Ren Chang1,61Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital, Yun-Lin Branch, 2Institute of Brain Science, National Yang-Ming University, 3Sleep Research Center, National Yang-Ming University, 4Department of Psychiatry, Cathay General Hospital, Taipei, 5Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital, 6Department of Psychiatry, Medical College, National Taiwan University, Taipei, TaiwanBackground: Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) remains poor among heroin users, even after being treated with methadone. Evidence regarding self-reported psychopathology and HRQoL in heroin users is also limited. The present study aimed to investigate the association between self-reported psychopathology and HRQoL in Asian heroin users treated with methadone.Methods: Thirty-nine heroin users treated with methadone and 39 healthy controls were recruited. Both groups self-reported on demographic data, the Brief Symptom Rating Scale, EuroQoL-5D, and World Health Organization Questionnaire on Quality of Life: Short Form. We compared clinical characteristics, psychopathology, and HRQoL between the two study groups. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to explore the association between psychopathology and HRQoL in the heroin user group.Results: Heroin users had more psychopathology and worse HRQoL than healthy controls. The HRQoL of heroin users had significant correlations with Brief Symptom Rating Scale scores. HRQoL could be predicted by depression, anxiety, paranoia, and additional symptoms (ie, poor appetite and sleep difficulties) independently.Conclusion: Self-reported psychopathology, depression, anxiety, paranoia, poor appetite, and sleep difficulties had a negative impact on each domain of HRQoL among heroin users treated with methadone. The importance of the environmental domain of HRQoL is discussed. Clinicians should recognize comorbid psychiatric symptoms early on to improve HRQoL in heroin users.Keywords: heroin abuse, Brief Symptom Rating Scale, World Health Organization questionnaire on quality of life

This study proposes a support vector regression (SVR)–based method to evaluate the peak floor acceleration (PFA) in a building subject to a major earthquake. Support vector machine, which constructs a hyperplane in high-dimensional space to solve multivariate problems, is well known for the outstanding performance in classification and regression. Six P-wave parameters obtained from the vertical component of the first three seconds of the acceleration time history of the ground motion, as well as the floor height and the fundamental period of the structure, are adopted as the eight input variables. With these and the support of SVR, the PFA of a specific building can be rapidly estimated to avoid the necessity of installing accelerometers on the building. The SVR model is trained on 2274 representative earthquake records from the Structure Strong Earthquake Monitoring System (SSEMS) of the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) in Taiwan and tested on 757 independent test earthquake records. As demonstrated, the accuracy of the predicted PFA, located within a one-level difference on the seismic intensity scale of Taiwan from the monitored PFA, is 95.51%. The developed algorithm can be integrated into an existing earthquake early warning system (EEWS) to provide comprehensive protection during major earthquakes.

Mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) blockade has been shown to suppress cardiac hypertrophy and remodeling in animal models of pressure overload (POL). This study aims to determine whether MR deficiency in myeloid cells modulates aortic constriction-induced cardiovascular injuries. Myeloid MR knockout (MMRKO) mice and littermate control mice were subjected to abdominal aortic constriction (AAC) or sham operation. We found that AAC-induced cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis were significantly attenuated in MMRKO mice. Expression of genes important in generating reactive oxygen species was decreased in MMRKO mice, while that of manganese superoxide dismutase increased. Furthermore, expression of genes important in cardiac metabolism was increased in MMRKO hearts. Macrophage infiltration in the heart was inhibited and expression of inflammatory genes was decreased in MMRKO mice. In addition, aortic fibrosis and inflammation were attenuated in MMRKO mice. Taken together, our data indicated that MR deficiency in myeloid cells effectively attenuated aortic constriction-induced cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis, as well as aortic fibrosis and inflammation.

A scaffolding-based mind tool was designed to allow teachers to easily create lesson plans for in-class gamified activities and to embed various scaffoldings in the lesson plan design. The purpose of this study was to investigate the learning outcomes of a scaffolding-based mind tool integrated with gamified learning activities applied to a science course. The study was conducted to investigate students' learning outcomes, flow, and qualitative feedback on the scaffolding-based mind tool. A total of 134 high school students participated in the experiment. The results showed that the gamified activity with the scaffolding-based mindtool significantly improved students' learning effectiveness, but the learning effectiveness did not differ significantly from that of the students in the lecture-based instruction. In addition, the study found that the learners' flow was high, the students were engaged in the activity. The qualitative feedback analysis also revealed high positive evaluations of the usefulness of the gamified activity, mind tool, and scaffolds. In addition, students with low prior knowledge or low learning effectiveness had significantly higher active engagement in flow than those with high prior knowledge/learning effectiveness.