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Long COVID hinders people from normal life and work, posing significant medical and economic challenges. Nevertheless, comprehensive studies assessing its impact on large populations in Asia are still lacking. We tracked over 20,000 patients infected with COVID-19 for the first time during the Omicron BA.2 outbreak in Shanghai from March-June 2022 for one year. Of the 21,799 COVID-19 patients who participated in the 6-month telephone follow-up, 1939 (8.89%) had self-reported long COVID symptoms. 450 long COVID patients participated in the 6-month outpatient follow-up. Participants underwent healthy physical examinations and questionnaires focused on long-COVID-related symptoms and mental health. Mobility problem (P < 0.001), personal care problem (P = 0.003), usual activity problem (P < 0.001), pain/discomfort (P < 0.001), anxiety/depression (P = 0.001) and PTSD (P = 0.001) were more prevalent in long COVID patients than in healthy individuals, but no significant differences were found between the two groups on chest CT and laboratory examinations. Of the 856 long COVID patients who participated in the 12-month follow-up, 587 (68.5%) had their symptoms resolved. In the multivariable logistic analysis, females (P < 0.001), youth (age P < 0.001), ≥ 2 comorbidities (P = 0.009), and severe infection in the acute phase (P = 0.006) were risk factors for developing long COVID. Middle age (40–60 years) was a risk factor for persistent long COVID one year after hospital discharge (P = 0.013). The study found that long COVID mainly manifested as subjective symptoms and impacts partial patients’ quality of life and mental status. After one year, most (68.5%) of the patients recovered from long COVID with no impairment of organ function observed.

RNA interference (RNAi) is a specific post-transcriptional gene-silencing phenomenon, which plays an important role in the regulation of gene expression and the protection from transposable elements in eukaryotic organisms. In Drosophila melanogaster, RNAi can be induced by microRNA (miRNA), endogenous small interfering RNA (siRNA), or exogenous siRNA. However, the biogenesis of miRNA and siRNA in these RNAi pathways is aided by the double-stranded RNA binding proteins (dsRBPs) Loquacious (Loqs)-PB, Loqs-PD or R2D2. In this study, we identified three alternative splicing variants of Loqs, namely Loqs-PA, -PB, and -PC in the orthopteran Locusta migratoria. We performed in vitro and in vivo experiments to study the roles of the three Loqs variants in the miRNA- and siRNA-mediated RNAi pathways. Our results show that Loqs-PB assists the binding of pre-miRNA to Dicer−1 to lead to the cleavage of pre-miRNA to yield matured miRNA in the miRNA-mediated RNAi pathway. In contrast, different Loqs proteins participate in different siRNA-mediated RNAi pathways. In exogenous siRNA-mediated RNAi pathway, binding of Loqs-PA or LmLoqs-PB to exogenous dsRNA facilitates the cleavage of dsRNA by Dicer−2, whereas in endogenous siRNA-mediated RNAi pathway, binding of Loqs-PB or Loqs-PC to endogenous dsRNA facilitates the cleavage of dsRNA by Dicer−2. Our findings provide new insights into the functional importance of different Loqs proteins derived from alternative splicing variants of Loqs in achieving high RNAi efficiency in different RNAi pathways in insects.

Organic cultivation has been considered as an important cultivation approach for sustainable agriculture in the world. Whether organic cultivation can mitigate the negative impact of agriculture on the environment especially in greenhouses is still unclear. The purpose of this study is to investigate the long-term impacts in soil fertility and environment quality through organic cultivation (OC), low-input cultivation (LC) and conventional cultivation (CC) in greenhouses after 15 years of cultivation. We found that the soil organic carbon (SOC) content in the OC treatment was 1.7 times of that in CC, 1.2 times of that in the LC treatments. Vegetable yield and the content of alkali nitrogen, available phosphorus and available potassium in the OC treatment was significantly higher than those in the LC and CC treatments. Due to the high input of organic fertilizers, increased content of heavy metals (Cu, Zn, Pb, Cd, Cr and As) were observed in the OC treatment. In addition, organic cultivation resulted in considerable residue accumulation of tetracycline antibiotics (TCs) and pesticides in the soil. Ecological risk assessment of soil pollutants showed that organic cultivation has the highest ecological risk index. At present, organic partial substitution or low-input cultivation could be a promising approach for the development of sustainable agriculture.

Background: To observe the effect of highly ag-glutinative staphylococcin (HAS) combined with α-calcium sulfate hemihydrate (α-CSH) on tendon-bone healing after cruciate ligament reconstruction, and to explore the effect of highly ag-glutinative staphylococcin combined with α-calcium sulfate hemihydrate on anterior cruciate ligament（ACL）reconstruction after ACL reconstruction. Methods: Fifty-four New Zealand white rabbits were randomly divided into three groups: blank control group, α-CSH group, and HAS+α-CSH group. In the blank control group, only autologous ACL reconstruction was performed. HAS binds to a-calcium sulfate hemihydrate complex. At different time after operation (4, 8, 12 weeks after operation), 6 experimental rabbits in each group were randomly selected to be sacrificed and perform gross histological observation, cytological outcome of tendon-bone interface, protein analysis of synovial fluid, and biomechanical test of knee joint. Results: HAS+α-CSH can make the tendon-bone interface appear "tide line"-like structure earlier, reduce the production of TGF-α and IL-1β in synovial fluid, increase the area of new bone formation and the maximum tensile load of the reconstructed tendon , maximum load energy and maximum stress result. Conclusion: The combination of highly ag-glutinative staphylococcin and α-calcium sulfate hemihydrate can promote the tendon-bone healing process after cruciate ligament reconstruction.

Patients with angina pectoris often experience heavy psychological distress, especially anxiety and depression, which results in poorer quality of life, shorter survival time. Acupoint therapies, including massage, acupuncture, acupoints injection, acupressure, and moxibustion, showed clinical and long-lasting benefits for angina pectoris, but the efficiency of acupoint therapies was poorly evaluated. The current review is attempted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the different acupoint-based therapies for angina pectoris.

According to the data of Cancer Statistics [1], liver cancer is increasing most rapidly, by 2% to 3% annually during 2007 through 2016, although the pace has slowed from previous years. The cancer mainly affects the elderly, as a result, most liver cancers are examined at a late stage and the 5-year survival rate for patients is only 17%, [2] compared with urban counterparts, rural residents have higher incidence and mortality of this disease. [3] Although advances in treatment have led to significant increases in survival rates, most people diagnosed with liver cancer are surviving longer, they have low quality of life. [1, 4, 5] Liver cancer patients are under psychological and physical cancer-related stressors which may impact on patients for many years following treatment. [6] Some data indicate that men with liver cancer may suffer from heightened psychological distress and the rates of depression among patients with liver cancer are 68. 42 %. [7] With high prevalence, more attention has turned to explore the effects of depression on patients with liver cancer and its risk factors. And according to recent data, an increasing trend is observed regarding research on the associations of liver cancer with depression. [8-9] These effects may contribute to image distortion and cause an added burden during treatment. Meanwhile, it may trouble with general management and decrease compliance with treatment. These patients with depression may live more unhealthy lifestyles than the general population. [10] Some data have showed that depression may decrease the immunity and influence the cancer survival. [11, 12] Therefore, early screening for the depression is advantageous in identifying high-risk patients. However, on account of its complex etiology and pathogenesis, complete screening for depression is difficult. Thus, identify high-risk factors may support tremendous assistance. Many researchers have found a variety of factors that can influence the prevalence of depression, they indicate that physical symptom burden, poor performance status, pain, marital status, age, economic status and low-educational level might place a man with liver cancer at increased risk for depression. [13-16] And various studies had reported some disease-related factors, such as, disease stage and performance status. However, most of these study results are inconsistent, their samples are too small. And some studies indicate that there has no association between depression and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. Only after screening out unified risk factors, and search out high-risk patients can we effective in offering more targeted treatment strategies, and improving quality of life in liver cancer patients and survivors. To provide robust evidence on the risk factors related to depression, we will undertake an evidence-based medicine systematic review and meta-analysis, the validated outcome will give recommendations for physicians to identify liver cancer patients with depression and the management of emotional issues for patients, and we can also give some suggestions on improving the quality of life of these patients.

As a rule, the production rate of a shale gas well is high at the initial stage and decreases within approximately one year of production. On the one hand, the rate of production of the horizontal shale gas well is obviously affected by the bottom hole liquid accumulation when even a cubic meter volume of accumulated liquid can lead to a complete cessation of gas production. On the other hand, the production rate is also sensitive to gas transmission pressure and the transmission mode. Due to the great difference in the gas production and percolation mechanism between a shale gas reservoir and a conventional gas reservoir; the error of prediction of the gas flow pattern can be very high. Based on the modern shale gas dynamics, the method of multiple regression analysis is proposed to predict the average pressure drop gradient of a gas well, and the average error rate is 9.0%. The new method has the advantages of high efficiency and low cost. According to the actual production data fitting, the gas wells are divided into stable production and unstable production wells, depending on the average pressure drop gradient, which effectively reflects the implementation of a well drainage gas production technology.

Background：Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) is well known to be associated with a lot of tumors, including lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, EBV associated gastric carcinoma and some other carcinomas with similar lymphoepithelioma-like features. However, the association between EBV and thymic epithelial tumors (TETs) is inconclusive as reports in this regard are not entirely consistent and the methods employed are of different sensitivity and specificity. The geographical difference of the patients is also one of the reasons for the different point of views. Methods：In our study, we examined 72 thymomas, including 3 cases of type A thymomas, 27 cases of type AB, 6 cases of type B1, 26 cases of type B2 and 10 cases of type B3 thymomas, and 15 thymic carcinomas to detect the viral genome at both DNA and RNA levels. The genome DNA of fresh tissues were first screened by nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which could be regarded as the most sensitive method to detect small amounts of DNA. Then all the tissue blocks were further submitted for viral localization by Epstein–Barr-encoded RNA (EBER) ISH. Results：Nested PCR results showed that none of type A, eight (29.6%) type AB, one (16.7%) type B1, fifteen (57.7%) type B2 and four (40.0%) type B3 were positive for EBV genome. None of them detected EBER expression except for one case of B2 thymoma. Fourteen (93.3%) thymic carcinomas were positive for EBV by nested PCR, of which three displayed weak nuclear signals within the tumor cells by EBER ISH. Conclusions：These results showed that nested PCR was a sensitive method for screening the EBV genome in thymic epithelial tumors. As the malignancy of thymoma increases, the rate of EBV infection became higher. Thymic carcinomas were well associated with the Epstein–Barr virus. We further analyzed the association between EBV infection and myasthenia gravis. We found that EBV infection rate was higher in the thymomas with myasthenia gravis. This gave us a hint that EBV may also played some roles in thymoma-related myasthenia gravis.

The coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) is caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus that was first detected at the end of December 2019. The epidemic has affected various regions of China in different degrees. As the situations evolve, the COVID-19 had been confirmed in many countries, and made a assessment that it can be characterized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. Drugs are the main treatment of COVID-19 patients. Pharmaceutical service offers drug safety ensurance for COVID-19 patients. According to COVID-19 prevention and control policy and requirements, combined with series of diagnosis and treatment plans, pharmacists in the first provincial-level COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment unit in Jilin Province in Northeast China have established the management practices of drug supply and pharmaceutical care from four aspects: personnel, drugs supply management, off-label drug use management and pharmaceutical care. During the outbreak, the pharmaceutical department of THJU completed its assigned workload to ensure drug supply. So far, no nosocomial infections and medication errors have occurred, which has stabilized the mood of the staff and boosted the pharmacists' confidence in fighting the epidemic. For the treatment of COVID-19, pharmacists conducted adverse reaction monitoring and participated in the multidisciplinary consultation of COVID-19. Up to now, the COVID-19 patients admitted to THJU have not shown any new serious adverse reactions and been cured finally. The hospital pharmacy department timely adjusted the work mode, and the formed management practices is a powerful guarantee for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic. This paper summarized the details and practices of drug supply and pharmaceutical services management to provide experience for the people who involving in COVID-19 prevention and contain in other abroad epidemic areas.

Luminescent metal-organic frameworks (LMOFs) with diverse structural features and promising fluorescence-based applications have attracted wide attention in the past two decades. In this work, a LMOF with the formula [Ca4(tcbpe-F)2(H2O)3] (1, LMOF-411) has been constructed from calcium (Ca) and 1,1,2,2-tetrakis(4-(4-carboxyphenyl)phenyl)ethene (H4tcbpe-F). Compound 1 features a three-dimensional framework with a 10-nodal net topology. Due to the relatively high hydration energy of Ca2+, compound 1 readily transforms into a new phase formulated as [Ca(H2tcbpe-F)(H2O)2] (1) upon exposure to water. Combining experimental characterization and theoretical calculations, we elucidated the mechanism of H2O-induced phase transition from 1 to 1. Notably, the water induced phase transformation can be detected visibly from the change in luminescence, which originates from the fluorescent linker. Compound 1 emits green light (λ em = 490 nm) under UV excitation, while compound 1 emits bright yellow light (λ em = 550 nm) under blue excitation (450 nm). Compound 1 represents the first Ca based LMOF yellow phosphor and its luminescence quantum yield reaches 68%. It can be coated directly onto a commercial blue light-emitting-diode (LED) chip to fabricate a white LED (WLED).

The selenium-enriched lotus leaf sclerotium mycelium fermented in 20L bio-tank was used as raw material to optimize the extraction process of selenium polysaccharide in mycelium and analyze the structure of water-soluble selenium polysaccharide through anti-cancer effect. The optimal extraction conditions of selenium polysaccharide were obtained by experiment and Box-Behnken design method: extraction time was 50 min, extraction temperature was 83 °C, ratio of material to liquid was 1:130 (g:mL), extraction times were 2 times. It is 44.62%, which is 0.02% higher than the predicted value. At this time, the selenium content in the polysaccharide reaches 31.9μg/g. The purified selenium polysaccharide is analyzed for anticancer effect, which has proliferation inhibition effect on various human cancer cells and inhibits tumor in vivo. Growing.

Structure and properties of crystalline organic-inorganic hybrid semiconductors have been explored and studied over the past decades. As the global energy consumption has escalated dramatically, their potential applications in energy related optoelectronics are attracting more research interests. For both energy saving devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) and higher efficiency sustainable energy source such as solar cells (SCs), hybrid semiconductors have shown remarkable performance as the active materials. Among various types of crystalline organic-inorganic hybrids, copper(I) halide-based hybrid semiconductors have been intensively and continuously synthesized and studied, due to their abundance in structure and promising photophysical/photochemical properties. This class of materials has already demonstrated their superior performance as eco-friendly and cost-effective rare-earth elements free (REE) phosphors. Various other applications including sensing, photochromic as well as dopants for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) have also attracted significant research interests. My research has been focusing on designing new CuI(L) (L: organic ligands) hybrid semiconductors with desired optical and electrical properties, and fabricating them into optoelectronic devices, particularly LEDs.While CuI(L) hybrids constructed through Cu-N/P/S coordination bonds are well-known for their excellent optical properties and high photoluminescence efficiency, the low solution processibility, insufficient stability and poor charge transport properties of the 0D-cluster based CuI(L) hybrids are the main drawbacks. To satisfy the requirements as stable and highly efficient emitting layer (EML) materials for LEDs, I designed and synthesized several new classes of CuI(L) hybrids with both ionic and coordinate bonds using uniquely designed cationic ligands with free N-binding sites. Such CuI(L) hybrids not only maintain extraordinarily high internal quantum yields (IQYs) but also have high photo/thermal stability, high solubility in selected solvents and enhanced charge transport properties as a result of introducing higher dimensional structures and multiple bonding modes. For the first time, high quality solution processed thin films of crystalline CuI(L) hybrids are deposited as host material free EML. I have successfully fabricated prototype yellow and blue LED devices with these CuI(L) compounds as EML, which demonstrate decent performances and stabilities.I have also worked with a series of new copper iodide based hybrid compounds having tunable and narrow bandgaps. High quality single crystals of these materials were grown, fabricated into single crystal devices and used in charge transport property measurements. They exhibit improved conductivity, several orders of magnitude higher than lead-based perovskites. Coupled with their high stability, these materials might be a promising candidate for potential photovoltaic applications.

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a novel enabling technology that can turn existing fibre optic networks to distributed acoustic sensors. However, it faces the challenges of transmitting, storing, and processing massive streams of data which are orders of magnitude larger than that collected from point sensors. The gap between intensive data generated by DAS and modern computing system with limited reading/writing speed and storage capacity imposes restrictions on many applications. Compressive sensing (CS) is a revolutionary signal acquisition method that allows a signal to be acquired and reconstructed with significantly fewer samples than that required by Nyquist-Shannon theorem. Though the data size is greatly reduced in the sampling stage, the reconstruction of the compressed data is however time and computation consuming. To address this challenge, we propose to map the feature extractor from Nyquist-domain to compressed-domain and therefore vibration detection and classification can be directly implemented in compressed-domain. The measured results show that our framework can be used to reduce the transmitted data size by 70% while achieves 99.4% true positive rate (TPR) and 0.04% false positive rate (TPR) along 5 km sensing fibre and 95.05% classification accuracy on a 5-class classification task.

Additional file 1: Table S1. The means and standard deviations for the data ( $$\overline{{\text{x}}}$$ x �� ��SD).

Metaverse has recently attracted much attention from both academia and industry. Virtual services, ranging from virtual driver training to online route optimization for smart goods delivery, are emerging in the Metaverse. To make the human experience of virtual life more real, digital twins (DTs), namely digital replicas of physical objects, are key enablers. However, DT status may not always accurately reflect that of its real-world twin because the latter may be subject to changes with time. As such, it is necessary to synchronize a DT with its physical counterpart to ensure that its status is accurate for virtual businesses in the Metaverse. In this paper, we propose a dynamic hierarchical framework in which a group of IoT devices is incentivized to sense and collect physical objects' status information collectively so as to assists virtual service providers (VSPs) in synchronizing DTs. Based on the collected sensing data and the value decay rate of the DTs, the VSPs can determine synchronization intensities to maximize their payoffs. In our proposed dynamic hierarchical framework, the lower-level evolutionary game captures the VSPs selection by the IoT device population, and the upper-level differential game captures the VSPs payoffs, which are affected by the synchronization strategy, IoT devices selections, and the DTs value status, given VSPs are simultaneous decision makers. We further consider the case in which some VSPs are first movers and extend it as a Stackelberg differential game. We theoretically and experimentally show that the equilibrium to the lower-level game exists and is evolutionarily robust, and provide a sensitivity analysis with respect to various system parameters. Experiments show that the proposed dynamic hierarchical game outperform the baseline.

Additional file 5 Supplementary Table S3. All triplets of conditions with prevalence > 1.5% and observed/expected (O/E) ratio > 1.5 (and p value

Additional file 4. Supplementary Table S2. Relationship between number of conditions and participant characteristics.

Additional file 4. Supplementary Table S2. Relationship between number of conditions and participant characteristics.

Additional file 1. Supplementary File 1. BHAS Phase 1 Questionnaire 2010–2015.

Additional file 2. Supplementary File 2. Statistical Supplement. Latent Class Analysis method.

We report an all-optical radio-frequency (RF) spectrum analyzer with a bandwidth greater than 5 terahertz (THz), based on a 50-cm long spiral waveguide in a CMOS-compatible high-index doped silica platform. By carefully mapping out the dispersion profile of the waveguides for different thicknesses, we identify the optimal design to achieve near zero dispersion in the C-band. To demonstrate the capability of the RF spectrum analyzer, we measure the optical output of a femtosecond fiber laser with an ultrafast optical RF spectrum in the terahertz regime., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, 26 references

Additional file 6. Supplementary Table S4. Morbidity patterns and number of conditions. Number of participants with each number of conditions and percentage within each morbidity pattern.

Additional file 5 Supplementary Table S3. All triplets of conditions with prevalence > 1.5% and observed/expected (O/E) ratio > 1.5 (and p value

Additional file 2. Supplementary File 2. Statistical Supplement. Latent Class Analysis method.

Additional file 3. Supplementary Table S1. Mean, median and maximum number of conditions by gender and demographic groups.

Additional file 6. Supplementary Table S4. Morbidity patterns and number of conditions. Number of participants with each number of conditions and percentage within each morbidity pattern.

Inorganic semiconductor materials are best known for their superior physical properties, as well as their structural rigidity and stability. However, the poor solubility and solution-processability of these covalently bonded network structures has long been a serious drawback that limits their use in many important applications. Here, we present a unique and general approach to synthesize robust, solution-processable, and highly luminescent hybrid materials built on periodic and infinite inorganic modules. Structure analysis confirms that all compounds are composed of one-dimensional anionic chains of copper iodide (CumIm+22-) coordinated to cationic organic ligands via Cu-N bonds. The choice of ligands plays an important role in the coordination mode (μ1-MC or μ2-DC) and Cu-N bond strength. Greatly suppressed nonradiative decay is achieved for the μ2-DC structures. Record high quantum yields of 85% (λex = 360 nm) and 76% (λex = 450 nm) are obtained for an orange-emitting 1D-Cu4I6(L6). Temperature dependent PL measurements suggest that both phosphorescence and thermally activated delayed fluorescence contribute to the emission of these 1D-AIO compounds, and that the extent of nonradiative decay of the μ2-DC structures is much less than that of the μ1-DC structures. More significantly, all compounds are remarkably soluble in polar aprotic solvents, distinctly different from previously reported CuI based hybrid materials made of charge-neutral CumXm (X = Cl, Br, I), which are totally insoluble in all common solvents. The greatly enhanced solubility is a result of incorporation of ionic bonds into extended covalent/coordinate network structures, making it possible to fabricate large scale thin films by solution processes.

Chemoresistance has been an obstacle in the further improvement of 5-year survival rates of osteosarcoma (OS) patients, but the underlying mechanism of chemo-resistance remains unclear. A comprehensive analysis of mRNAs and noncoding RNAs related to OS chemo-resistance could help solve this problem. In the current study, we first identified that fibronectin-1 (FN1), screened by microarray analysis in three paired chemo-resistant and chemo-sensitive OS cell lines, was significantly upregulated in the chemo-resistant OS cell lines and tissues and was related to unfavourable prognosis. Further functional assays revealed that FN1 inhibition greatly increased the sensitivity of OS cells to doxorubicin in vitro and in vivo, whereas FN1 overexpression had the opposite effect. Moreover, mechanistic investigation demonstrated, by a series of assays that included luciferase reporter gene, RNA immunoprecipitation, RNA pull-down and rescue assays, that FN1 expression was regulated by the oncogenic long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) OIP5-AS1 through sponging miR-200b-3p. Thus, these results indicated the role and potential application of the lncRNA OIP5-AS1/miR-200b-3p/FN1 regulatory pathway as a promising target in treatment of OS chemo-resistance.

A mathematical fitting modeling method based on Ant Colony Algorithm and which can effectively reflect the intrinsic mechanism eigenvalue of ECG is studied. The measured ECG signals are taken as the research object, fitting methods are used to obtain multiple characteristic parameters, ITAE is used as the evaluation criteria, and then the parameters are acquired through the ant colony algorithm, in the end, the model of calculated parameters for ECG is established, this fitting way can not only enrich the date of ECG in QRS, but also provide effective data for further research such as magnetoelectricity inversion calculation, expanding the mathematical fitting method for analyzing discrete signals such as electrophysiology.

Magnetocardiogram (MCG) signal is a kind of non-stationary signal reflecting the changes of cardiac magnetic field. It has practical significance to study the MCG signal and predict its change trend, which can help to analyze cardiac electrophysiological activities. In this article, Markov verification is carried out on MCG signals, it was possible to predict the magnetic field intensity of the MCG signal by Markov chain. Combined with the initial data acquired by the SQUID, it was feasible to predict the magnetic field intensity of the MCG signal by models of Markov chain with weights.

Objective. To evaluate the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of a new surgical method of U-shaped myometrial excavation and modified suture approach with uterus preservation for diffuse adenomyosis. Methods. From January 2012 to December 2014, 198 patients with diffuse adenomyosis were surgically treated using this novel procedure in Zhengzhou Hua-Shan Hospital. Degree of dysmenorrhea, menstrual blood volume, serum CA 125, and uterine size before and at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months after surgery were compared. Results. Postoperatively, VAS score of dysmenorrhea, menstrual blood volume, serum CA 125 level, and uterine size significantly decreased at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months from presurgical levels (all p < .001), but there were no differences at the follow-up time points. Two patients recurred at 18 months and 23 months after surgery, but both recovered after repeat surgery. Interestingly, 2 other patients recrudesced at 10 months and 12 months after surgery. In addition, only one patient was found to have a postoperative anaemia with fever, conservatively managed without surgery. Conclusion. U-shaped myometrial excavation and modified suture approach with uterus preservation is a safe and feasible surgical approach to treat diffuse adenomyosis, with favourable outcomes.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) represent a widespread class of non-coding RNAs generated from back-splicing, with a circular loop structure. Many circRNAs have been reported to play essential roles in cancer development and have the potential to serve as a novel class of biomarkers for clinical diagnosis. However, the role of circRNA in osteosarcoma (OS) remains largely unknown. In the current study, we examined the expression level of circular RNA PVT1 (circPVT1), previously screened and identified the oncogenic role in gastric cancer, in OS and found that circPVT1 was significantly up-regulated in the OS tissues, serums and chemoresistant cell lines, correlated with poor prognosis of OS patients. Besides, ROC curve demonstrated that circPVT1 may be a better diagnostic biomarker than alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in OS with more sensitivity and specificity. In addition, functional assays revealed that circPVT1 knockdown by siRNA could weaken the resistance to doxorubicin and cisplatin of OS cells through decreasing the expression of classical drug resistance-related gene ABCB1. These findings may provide a new insight into the role of circPVT1 as a biomarker for the diagnosis and treatment target of OS.

Sm3+ doped calcium stannate (CaSnO3:Sm3+) and (Sm3+, Zr4+)-co-doped calcium stannate (CaSnO3:Sm3+, Zr4+) photoluminescent phosphors were synthesized via co-precipitation and subsequent sintering in oxidizing atmosphere at 1400 °C for 60 min with SnCl4·5H2O, CaCl2·2H2O, ZrO(NO3)2·xH2O and Sm2O3 as main raw materials. The synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, photoluminescent spectroscopy, luminescent decay curves, afterglow spectroscopy and thermo-luminescent glow curves. The results show that CaSnO3 pure phase is synthesized in co-precipitation reaction at an optimum molar ratio of CaCl2·2H2O:SnCl4·5H2O of 1.4:1.0 and subsequent sintering at 1400 °C for 60 min. Calcium stannate as a host matrix can be doped with Sm3+ ions or co-doped with Sm3+/Zr4+ ions for the formation of white photoluminescent phosphors. CaSnO3:0.03Sm3+ phosphor has an optimum photoluminescent intensity. Also, the fluorescent emission intensity of CaSnO3:0.03Sm3+，0.04Zr4+ phosphor under excitation of 365 nm wavelength can be enhanced due to Zr4+ ions doping at an optimum doping amount y of 0.04. The CIE 1931 chromaticity coordinates change from (0.3600, 0.3535) for CaSnO3:0.03Sm3+ phosphor to (0.3622, 0.3574) for CaSnO3:0.03Sm3+, 0.04Zr4+ phosphor as the average crystalline size decreases from 71.5 to 68.3 nm and the unit cell volume increases from 0.2686 to 0.2775 nm3. In addition, the electron transition mechanism for the photoluminescent and long afterglow properties was also discussed.

// Zhu Kun-Peng 1, 2, * , Ma Xiao-Long 1, 2, * and Zhang Chun-Lin 1, 2, * 1 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, Shanghai 200072, PR China 2 Institute of Bone Tumor Affiliated to Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200072, PR China * These authors contributed equally to this work and co-first authors Correspondence to: Zhang Chun-Lin, email: shzhangchunlin123@163.com Keywords: LncRNA, FENDRR, osteosarcoma, chemoresistance, doxorubicin Received: April 03, 2017 Accepted: May 07, 2017 Published: May 18, 2017 ABSTRACT Long noncoding RNAs (LncRNAs) act as crucial regulators in various cancers including osteosarcoma (OS), yet their potential roles and molecular mechanisms in OS chemoresistance remain unclear. In the present study, we investigated the role and potential regulatory mechanism of the most down-regulated expressed lncRNA, FENDRR screened by our previous lncRNA microarray analysis between the paired doxorubicin-resistant and sensitive human osteosarcoma cell lines (MG63/DXR vs MG63). FENDRR expression was down-regulated in the doxorubicin-resistant OS cell lines and tissues and negatively correlated to the poor prognosis of OS patients. Overexpression of FENDRR suppressed doxorubicin-resistance, G2/M phase of cell cycle, and promoted cell apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells in vitro and tumor growth in vivo whereas FENDRR knockdown had the opposite effects. In addition, we found that FENDRR was mainly located in the cytoplasm and could regulate the drug resistance of osteosarcoma cells by negatively affecting posttranscriptional expression of ABCB1 and ABCC1. Together, our study demonstrated that lncRNA FENDRR may act as an inhibitory molecule of doxorubicin-resistance through down-regulating the expression of ABCB1 and ABCC1 genes in osteosarcoma cells. These findings may extend the function of FENDRR in tumor progression and provide a novel target for reversing OS chemoresistance.

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignant bone cancer in children and adolescents. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to play significant role in various cancers, including OS. In a previous study, we have reported that a novel antisense lncRNA FOXF1-AS1, also known as FENDRR, could sensitize doxorubicin-resistance of OS cells through down-regulating ABCB1 and ABCC1. Here in, the critical role of FOXF1-AS1 in regulating OS progression was further investigated. Firstly, we found that FOXF1-AS1 and its antisense transcript FOXF1 expression were positively up-regulated in OS tissues and cell lines and correlated with poor prognosis of OS patients. Besides, FOXF1-AS1 as well as FOXF1 silencing significantly inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion of OS cells and tumor growth both in vitro and vivo through decreasing the expression of MMP2 and MMP9, whereas enhanced expression of FOXF1-AS1 had the opposite effects. In addition, mechanistically, both of FOXF1-AS1 and FOXF1 could regulate the expression of MMP2 and MMP9 at mRNA and protein levels, whereas FOXF1-AS1 could influence the FOXF1expression but FOXF1 did not have the same effect on FOXF1-AS1. Rescue assay further showed that FOXF1-AS1 overexpression efficiently reversed the knockdown of MMP2 and MMP9 expression induced by si-FOXF1. Thus, we concluded that FOXF1-AS1 may promote migration and invasion of OS cells through the FOXF1/MMP-2/-9 pathway. Taken together, these findings demonstrated the underlying mechanism of FOXF1-AS1 in the regulation of OS progression and provide a novel potential target in the OS therapy.

With the advances in telecommunication technologies and dramatic performance enhancement of communication equipments, the communication and computing are converging and autonomous distributed architectures will play more important roles in future wireless communication networks. Therefore, devising distributed and dynamic algorithms for ensuring a robust network operation in time-varying and heterogeneous environments becomes a critical issue. Game theory as a discipline studying the interactions of interdependent autonomous agents provides an ideal framework with a set of mathematical tools for this purpose. In this dissertation, we focus on the use of dynamic games to model, analyze, and design efficient distributed algorithms for the competitive resource management in wireless networks. The motivation for the use of dynamic games is from the consideration of dynamic nature of wireless environment and the wide existence of hierarchical structures in wireless networks modeling. The specific issues addressed in this dissertation are summarized as follows.The first issue is the dynamic network selection in heterogeneous wireless networks with incomplete information. A network selection Bayesian game is formulated for this purpose. In general, the preference (i.e., utility) of a mobile user is private information. Therefore, each user has to make the decision of network selection optimally given only the partial information of the preferences of other users. To study the dynamics of such network selection, the Bayesian best response dynamics and aggregate best response dynamics are applied. Bayesian Nash equilibrium is considered to be the solution of this game, and there is a one-to-one mapping between the Bayesian Nash equilibrium and the equilibrium distribution of the aggregate dynamics. We show that even with incomplete information, the equilibrium of network selection decisions of mobile users can be reached. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (SCE)

Breast cancer (BC) is a serious worldwide disease that threatens women's health. Particularly, the morbidity of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is higher than that of other BC types due to its high molecular heterogeneity, metastatic potential and poor prognosis. TNBC lacks of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), so there are still no effective treatment methods for TNBC. Here, we reviewed the classification of TNBC, its molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis, treatment methods and prognosis. Finding effective targets is critical for the treatment of TNBC. Also, refining the classification of TNBC is benefited to choose the treatment of TNBC, because the sensitivity of chemotherapy is different in different TNBC. Some new treatment methods have been proposed in recent years, such as nutritional therapy and noncoding RNA treatment methods. There are some disadvantages, such as the side effect on normal cells after nutrient deprivation, low specificity and instability of noncoding RNA. More studies are necessary to improve the treatment of TNBC.

Relative coverage of transcripts from susceptible (A, B) and phosphine-resistant (C, D) T. castaneum adults from this study, either not exposed (A, C) or exposed (B, D) to phosphine, aligning to DLD mRNA from a phosphine-susceptible T. castaneum adult strain (QTC4, accession JX434604) using SeqMan Pro (DNAStar). Thin red line – single strand coverage; thick red line – exceeds threshold of coverage; thin green – coverage on both strands; thick green – above threshold coverage; thin cyan – single direction coverage only. (PDF 99 kb)

of Genes related to mitochondrial functions are differentially expressed in phosphine-resistant and -susceptible Tribolium castaneum

Treatment and sequencing strategy for T. castaneum adults (RFB). Abbreviations: RFBSusc, phosphinesusceptible laboratory colony; RFBPhosResBr, phosphine-resistant population from Brazil. Overall there were four treatments: RFBSusc not exposed to phosphine (blue); RFBPhosResBr not exposed to phosphine (orange); RFBSusc and RFBPhos-ResBr exposed to phosphine* (red). Each treatment was in triplicate; lower tier describes the samples that were extracted for mRNA used in the RNA-Seq experiments. (PDF 278 kb)

Summary of SNPs/INDELs found in transcripts encoding DLD from phoshine-susceptible (A, unexposed; B, exposed) or -resistant (C, unexposed; D, exposed) T. castaneum adults, when transcripts were assembled to QTC4 ((gi|399108166|gb|AFP20530.1|) using SeqManNGen (DNAStar). (PDF 115 kb)

Multiple sequence alignment of RNA-Seq transcriptome data from phosphine-susceptible (TcPhosSusUxp_DLD, TcPhosSusExp_DLD) and -resistant (TcPhosResUxp_DLD, TcPhosResExp_DLD) T. castaneum to DLD mRNA from other strains. QTC sequences corresponded to gi|399108165|gb|JX434604.1| (QTC4); gi|399108167|gb|JX434605.1| (QTC931); gi|399108169|gb|JX434606.1| (QTC1012); and gi|399108171|gb|JX434607.1| (QTC1389) [10]. R = purine (A or G); M = Amino (A or C); S = Strong (G or C); Y = pyrimidine (C or T); - = deletion; lower case letters indicate polymorphism (most common nucleotide shown). Shaded are recognition sequences for restriction enzymes that may be used to detect resistance, and sites are identified by arrows. (PDF 100 kb)

ArrayStar statistics on alignment of reads to Tcas3 (Total Reference bases - 32,060,158; Total Reference sequences - 18,428; Total Genome bases - 160,464,614). Parameters: mer length = 5; mer repeat threshold = fixed, 150; read assignment qualification - match 80Â % of read or 20 bases. (PDF 60 kb)

Comparison of relative transcript expression among all four treatment groups (resistant exposed – Rexp; resistant unexposed – Ruxp; susceptible exposed – Sexp; susceptible unexposed – Suxp) in which expression was upregulated in resistant compared to susceptible adults exposed to phosphine, using F-test (ANOVA, p

Mortality of adult T. castaneum from Brazil exposed to increasing doses of phosphine (dotted lines represent the 95Â % C.I.). (PDF 350 kb)