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Abstract Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of regorafenib monotherapy or in combination with immune-checkpoint inhibitor while treating Chinese patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC): a real-world study. Methods The data of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who received regorafenib-containing regimen as the third or later line treatment at ten Chinese hospitals from Aug 2017 to Jun 2020 were retrospectively analyzed, including dosing details, survival data as well as adverse events. Survival analysis was further performed for patients administrated with regorafenib monotherapy and combined with an immune-checkpoint inhibitor based on Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression methods. The primary endpoint was overall survival. Results A total of 537 patients were included with a median age of 61, among whom 376 received regorafenib monotherapy and 245 received regorafenib combined with immune-checkpoint inhibitors. The clinicopathological characteristics of the two groups at baseline were mainly balanced. No significant difference in progression-free survival (PFS) was observed in patients receiving regorafenib monotherapy or combination therapy (3.8 vs. 5.5 months, p = 0.170). In contrast, patients receiving combination therapy had a more prolonged overall survival (OS) than those receiving regorafenib monotherapy (13.5 vs. 10.0 months, p = 0.001). The treatment regimen and regorafenib dosage were significant prognostic factors in the multivariate analysis. Significant benefits in PFS and OS were achieved in KRAS mutant and anti-angiogenesis treatment-naïve subgroups receiving combination therapy compared to monotherapy. No apparent increase was recorded in treatment-related adverse events in patients receiving combination therapy. Conclusion Regorafenib plus an immune-checkpoint inhibitor has already been a widely adopted strategy in the later-line treatment for mCRC in the real world. The combination therapy yielded a significantly prolonged overall survival than regorafenib alone, with a manageable safety profile in Chinese patients, and warrants further investigation. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04835324. Registered 6th April 2021.

Background: The study of bladder preservation for muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) mainly focuses on the T2 stage, which remains difficult in the T3 and T4 stage. Pembrolizumab has been applied as neoadjuvant therapy followed by radical cystectomy for MIBC, gaining encouraging results in the phase II study. Disitamab vedotin, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), also achieved promising efficacy for refractory bladder cancer. However, the neoadjuvant therapy strategy of these drugs for bladder sparing remains further exploration. Case presentation: A patient with locally advanced MIBC at our institute underwent a neoadjuvant therapeutic regimen followed by transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) and concurrent chemoradiotherapy. In light of limited initial efficacy, we enacted an adaptive shift in the neoadjuvant treatment strategy, transitioning from a combination of gemcitabine, cis-platinum, and pembrolizumab to disitamab vedotin with pembrolizumab. This approach ultimately achieved bladder preservation, complete response, and a remarkable 1-year disease-free survival (DFS). Conclusion: Proactive evaluation in the early stages of tumor downstaging can serve as a guiding principle for neoadjuvant strategies. This is the first successful case of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab combined with disitamab vedotin and chemotherapy in MIBC patients achieving complete response and bladder preservation.

Semiconductor heterojunctions have garnered extensive interest in photocatalytic hydrogen generation, yet the limited light absorption and charge transfer efficiencies still restrict the photocatalytic performance. The topological insulator has unique surface states and high‐mobility electrons, demonstrating the significant potential for enhancing photocatalysis. Herein, a ternary photocatalyst based on a topological insulator, in which CdS and ZnS nanoparticles are grown on Bi2Se3 nanotube, is prepared for efficient photocatalysis driven by topological surface state for the first time. Under simulated solar light irradiation, the CdS/ZnS/Bi2Se3 nanotubes display a robust photocatalytic hydrogen production rate of 7.13 mmol h−1 g−1, which is 69.2 times of CdS and comparable to many CdS‐based photocatalysts. The unique hollow structure, topological surface state of Bi2Se3, and cooperative bandgap excitations of the three components endow the hybrids with wide light response to harvest solar energy. Meanwhile, the multichannel charge transfer facilitated by topological surface state and internal electric fields within the hybrids effectively suppresses the recombination of the photogenerated charge carriers. This mechanism maintains a high concentration of stable electrons on Bi2Se3, resulting in highly efficient hydrogen production. This work provides a new inspiration for designing heterojunction photocatalysts based on topological insulators for high‐efficiency solar‐driven energy conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To analyze the value of the combined test of the cardiac color Doppler ultrasound, the serum middle receptor pro-atrial natriuretic peptide (MR-ProANP) and the N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-ProBNP) in forecasting the hypertensive left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and left heart failure (LHF). All patients were subjected to cardiac color Doppler ultrasound examination to obtain left atrium volume index (LAVI), left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD), early-diastolic peak flow velocity (E), early-diastolic mean flow velocity (e'), early-diastolic peak flow velocity/early-diastolic mean flow velocity (E/e') and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Biomarkers were performed to obtain serum MR-ProANP and NT-ProBNP concentrations, and statistical analysis was performed. The LVEF was obviously lower than that in the control group (P<0.01). The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) values of LVEF, E/e', serum MR-ProANP and NT-ProBNP alone were in the range of 0.7–0.8. The AUC, sensitivity and specificity of LVEF and E/e' combined with MR-ProANP and NT-ProBNP to diagnose hypertensive LVH and LHF were 0.892, 89.14% and 78.21%, which were higher than those of single diagnosis. In the heart failure group, LVEF was negatively correlated with serum MR-ProANP and NT-ProBNP concentrations (P<0.05), and E/e' was positively correlated with serum MR-ProANP and NT-ProBNP concentrations (P<0.05). Pump function and ventricular remodeling in patients with hypertensive LVH and LHF are closely related to serum MR-ProANP and NT-ProBNP levels. Combination of the two testing can improve the prediction and diagnostic efficacy of LHF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toroidal vortices, or vortex rings, are torus‐shaped vortices observed in various fluid systems. Recently, optical toroidal vortices, novel solutions to Maxwell's equations, have been experimentally observed (Nat. Photonics, 2022, 16, 519). Thus, their nanoplasmonic counterparts, namely plasmonic toroidal vortices, are highly anticipated. This study aims to elucidate the generation and manifestation of plasmonic toroidal vortices. To achieve this, a technique involving the illumination of a gold nanotorus with a radially‐polarized beam is employed. Notably, the plasmonic toroidal vortices exhibit a distinct photon flow trajectory along the minor radius of a nanotorus. This work presents an advancement in toroidal vortices within the plasmonic regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As smart grid advance, Power Load Forecasting (PLF) has become a research hotspot. As the foundation of the forecasting model, the Power Load Monitoring (PLM) data takes on great importance due to its completeness, reliability and accuracy. However, monitoring equipment failures, transmission channel congestion and anomalies result in missing PLM data, which directly affects the performance of the PLF model. To address this issue, this paper proposes an L1-and-L2-Regularized Nonnegative Tensor Factorization (LNTF) model to impute PLM missing data. Its main idea is threefold: (1) combining L1 and L2 norms to achieve effective feature extraction and improve the model's robustness; (2) incorporating two temporal-dependent linear biases to describe the fluctuations of PLM data; (3) adding nonnegative constraints to precisely define the nonnegativity of PLM data. Extensive empirical studies on two publicly real-world PLM datasets with 1,569,491 and 413,357 known entries and missing rates of 93.35% and 96.75% demonstrate that the proposed LNTF improves 14.04%, 59.31%, and 71.43% on average over the state-of-the-art imputation models in terms of imputation error, convergence rounds, and time cos, respectively. Its high computational efficiency and low imputation error make practical sense for PLM data imputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quasi-particle named plexciton emerges from the hybridization between plasmons and molecular excitons which exhibits characteristic spectral features, such as Fano resonance and Rabi splitting in extinction, scattering, and reflection spectroscopy. However, the understanding of the fluorescence properties in plexcitonic hybrids remains unclear, especially for nonlinear upconverted emissions. In this Letter, we prepared three-component plexcitonic hybrids with two cyanine dyes (Cy3 and Cy5) coupled to Ag nanostructured films and investigated their enhanced nonlinear radiation, including two-photon luminescence (TPL), second-harmonic generation (SHG), and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The plexcitonic hybrids showed a splitting extinction spectrum with five peaks induced by the hybrid of the monomer and dimer excitons in the two cyanine dyes with surface plasmon resonance of the Ag films. Under the laser excitation at 1260 nm, the (Cy3–Cy5)/Ag hybrid had a 6.3-fold enhancement of TPL and a 5.1-fold enhancement of SHG compared to a two-component hybrid of Cy5/Ag. Our experimental results provide valuable insights for designing and manufacturing multicomponent plexcitonic devices with highly efficient nonlinear radiation. The plexcitonic hybrids, characterized by their featured extinction properties and largely enhanced upconverted emission, have great promise for applications in nonlinear optics, quantum information processing, biomedical sensing, and photochemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal core@semiconductor shell hybrids are regarded as promising candidates for plasmon-enhanced photocatalysis, but it remains a challenge to build semiconductor junctions on the shell region for further improved photocatalysis. Herein, Au core@dual-semiconductor coshell hybrids, whose shell was made by two different metal sulfides, were prepared by a one-pot direct growth method based on Au nanorods for highly improved photocatalysis for the first time. By inducing two different metal ions at the step of shell growth in a surfactant-assisted hydrothermal reaction, three types of Au@dual-semiconductor hybrids were prepared. In these hybrids, Au and two semiconductors intimately contact with each other, and three types of semiconductor heterojunctions including type I (ZnS–CdS), type II (Cu2–xS–Bi2S3), and Z-scheme (Bi2S3–CdS) are grown on Au nanorods. The as-prepared Au@dual-semiconductor hybrids show excellent photocatalytic activity on degrading rhodamine B under light irradiation, which is much higher than that of Au@single-semiconductor, semiconductor junctions, and Au@semiconductor@semiconductor hybrids with a double-layer shell. The enhanced mechanism can be ascribed to the accelerated carrier transfer and separation driven by the internal electric fields (IEFs) between semiconductors. Meanwhile, the plasmon-induced hot electron injection from Au to semiconductors can be promoted due to the cooperation of the Schottky junction or ohmic contact at metal–semiconductor interfaces and IEFs at semiconductor–semiconductor interfaces, which further promote the photocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Favorable growth of asymmetric hetero‐nanostructures consisting of plasmonic metals and semiconductors or topological nanomaterials is highly desired because the performance of nonlinear optical antennas is closely related to their composition and morphology symmetry. In this work, two methods are proposed to overgrow PtSe2, a semiconductor or topological semimetal material, onto Au nanorods (AuNRs) to form Au/AuPt/PtSe2 and Au/AgPtSe2 heterorods via wet chemical technique. Both Au/AuPt/PtSe2 and Au/AgPtSe2 heterorods show asymmetric morphologies: the Au/AuPt/PtSe2 heterorods show a partially hollow morphology with an etched AuNR coated by AuPt and PtSe2 shells; the Au/AgPtSe2 heterorods prepared by Ag‐mediated overgrowth method have a toothbrush shape with AgPtSe2 attached on the side surface near one end of AuNRs. The two asymmetric heterorods show significantly enhanced nonlinear radiations of second harmonic generation with the excitation laser wavelength tuning from 1220 to 1315 nm, and a maximal nonlinear enhancement factor of 16 is achieved, which is attributed to the interaction of gold core with platinum selenide shell and the broken symmetry of heterostructures. The findings provide a strategy to prepare metal‐topological heterostructures as optical antennas with optimized performance in the application of nonlinear photonic nanodevices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a triple-layer grating beam splitter with three-port output is designed. Through the combination of rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) and simulated annealing algorithms (SAA), the calculation and optimization of each parameter of the grating is carried out to make the diffraction efficiency of the grating meet the conditions. At the incident wavelength of 800 nm, the diffraction efficiencies of 0th order and ±1st order under TE polarization are 31.6% and 31.4%, respectively. The diffraction efficiencies of 0th order and ±1st order under TM polarization are 32.7% and 32.5%, respectively. It can be seen that not only the total diffraction efficiency under TE polarization and TM polarization exceeds 90%, but also the uniformity of diffraction efficiency at each order exceeds 99%. Finally, the influence of grating parameters and incident wave characteristics on diffraction efficiency is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]