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Background and Aim. Sphingosine kinase 1 (SPHK1) is a key enzyme of sphingolipid metabolism which is involved in the pathogenesis and progression of human cancer. It has been demonstrated to be upregulated in various types of human malignancies. However, the prognostic value of SPHK1 remains unclear. Therefore, we performed this meta-analysis to assess its predictive value in the prognosis of cancer patients. Methods. PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CNKI, and Wanfang databases were thoroughly searched for eligible studies, in which the relationship between SPHK1 expression and cancer prognosis was evaluated. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were pooled to estimate the impact of SPHK1 expression on cancer patients’ survival. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs were combined to assess the association between SPHK1 expression and clinicopathological characteristics of cancer patients. The certainty of evidence was evaluated by Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) criteria. Results. Thirty studies comprising 32 cohorts with 5965 patients were included in this meta-analysis. The outcomes indicated that elevated SPHK1 expression was associated with worse overall survival (OS) ( HR = 1.71 , 95% CI: 1.45-2.01, P < 0.001 ) and disease-free survival (DFS) ( HR = 1.34 , 95% CI: 1.13-1.59, P = 0.001 ). What is more, SPHK1 overexpression was significantly correlated with certain phenotypes of tumor aggressiveness, such as clinical stage ( OR = 2.07 , 95% CI: 1.39-3.09, P < 0.001 ), tumor invasion ( OR = 2.16 , 95% CI: 1.47-3.18, P < 0.001 ), lymph node metastasis ( OR = 2.04 , 95% CI: 1.71-2.44, P < 0.001 ), and distant metastasis ( OR = 3.16 , 95% CI: 2.44-4.09, P < 0.001 ). The quality of the evidence for both OS and DFS was low. Conclusions. Increased SPHK1 expression is related to poor prognosis in human cancers and may serve as a promising prognostic marker and therapeutic target for malignant patients. However, conclusions need to be treated with caution because of lack of high quality of evidence.

Congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) are a family of often-concurrent diseases with various anatomical spectra. Null-mutant Gen1 mice frequently develop multiple urinary phenotypes, most commonly duplex kidneys, and are ideal subjects for research on ectopic budding in CAKUT development. The upper and lower kidney poles of the Gen1

Transition metal sulfides are of great interest as electrode material for alkali metal-ion batteries due to their high theoretical capacity. However, sluggish ion migration and electron transfer kinetics lead to poor cycling stability and rate performance, which hinders their practical applications. Herein, we develop a two-step localized carbonization and sulfurization method to construct a CoS

Musashi 2 (MSI2) is an RNA-binding protein that regulates mRNA translation of numerous intracellular targets and plays an important role in the development of cancer. However, the prognostic value of MSI2 in various cancers remains controversial. Herein, we conducted this meta-analysis including 21 studies with 2640 patients searched from PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases, and WanFang databases to accurately assess the prognostic significance of MSI2 in various cancers. Our results indicated that high MSI2 expression was significantly related to poor overall survival (HR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.66-2.05, P < 0.001) and disease-free survival (HR = 1.73, 95% CI: 1.35-2.22, P < 0.001). In addition, MSI2 positive expression was associated with certain phenotypes of tumor aggressiveness, such as clinical stage, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, liver metastasis and tumor size. In conclusion, elevated MSI2 expression is closely correlated with poor prognosis in various cancers, and may serve as a potential molecular target for cancer patients.

Adverse intrauterine and early postnatal environment cause reduced nephron endowment and subsequent hypertension, chronic kidney disease (CKD). Exploring modifiable approaches is particularly important to alleviate the global burden of CKD. Enhanced glomerular progenitor cell apoptosis is a major contributor to renal developmental programming. The differentially expressed protein perlecan, which we previously identified using proteomics, is an important extracellular matrix glycoprotein, and its domain V (endorepellin) can inhibit apoptosis through a paracrine form. In explanted mice embryonic metanephros, we found that endorepellin can rescue glomeruli-deficit phenotype resulting from malnutrition, and this protective effect was also verified in vivo using a renal developmental programming model which was given a low-protein diet during pregnancy. We further demonstrated that endorepellin significantly inhibited glomerular progenitor cell apoptosis which activates ERK1/2 phosphorylation. Our results show that endorepellin rescues the nephron number reduction in renal developmental programming, possibly through the inhibition of progenitor cell apoptosis via the ERK1/2 pathway.

Immunofluorescence staining is a very common method for the subcellular localization study of proteins. A tissue-chopping-based immunofluorescence staining method for chloroplast proteins overcomes the restriction of plant cell wall, makes the operation simpler, and uses less experimental materials. Here we provide some improvements for this method. We found that the stained tissues can be directly observed with a confocal microscope without tissue lysis. Samples maintained at a low temperature (0–4 °C) throughout the process can reduce the intensity of chlorophyll autofluorescence and the background signal. A low temperature is also good for the storage of the sample. Fluorescence signal of the stained samples can be kept for several weeks if they are stored at −20 °C. FtsZ is an essential component of the chloroplast division apparatus. We demonstrated this method with the immunofluorescence staining of FtsZ1 in wildtype Arabidopsis and some chloroplast division mutants. We also successfully tested this method by the immunofluorescence staining of FtsZ1 in many other plants, including woody plants. With these procedures, the performance of tissue-chopping-based immunofluorescence staining method are further improved.

The L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1, SLC7A5) is overexpressed in various types of cancer and has been thought to assist cancer progression through its uptake of neutral amino acids. However, the prognostic role of LAT1 in human cancers remains uncharacterized. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to determine the prognostic significance of LAT1 in various cancers. We systematically searched the PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and WanFang databases to collect relevant cohort studies investigating the prognostic value of LAT1 expression in patients with cancer. Hazard ratios (HRs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were pooled to clarify the association between the LAT1 expression and the survival of patients with cancer. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% CIs were calculated to appraise the correlation between LAT1 and the clinicopathological characteristics in patients with cancer. A total of 32 eligible articles, including 34 cohorts and 6410 patients, were enrolled in this meta-analysis. Our results demonstrated that high LAT1 expression was significantly associated with poor overall survival (HR = 1.66, 95% CI 1.41–1.96, P

Cumulative evidence suggests that A-kinase interacting protein 1 (AKIP1) plays an important role in tumor progression. However, the prognostic value of AKIP1 expression in various cancers remains unclear. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic value of AKIP1 expression in patients with cancer.The PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, CNKI, and Wanfang databases were systematically searched to identify studies in which the effect of AKIP1 expression on prognosis (overall survival or disease-free survival) was investigated. Hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were combined to assess the effect of AKIP1 expression on patient survival. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% CIs were pooled to estimate the association between AKIP1 expression and clinicopathological characteristics of patients with cancer.Nineteen eligible studies, encompassing 3979 patients, were included in the meta-analysis. AKIP1 expression was negatively associated with overall survival (HR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.58-2.18, P .001) and disease-free survival (HR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.53-1.87, P .001) in patients with cancer. Moreover, AKIP1 overexpression was positively correlated with adverse clinicopathological features, such as tumor size (OR = 2.22, 95% CI: 1.67-2.94, P .001), clinical stage (OR = 2.05, 95% CI: 1.45-2.90, P .001), depth of tumor invasion (OR = 2.98, 95% CI: 2.21-4.02, P .001), and degree of lymph node metastasis (OR = 2.12, 95% CI: 1.75-2.57, P .001).High AKIP1 expression is an unfavorable prognostic biomarker and may serve as a potential therapeutic target in patients with cancer.

In vitro and vivo studies indicate that oxidative stress contributes to bone loss. Fluorescent oxidation products (FlOPs) are novel biomarkers of oxidative stress; they reflect global oxidative damage of lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and DNA. However, whether FlOPs are associated with bone mineral density (BMD) is still unclear. In the present study, we examined the association between FlOPs and BMD among male veterans. This cross-sectional study was conducted among participants recruited from the Department of Medical Examination, The Second Hospital of Jilin University in Jilin, China. We identified male veterans who were at least 50 y old between June and October of 2019. Plasma FlOPs were measured with a fluorescent microplate reader (excitation/emission wavelength: 320/420 nm). BMD were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The association between FlOPs and BMD was tested by multivariable linear regression models. A total of 164 male veterans were enrolled in the study, the average age was 56.6 y. After adjusting for covariates, veterans who had FlOP levels in the highest tertile had a statistically significant lower femoral neck (β = -0.044; p = 0.007) and total hip BMD (β = -0.045; p = 0.020) as compared to those with FlOP levels in the lowest tertile. Similar results were found when FlOPs were treated as a continuous variable (per 1-SD increase, β = -0.014 and p = 0.033 for femoral neck BMD; β = -0.016 and p = 0.047 for total hip BMD). Higher FlOP levels were associated with lower BMD among male veterans.

Context Bone mineral density (BMD) T-score references may be updated when the peak BMD of the population is unclear and warrants reevaluation. Objective To update BMD T-score references using the peak BMD from the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Methods This cross-sectional study used NHANES data from 2005 to 2014. Non-Hispanic White females between the ages of 10 and 40 years (N = 1549) were our target population to estimate peak BMD (SD). Individuals aged ≥ 50 years (N = 5523) were used to compare the percentages of osteoporosis and low bone mass based on existing and updated BMD T-score references. BMD data within the age at attainment of peak BMD ± 5 years were used to calculate updated BMD T-score references. Results The updated average of BMD (SD) for diagnosing osteoporosis at the femoral neck and lumbar spine were 0.888 g/cm2 (0.121 g/cm2) and 1.065 g/cm2 (0.122 g/cm2), respectively. The percentages of individuals with osteoporosis at the femoral neck and low bone mass at the femoral neck and lumbar spine based on the updated BMD T-score references were higher than the percentages of people designated with these outcomes under the existing guidelines (P < 0.001). However, we observed the opposite pattern for lumbar spine osteoporosis (P < 0.001). Conclusions We calculated new BMD T-score references at the femoral neck and lumbar spine. We found significant differences in the percentages of individuals classified as having osteoporosis and low bone mass between the updated and existing BMD T-score references.

Catalytic enantioselective oxaziridination is one of the challenging reactions in the oxidation of organic molecules. In this article, a series of novel chiral thiourea moleculars were synthesized from natural cinchona alkaloids and primary amines. By using these molecules as organocatalysts and m-chloroperoxybenzoicacid (m-CPBA) as the oxidant, a methodology on highly enantioselective epoxidation of aldimines has been developed. Several optically active oxaziridines have been constructed in good yields (up to 95%) and moderate to excellent enantioselectivities (up to 99% ee). A plausible transition state was also proposed.

BP neural network has strong mistake tolerance and unsupervised speaker adaptation, so it has a wide range of applications in the field of pattern recognition. In this paper, an appearance level quantification algorithm based on BP neural network to extract face geometric features is proposed. We use 30 feature distances corresponding to facial features as the quantitative factor to calculate the appearance level and predict the appearance scores of the given face images.

Osteoporosis is a major public health problem worldwide. Lower peak bone mineral density (BMD) in youth may be the single most important factor leading to the development of osteoporosis in the elderly. Using cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005-2014, we included 18,713 individuals with complete and valid data on femoral neck, total hip and lumbar spine BMD. Generalized additive models were used to estimate the age at attainment of peak BMD and 95% confidence intervals (95%Cls); model covariates were sex, race, body mass index (BMI) and we also examine factors potentially affecting age at attainment of peak BMD. This study clearly stated that age at attainment of peak femoral neck, total hip and lumbar spine BMD were 20.5 years, 21.2 years and 23.6 years in males, and 18.7 years, 19.0 years and 20.1 years in females, respectively and age at attainment of peak BMD varied by skeletal sites and sex. The study also found that females achieved peak femoral neck, total hip and lumbar spine BMD earlier than males (all P 0.001); race and BMI were not associated with the age at attainment of peak BMD (all P 0.05). These results suggested that improving bone health among individuals before 20 years old may be useful for reducing future risk of osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures.

Based on machining experiments the diamond forming tool wear degrees of irregular area were studied, the tool wear rate mathematical model was deduced by regression analysis and the improvement project of tool was innovatively designed. Through the diamond forming tool segments thickness dimension compensation, the tool wear of irregular area can be uniformly achieved, the performance of diamond forming tool has been increased highly and the diamond forming tool life is greatly extended.

Catalytic enantioselective oxaziridination is one of the challenging reactions in the oxidation of organic molecules. In this article, a series of novel chiral thiourea moleculars were synthesized from natural cinchona alkaloids and primary amines. By using these molecules as organocatalysts and m-chloroperoxybenzoicacid (m-CPBA) as the oxidant, a methodology on highly enantioselective epoxidation of aldimines has been developed. Several optically active oxaziridines have been constructed in good yields (up to 95%) and moderate to excellent enantioselectivities (up to 99% ee). A plausible transition state was also proposed.

The paper proposes a new implementation platform for parallel FFT called multi-core DSPs, which uses Serial RapidIO (SRIO) to achieve DSP-to-DSP communication and utilizes Enhanced Direct Memory Access (EDMA3) to realize core-to-core communication. The simulation results show this architecture not only effectively solves the bottleneck of system interconnection, but also greatly improves executing efficiency of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Especially for large FFT points, this advantage is more obviously presented.

The implementation of the NPD (New Product Development) projects is to gain an important means of competitive advantage, new products; competition has become one of the core areas of competition. With the investment in NPD projects continue to increase, the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises continues to strengthen, but it also faces the risk of failure. It can be said that the “project into it, lose it project”, NPD projects even threaten the survival and development of enterprises, so how to improve the success rate of NPD projects, enhance Chinese enterprises develop NPD capable, is becoming a issue of great significance and need to study. Accordingly, this article from the perspective of the life cycle of the project to spread out the research on NPD projects critical success factors.

On the basis of the deep search and analysis of the relative literature of Virtual RD according to the results of the analysis of the model, amends to the model, and draws the relevant conclusions.